God of the Sun Day 359 of 2007 6 days left in this year

HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY —
“No one has ever died for the mistakes he made; only because he did not repent.”

December 25, 325 (or thereabouts): The Roman Emperor Constantine (actually rhymes with Constant Whine) holds the Council at Nicaea with Christian leaders of the day.

Until 312, the Roman empire had been ruled by four Emperors who split it into four part, one of which was ruled by Constantine’s father, Flavius (a good and in many ways a noble historical figure).  When the emperors began to die, Constantine decided it would be best if the empire was again united, and that he should be the one emperor. This was a gutsy and risky decision, as Constantine only had his father’s power base from which to launch his campaign, and civil war.

Ever shrewd, Constantine announced that from that point on, Christians, far from being persecuted, would be allowed to practice freely and without harm in his part of the world, and any part which fell under his control (pretty important, that last bit. It’s like running for president today and suddenly declaring yourself against a woman’s right to choose, to win the fundamentalist vote.). This won him a lot of votes with the “roman mob,” many of whom had converted to Christianity during the past 300 years.

In a battle in 312 to unite the empire, Constantine, who was a strong worshiper of the Sun God, claimed to see a cross (or Labarum symbol) in the sunlight; he had his soldiers put the symbol on their shields, and he won a victory as the underdog. Henceforth, Constantine declared himself a Christian, though he never took sacraments, and continued to worship the Sun God until shortly before his death.

After the war, in 325, the reigning bishops meeting at Nicaea argued about damn near everything.  Whether Jesus was a man with godlike powers, or a god who took human form or wasn’t divine but acted divinely, as if they knew any of it. They established rules in what became known as the first Ecumenical Council, a council to determine what people should think and how they should act as true Christians.

It was here that Christian beliefs were first formally written (I believe in one god, the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth ….), which is recited to this day in the Roman Catholic Church as the Apostle’s Creed. They also once and for all established the concept of the Trinity. Yeah, there’s one god, but really there are three, including Jesus and the Holy Ghost. (The 1964 Vatican Council decided that “ghost” was a scary word and changed it to the Holy Spirit.) So, no, we’re monotheistic, honest, but Jesus was a god and the Holy Ghost isn’t his brother but … well, it’s a MYSTERY, dammit!

Desperate times call for crazy beliefs and this was one of those times.

One of their first actions after the council ended was to take pledges from everyone to uphold these new rules,  called the Nicene Creed. Any “Christian” who didn’t take the pledge was excommunicated, and usually slaughtered after torture. So much for Christian tolerance. (During these years, the bishop of Constantinople was twice excommunicated and reinstated, depending on who was meeting and what rules were decided. These were wacky times.)

One decision made was that Jesus’ birthday would be celebrated on December 25 of each year because that was the official Praise the Sun God Day anyway. In addition, it was officially declared by the bishops (with loads of help from Constantine, and the bishops knew which side their host was buttered on) that the day of rest and praise each week for the Christian god would be Sun Day.

Constantine ruled as one emperor until 337, when he grew very ill. Knowing his time to be short, on his deathbed, Constantine called in a priest and was baptized a Christian. Wily to the end, the emperor chose the one sacrament that wipes every misdeed and mortal sin from one’s soul in a flash, no waiting necessary, no praying needed. Extreme Unction and it was automatic. The laundry list of his crimes including genocide, uxoricide and filicide, was forgiven and he was free to enter the Christian heaven, if such existed.

After his death, Christians began a two-hundred year reign of torture and terror for pagans. Anyone refusing to take the Nicaean oath was stretched, boiled, broken and busted, before being murdered. Constantine had ordered toleration for pagans as he had for Christians, but his edict could only be enforced as long as he was alive.

From there, things just got worse, of course. Christians stole the christmas trees and gifts from pagan rituals of Scandanavia (somewhere around 700 CE), and made them their own. They cobbled together an ugly mass of ritual and lie (um, no Jesus wasn’t born in Bethlehem) to finally make what has been since the 20th century a mass market of commerce and greed, and the occasional 24-hour ceasefire in whatever wars are going on, many of them waged by, surprise, Christians.

How the 18th century Christian missionaries indoctriated native Hawaiians into such a “creed” is anyone’s guess, but the natives have sure bought it. To this day there is just one synogogue on Maui. Oh, and by the way, this explains why the Christian sect Jehovah’s Witnesses does not celebrate Christmas — as their literature says, it’s a pagan holiday.

Hey, happy holidays to all you pagans out there!

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY – December 25th

• 1821: Clara Barton,  nurse, founded American Red Cross
• 1876: Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founded Pakistan 
• 1883: Maurice Utrillo, painter
• 1887: Conrad Hilton, hotel mogul
• 1893: Ropert L Ripley, cartoonist
• 1899: Humphrey Bogart, actor
• 1906: Clark M Clifford, U.S. Secretary of Defense
• 1907: Cab Calloway, bandleader/actor
• 1918: Anwar el-Sadat, Egyptian president
• 1924: Rod Serling, writer/host Twilight Zone
• 1929: Billy Horton, rocker
• 1931: Carlos Castaneda, writer/mystic
• 1937: O’Kelly Isley, rock vocalist
• 1945: Kenny Stabler, NFL QB
• 1945: Noel Redding, rocker
• 1946: Jimmy Buffett, singer 
•  1949: Sissy Spacek, actress 
• 1954: Annie Lennox, singer
• 1954: Steve Wariner, country singer
• 1957: Shane McGowan, rock vocalist