21-12-2022
On the Day of Winter Solstice 2022
Yasuhiko Genku Kimura
Season’s Greetings to You and All Your Loved Ones!
We have entered a special time of the year, which calls not only for mutual giving and gratitude for our families, friends, and fellow humanity but also for deep self-reflection and meditation.
The festivity on December 25th is believed to be a Christian festival founded on the nativity of Jesus the Christ. Yet, the significance of Christmas is far more universal, transcending a particular religious tradition called Christianity.
On the same day, the Babylonians celebrated the birth of Tammuz; the Persians the birth of Mithra; the Phrygians the birth of Attis; the Egyptians the birth of Osiris; and the Greeks the birth of Adonis. Also during this period in December the Romans held their drunken Saturnalia in honor of Bacchus, the god of wine (or di-vine).
In fact, the Christian date of Christmas was set to conform to these pagan festivals only in the fourth century when in 337 AD Pope Julian I decreed it. To this day the Eastern Orthodox Church does not comply with this date as the birthday of Christ. All in all throughout history there have been 136 different dates on which the various Christian sects have celebrated the birth of Christ.
Therefore, it is evident that the festivity on December 25th is not Christian but pagan, more ancient and common, in origin. The question is what universal significance this date has so that the ancients should make it the time of celebrating their gods and saviors.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the 21st day of December marks the winter solstice, the day when the Sun reaches its farthest point south. This is the longest and darkest night of the year. According to ancient cosmology, it is at this time that the Sun’s physical forces upon the Earth are at their minimum, while the Earth’s psychic or astral forces are most powerful. And the maximum of this psychic period is reached about three or four days after December 21st, that is, 24th or 25th, just before the influence of the returning Sun is felt.
At midnight, at the cusp between the 24th and 25th of December, when the Sun is directly under the Earth, and when the zodiacal sign of Virgo, the virgin, appears on the horizon, Christ (the Divine Consciousness) is born of a Virgin. This birth signals the dawning of an immaculate new year and symbolizes light’s triumph over darkness. Thus at midnight, the Divine Consciousness, the “Savior”, immaculately conceived in Spirit, is born of a Virgin from the darkest of the dark.
When the mundane phenomenal world is at its darkest, the spiritual noumenal world is at its most luminous. The Luminous Numen presides over the world awakening and presages a new world aborning. The Cosmic Light illumines our path toward our divine destiny, toward our “salvation”, toward the freedom and liberation, and felicity and beatitude, of our soul.
This is the cosmic meaning and significance of December 25th, now celebrated as Christmas. This is indeed a “holy night” because this is a solemn, sacred moment in nature, in the cosmic cycle, which we should observe with the same wonder, awe, and reverence with which we behold an eclipse and other wonders of the Universe.
This spiritual significance extends to the whole Christmas season and the whole season of winter. The Christmas season is to the year what the Sabbath is to the week, a time for spiritual reflection and regeneration. It is said that the night time is the day time of the soul. The same is also true of the yearly cycle. The winter time is the summer time of the soul. Winter is the time of spiritual activity; summer the time of physical activity.
John Milton once wrote (in effect) that he did not try to write in summer because his inspirations in winter were so much better. In the winter time the cosmic forces are with us for our spiritual illumination and therefore the wise use the season for their greater spiritual illuminations and creative inspirations.
Therefore, let us not waste, under the pressure of banal commercialism prevalent in the world, this precious time for spiritual illumination and development, and for a momentous self-reflection and decision, by excessively indulging in our physical pleasures and glutting our physical appetites, or obligatorily giving material gifts to others.
Let our giving be authentically spiritual in nature. Let our giving be genuinely of our love and appreciation. Let the form (“the gift”) that carries our message of love and appreciation be most proper to our message that is beyond any form.
Alone let us each look deeply into his or her soul, so deeply that we reach the innermost where our individual souls become one inter-soul in the inner bosom of the Over-Soul. Let us be illumined by the Light and Love of the Over-Soul. Let us illumine our world with our light and love. Let us together creatively think our shared future into existence in light and love.
This day is the Festival of Light of one whole human race beyond any one religion or creed. Together we celebrate our cosmic human unity, the light and love residing in our heart, and the common destiny that will take us all to the promised land of divine benediction.
Dear Friends, in attunement with the spiritual forces of the cosmos, with my beloved wife Mira Joy, I celebrate with you our common divine destiny and wish you all Joyous Holidays and a Happy New Year.
Yasuhiko Genku Kimura
Vision without action is empty.
Action without vision is blind.
Opinion and ideology divide.
Quest and commitment unite.