On the Feast of Stephen

The story of Christmas is the story of assimilation. Sorry to put it so nakedly, but it’s true. Wrapped up in this holiday, this holy day, is a whole history of cultural appropriation, identity theft, and synchretism. And there are no easy answers. It’s all so very messy.

December 25 was the date of the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere according to the old Julian calendar. In the Gregorian calendar currently in use, the solstice falls on the 21st or 22nd. Most ancient cultures held their biggest annual festivals at this time of year; if you take into account all winter festivals worldwide, the list of holidays is staggering.

The Church was pretty open about appropriating the winter solstice (or, more specifically, the Roman celebration of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the festival of Sol, the invincible sun god) as Jesus’ birthday. Jesus was almost certainly born in late March or early April, but if you want an instant celebration of a new concept, you simply glom onto an existing festival and add a new face to it.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Jesus is not “the reason for the season.” The reason for the season, as a friend recently pointed out, is the tilt in the earth’s axis, and humankind’s need to celebrate light and life on the darkest day of the year.

Today, the 26th, is the feast day of St. Stephen (the day Good King Wenceslas looked out, as the song puts it, and saw a peasant struggling to survive the harsh winter and did him an act of charity). Stephen was the first Christian martyr, so his life is celebrated right after Jesus’ “birthday.” Such an honor.

Stephen was a Hellenist. These were first-century Jews who spoke and read Greek—intellectuals who had more thoroughly assimilated into Greek culture. (Even though Rome was the occupying force at the time, the intellectual and cultural imprint over the empire was still firmly Greek.) Opposing the Hellenists were the Aramaic-speaking “Hebrews” who, while able to speak Greek, held more anti-assimilationist beliefs.

Vying for control of religious life were the Perushim (Pharisees), a sect of devoutly religious purists and scholars that later became the Rabbinical movement in Judaism; and the Saducees, who represented the aristocratic group of the Hasmonean High Priests. (Two hundred years earlier, the Greek ruler in Jerusalem desecrated the Temple by erecting a statue of Zeus and sacrificing pigs on his altar, prompting the Maccabean uprising; the rebel forces took control, liberated and rededicated the Temple, and installed the new Hasmonean priestly line. That’s the story of Hanukkah.) The Hasmoneans ruled as “priest-kings,” and like other aristocracies across the Hellenistic world became increasingly influenced by Hellenistic syncretism and Greek philosophies.

Then there were the Samaritans, descendants of the northern Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh who survived the destruction of the Northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. Judeans viewed them as heretics and the worst kind of assimilationists, for they had sided with the Greeks during the Maccabean revolt.

You had the Essenes, a devout monastic sect whose religious beliefs tended toward the mystical (some historians suggest, perhaps without a great deal of linguistic support, that “Essene” is Hellenized form of the word “Hasidim,” and there are even some legends that the Kabbalah was first developed by the Essenes); and the Zealots, political insurgents who desperately wanted to throw the Roman occupying forces out of the country.

There were also the everyday tensions between rich and poor, city-dwellers and country bumpkins, ultra-religious types and more secular folks. Clearly nothing whatsoever has changed in two thousand years.

So back to Stephen. He was one of those Hellenistic Jews, one of those cultured, civilized people, who tended to view his fellow Jews, the Judeans, as barbarians. One of the “good” assimilationists! In the fledgling community of Jews trying to decide how to go forward after Jesus’ death, Stephen felt that the poor and widowed among the Hellenists weren’t getting the same financial support from the community that they were giving to the Judean poor and widowed. An argument became a rift which led to a conspiracy, a trial before the Sanhedrin, and Stephen’s execution. This in turn led to the first great schism in this new religion, the great antipathy between Jewish Christians (led by Peter) and Gentile Christians (led by Paul).

My question, on this Feast of Stephen, is about assimilation. Cultural assimilation by conquering civilizations is sometimes done consciously and destructively. When one culture appropriates another’s belief system, and changes or adds to it, is that something to be resisted, or is resistance futile?

Sometimes assimilation is a more subtle, perhaps more insidious, occurrence. Sometimes the new culture is seen as more attractive, and people want to assimilate. That phenomenon is certainly prevalent in today’s society. Is it still identity theft?

I call myself a religious synchretist, but that also means I have no home of my own; am I one of those birds who steals others’ nests?

Earwig

Will someone please tell me why in the world this song from the Broadway musical Hair should play over and over and over and over and over in my sleep all night long?

Folding the flag is taking care of the nation; Folding the flag is putting it to bed for the night. I fell through a hole in the flag, I’m falling through a hole in the flag! Helllllllllllllllp! Don’t put it down— Best one around! Crazy for the red, blue, and white Crazy for the red, blue, and white You look at me, What do you see? Crazy for the white, red, and blue Crazy for the white, red, and blue ‘Cause I look different You think I’m subversive. Crazy for the blue, white, and red Crazy for the blue, white, and red My heart beats true For the red, white and blue! Crazy for the blue, white, and red Crazy for the blue, white, and red And yellow . . . fringe! Crazy for the blue, white, red, and yellow!

Off to Africa?

In two days I’m heading out of town for the holidays. When Dad died in 1982, Mom and I couldn’t bear to celebrate that first Christmas without him surrounded by the same old familiar things, having to put on a brave face and either be endlessly consoled or, worse, not consoled. So we decided to leave town. We drove down to Williamsburg, Virginia, and did the whole Colonial America thing. They have quite a lovely holiday celebration, and it was just so odd and so different that we thought it would be just the thing. We could be quiet and mourn in our own way, talk or not talk as we wish, and broaden our horizons just a bit.

So I thought it was an appropriate thing to do for the first Christmas without Mom. No, not Colonial Williamsburg, but a road trip. I’m heading up to Norfolk, Virginia, to spend the holidays with my old, old, old friend Jim (he’s only half a year older than I; it’s just that we’ve been friends since the age of three). He would always come over to our house in Maryland on Christmas eve and spend the night, and then we’d all open prezzies in our robes the next morning. When we moved to Florida, he spent most Christmases down here with us.

Jim bought a house a few years ago, but Mom had been too sick for me to leave her for an out-of-town visit with him. Now that he’s trying to sell it (and with the housing market the way it is, you know that’s going well!), I wanted to see it at least once, and this seemed like the perfect time to do it. We’ll have our quiet little get-together, we’ll lift a glass to Mom, and we’ll find a balance between the old and the new.

On the way up I had already decided to stop at the Waffle House my brother Darryl and I so enjoyed on the funeral trip. But as I was planning, I ran across two new potential adventures.

When I lived and worked in the D.C. area, I came to love Ethiopian food. There are a number of excellent—one might even say renowned—Ethiopian restaurants in the area, though my favorite was a little hole-in-the-wall in Silver Spring, whose customers were almost exclusively Ethiopian, which tells you a little about the authenticity of the food.

I came to find that Ethiopian cuisine is not as well known elsewhere. I recently stumbled upon a database of Ethiopian restaurants, and it turns out there’s one in Jacksonville, on my way north. Guess where I’m eating lunch on Sunday? At the Queen of Sheba! I’ll have the Doro Wat, please, and maybe a little Alitrcha Fit-Fit.

A bit further up the road, in Sheldon, South Carolina, is the Kingdom of Oyotunji African Village. Its founder, King Oba Ofuntola Oseijeman Adelabu Adefunmi, who died in 2005, is credited as having been as one of the pioneers of cultural nationalism in America and the first African-American to be crowned King of all Yoruba in the Americas and Canada. According to Roadside America:

The Kingdom of Oyotunji African Village covers 27 acres and has, well, we don’t know exactly how many citizens (5 to 9 families in the last ten years, according to one tipster). It seems uncrowded. It was founded in 1970 by King (Oba) Ofuntola Oseijeman Adelabu Adefunmi I, a former used car dealer who, some say, was running from the law. Whatever else he may have been, King Oba was smart enough to see the tax benefits of starting not only his own religion (“New World Yoruba”) but also his own country. Oyotunji is not part of the United States, at least according to King Oba’s accountants. It moved to its present site near Sheldon because its old neighbors complained about the tourists and the drumming. Oyotunji literature pictures its happy residents strutting about in colorful, flowing robes, dancing and playing fanciful percussive instruments. In real life the people of Oyotunji dress like any other small-town South Carolinans. Except, of course, that this “town” was built in the middle of a forest, has dirt instead of streets, bizarre, crumbling concrete monuments, and a “royal palace” that looks like a bargain basement V.F.W. hall. In one corner of the palace courtyard lies the mausoleum of Orisamola Awolowo, one of the founding fathers of Oyotunji, who died in 1990. A sign outside, painted on a piece of 4 x 8 plywood, beckons visitors to venture down the “Safari Road” to visit the Village “as seen on TV.” The King has been on Oprah, defending his right to practice polygamy (at one point he had six wives). Some consider a visit to Oyotunji a spiritual experience. For the less spiritually inclined, this sandy, marshy, bug-infested conglomeration of tumble-down shacks and crumbling concrete sculptures testifies to the American right to believe in whatever you want (even if you no longer consider yourself an American). We give the people of Oyotunji credit for still being around, particularly in light of the rise and fall of the Nuwaubian Pyramids—another grand exercise in African-American nation-building—next door in Georgia.

I don’t know if I’ll hit the Kingdom of Oyotunji on my way up, or as I head back, but how in the world can I resist a visit?