So, could someone give me a near-correct answer as to who started this War on Christmas? Was it some Jew? Or some Puritan? Or some other Christian who just doesn’t get enough of it?
Actually, in the original Greek myth, Persephone’s annual stay with Hades and Demeter’s mourning over it explained summer, not winter. Greek winters are mild and damp, summers are hot and dry, but the myth got reinterpreted by North-Euros to whom winter is the barren time.
I heard this from a friend a couple years ago…and I don’t believe it withstands the test.
Check out Hesiod’s Works and Days, when he tells you how to know what time to plant and what time to harvest. The winter is defined by the time of the rising of various constellations, so there can be no ambiguity.
Also, I have talked with several people who live in Greece, and they say no: planting is in the spring and harvest is in the fall. Summers are hot, and winters are cold. Greece isn’t far enough south to have tropical climate patterns. Even as far south as Jerusalem, the winters are cold, sometimes even snowy, and summers are hot and nasty. But there, too, summertime is the growing season, not the barren season.
Please, though: please, I beseech you in the bowels of Ouranos: if you have a cite for this, get it to me, here or in a PM. I’ve been trying to find a cite for the claim, as you made it and as I heard it, for the last two years, and I’ve found nothing.
I wrote to four different classical studies professors at various universities…but never heard back from any of them. Hmph. So much for academia!
BrainGlutton: Thank’ee most kindly! This has been a kind of bete noir of mine for a couple years. Maybe I should toss it to Uncle Cecil! (I actually did ask it once in General Questions, but didn’t get much help.)
It wouldn’t resonate as being real if we weren’t already flooded with not-quite-as-ridiculous real War on Christmas shit over the last few years. This does seem like the sort of thing those assholes would get in a tizzy about.