) ( ) Good Morning Family! .-.,--^--. ( Come on in. . . \\|`----'| - The coffee pot's on. . . \| |// ...and we even have decaf, | |/ tea, and hot chocolate! \ / ------ Today's topics include: 1. Welcome to new cousins 2. Bower Community Queries 3. The Retreat 4. Christmas Potpourri: A History of Christmas **** REMINDER: GIFTS FOR OUR FAMILY CHRISTMAS ARE DUE TO ME BY DECEMBER 9th **** If you've been with the family for at least three weeks, you'll probably want to skip the following paragraph… TO OUR NEWEST COUSINS ~~ On behalf of the entire family, I'd like to extend a most hearty welcome to those cousins who came into the family fold this past week. We are very glad to have you with us and hope you'll stay and remain a part of our online family. As soon as you're comfortable with us and the list, please send in your Bower[s]/Bauer or Baur lines so we can all see how we're related to you. We do not have a fancy format for sending in records or queries to the list. Post as many as you wish! If the data has anything to do with Bower[s]/Bauer or Baur ancestors or any of the 81+ variant spellings we research that might help someone, please feel free to post it. Every scrap of information is appreciated. If you haven't visited the homesite of this list yet, you are encouraged to do so. Our home is Bower Community, located at <http://bowercommunity.com>. There, we currently have two sites: The Bower Family Homestead [a.k.a., the Homestead] is our primary homesite and the gathering place for much of our information. It waits to join us all in welcoming you into the family at <http://bowercommunity.com/homestead>. Smaller and just opened this year, our sister site, the Bower Cottage, houses most of our projects including an online GEDCOM fed by quite a few cousins from our lists. The Cottage is still small as far as material goes, however give us time and we'll have it filled really soon. The Cottage is at <http://bowercommunity.com/cottage>. BOWER COMMUNITY QUERIES There are two ways for you to get a query placed at Bower Community. The first is through the Bower Family Homestead. You send your query directly to me, where I put it online for you. But, did you also know there is a forum in place at the Cottage where you can enter a query yourself? It can be as long or short as you please, and it will be published on the Web immediately after you submit it. This little-used tool is one you won't want to overlook. THE RETREAT Due to a lack of security at our myfamily.com Retreat, our haven coordinator, Vicky Bowers-Gielau, found a new non-genealogical, secure location for us at <http://bowersretreat.intranets.com>. The fact that it's a non-genealogy site is good because the site server will have no interest in our data and we won't have to worry about it being sold. Have you been to the intranets.com Retreat yet? Vicky needs your opinion in her efforts to improve our get-away-spot and the amenities there. She has been in contact with the server and they're very impressed that she's brought a genealogy group to them. Also, they're working with her all they can to come up to the secure standards we need/expect. But, Vicky needs to know from the Retreat members how you feel about what's already in place? Do you like the new move? If so, please tell her. Do you like the new surrounds? If so, let her know that, too. Vicky has worked pretty hard to establish the new Retreat location and expects to be able to reopen the doors right after the holidays in January. You can reach Vicky at <[email protected]>. CHRISTMAS POTPOURRI Everyone enjoyed the Thanksgiving trivia so much, I thought that with the advent of the Christmas holiday season, it would be nice to use December's Coffees to relate holiday historical facts and trivia. To that point, all the upcoming Coffees until January, 2001 will focus primarily on Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year's customs and traditions under the above subheading. I have a lot of material here and this way you won't be pummelled with it all in one message! :) We begin with .... A HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS Our current stories, customs and traditions of holidays, just as in our genealogy, are passed down from generation to generation, from one interpretation to another, from one translation to another, one conflicting with another ... but all lending an aura around the lives of our ancestors. Though you may believe one story about Christmas, there are many many others you may not know .... If we go back far enough in history, to the period of paganism, you'll find the origins of many Christmas traditions. The early missionary monks of St. Benedict under St. Augustine, and following rules set down by the then, pope St. Gregory, "christianized" many of the customs which evolved into today's celebratory activities. St. Gregory realized the church would make more converts from paganism by "adding on" to customs already in accepted practice, rather than trying to eliminate everything as "wrong" or "bad." He encouraged the people of Britain to decorate their temples for the saints rather than to their earlier dieties. Pope St. Gregory encouraged the people to eat the animals they'd slain for celebrations ~ to use the meat as food for themselves rather than as sacrifices. Over the centuries, these actions became confused and corrupted, bringing about (particularly Roman) debauchery and excesses of Saturnalian feastings. The ancient Romans held year-end celebrations to honor Saturn, their harvest god; and Mithras, the god of light (more on Mithra below). The first mention of the feast of nativity on December 25th is in the Philocalian Calendar in the year 354. In 388, St. Chrysostom wrote that observing of the festival of the Nativity (on December 25th) was not yet ten years old. Another source states that the first mention of December 25th as the birth date of Jesus occurred in AD 336 in an early Roman calendar. However, according to another story, the first December 25th Christmas was initiated in 375 AD in Rome, under the instruction of Pope Liberius. Prior to that time, the nativity was celebrated only by Egyptian Christians, on January 6th ~ the traditional time of the Magi's visit. The date also coincided with the Egyptian celebration of the new Aion, a personification of Osiris. Aion was birthed by Kore, a "maiden." The birth was presaged by the rising of a star (Sirius), and signaled the flooding of the Nile. This flood was thought to renew the land via the spirit of Osiris. A ceremony occurred the night before that involved descending into a crypt and brining up a wooden idol adored with a cross and star of gold. This represented the birth process of the "the Aion." The Greeks, Persians, and Zoroastrians were among those pre-Christians who claimed virgin births for their gods. The Etruscans worshipped Virgin and child. Krishna and Buddha also shared similar elements to the story of the birth of the Christian Messiah. However, Mithra, a popular Persian deity, had the story most similar to Jesus Christ. Mithra emerged from the virgin mother rock into the world of men. Shepherds witnessed it while tending their flocks. A Mithraic monument found in Oxford, England, shows the Goddess of the Year nursing the God Day, on a memorial to the birth of Mithra "in the night of light," resembling the Madonna and child. Mithraism, with its rituals and quest for moral purity and immortality, was the biggest competitor for Christianity in Asia and Europe. It reached into England, and on into Scotland. Mithra's birth was supposedly December 25th. This then, was the movitivation for the decision made by Pope Liberius to officially make the Christmas celebration date December 25th per the Julian calendar. The more common reason we celebrate on December 25th is the winter solstice. By celebrating on the 25th, Christ became the risen sun as well as the risen son. The winter solstice is considered the lowest point of the sun's degradation below our himisphere. The increase and ascension of the sun begins at that moment. Through the generations, Christian leaders implored their followers to celebrate the nativity rather than "worship" the sun. Winter solstice celebrations were not confined to any one pagan religion. One of the most noted of them, however, was the Druids. Their antiquity is validated at least as far back as Pliny, the Roman philosopher, at some point between 24 and 67 AD. In the British territories, much of the rest of Europe, and Ireland, the winter solstice was celebrated by burning large fires upon hilltops on December 25th, and repeated on January 6th. In these countries and others, the Christmas season custom of decorating with evergreens and mistletoe remains -- a practice purely Druidic in origin. Whatever the origins of stories from our distant past, each tradition and legend holds this as a time of great joy, peace, and celebration. As part of all these celebrations, the people prepared special foods, decorated their homes with greenery, and joined in singing and gift-giving ~ all of which became part of today's Christmas celebration. Did you know? ... *** The first records of Britain show that St. Augustine arrived with his monks from Rome, and on Christmas Day 598, is said to have baptized more than 10,000 English people into the Christian faith? *** In the year 816, the Council of Chelsea, enforced the observance of Christmas on December 25th? This date was formerly called 'Mothers Night,' a vigil in honor of the rebirth of new sun, so it had been deemed easy to replace it with the birth of the Son of God. *** During the reign of the Saxon King Ethelred [991-1016] a law was made that the season of the Nativity should be a time of peace and goodwill, when all strife must end? *** Until about 1170, the festival was always referred to as "in Festis Nativitiatis' or "Natalis' ~ the Feast of the Nativity? The anglicized 'Cristes-Maesse' did not appear until after the Norman invasion. *** In 1644 the puritan parliament first sat on Christmas Day, setting a trend of 'no Christmas'? The Period of No Christmas in England: King Henry VIII's Reformation (mid-1500's) brought Christmas events to a stop. During the Reformation, many Christians began to consider Christmas a pagan celebration because it included nonreligious customs. Christmas, the chosen time for cornonation, decrees and all manner of important events was halted, and the holiday was outlawed in England and in parts of the English colonies in America. In 1645 the puritan parliament declared Christmas a working day. Anyone found making Christmas pies was arrested. It was during this time that all the customs began to die out. Priests were in hiding and few people managed to attend the old 'Cristes-Maesse.' There was no feasting or decorating of houses or streets. During the reign of King Charles II in 1660, things improved, but after more than 100 years of puritan restraint, many of the old customs were not restored in their former style. It was not until the Victorian scholars began to research into old documents, and talk to ancient elders in villages and hidden areas of northern England (where things changed more slowly) that the old customs were to be practiced again. However, many of the symbolisms and reasons behind the christianized versions of these customs was lost. As I finish this piece, I wonder about those holidays in times of the far past ... Family ... it's what we're all about. Thank you for allowing me to spend this time with you. I hope your upcoming week is filled with health, productivity, fun, and above all, filled with love. ) ( ) _.-~~-. (@\'--'/. Colleen ('``.__.'`) `..____.'