You may know about, or have heard of the connections that Jesus and Christmas have with solar gods and their sons who preceded Christ. Extreme Christians react with horror that solar religions have “crept into” the fabric of Christianity, denouncing SUNday as a day of worship and 25th Dec, the traditional Sun’s birthday, as Christ’s birthday. The pagan-inclined are, or should be, horrified at how something as hardwired as solar worship has been hijacked by Christianity, stealing dates and legends of former heroes and divinities.
I recently realized that it is was all much more straightforward and less sinister in its conception than one had imagined. To be sure, ongoing and ceaseless brutality has ensued ever since but it started with understandable bureaucratic intentions. It was a simple matter of Emperor Constantine, a Sun worshiper himself, being driven to distraction by all the different religions and priests that he had to deal with across the Roman Empire. Can you imagine?
So at the infamous Council of Nicea in 325AD his agenda was to hammer out a religion that would be instituted as standard throughout the Empire. To smooth the transition, as many existing dates, legends and stories as possible were incorporated into the fabric and dogma of Christianity. And orders went out to destroy all other gospels and spiritual records extant at the time, to pre-empt future confusion and conflict.
Constantine himself only converted to Christianity on his deathbed, presumably for bureaucratic reasons. And the new religion of the Roman Empire conveniently provided a terrific charter for the oppressive rulers who were to follow – promoting suffering in this life as a sure ticket to heaven in the next, whilst advising the oppressed to love their enemy and turn the other cheek. Yet, without Constantine, the world’s biggest religion would be little more than a page in the history books.
So isn’t it time to get back to basics? That’s where we go in Sun of gOd, which re-opens the book on a very old subject, looking at it in a modern light. Emperor Constantine: it was an understandable idea but no longer serves the function intended. It’s time to return to the real “light of our life,” the Sun above.
