First of all, thank you loyal readers for letting me know that you are reading my articles in both the Hastings and Cottage Grove papers. I appreciate your support, as I truly do like writing the articles. Remember that you can always reach me by email which is “[email protected] com”. It sounds like we had a few misunderstandings back in the December 23 article and I upset some people that I implied that Christmas was a pagan idea. I did not and you can explore why I am saying that fact was incorrect.

Here is reprint of that paragraph. “For many centuries before and after the birth of Jesus, there were lots of celebrations around this time period but probably most were related to the winter solstice which symbolizes the resurgence of the sun and promise of life to come. Some say this time frame formed into celebrating the birth of Jesus but being a pagan idea, the church may not have been eager to get on that band wagon”. The time frame times are the pagan ideas. The pagans never had a time when they celebrated an occasion that was called Christmas or had any of the contents of what we Christians now call Christmas.

Look at the term “pagan”. It seems to be a really bad thing that we should have nothing to do with. I am sure there are things called that these days and some are truly bad and evil. As I look at it, the term in my statement means times before we turned to Christianity and belief in one God. There were many thousands of years before that time that a wide range of worships were done to things surrounding the people and they believed in multiple gods. And it is a fact that we still are in touch with pagan ideas.

Okay, now the bomb has been fired up and it probably is an extra large bomb. Before you tear up this paper, call me, or call the Hastings Journal, (and you still can call the paper or email me) to voice your distaste with this statement, please continue reading the next paragraph.

I invite you to Google Ten Christian Holidays and Beliefs Steeped in Pagan Traditions. Also, Google pagan ideas involved in our Easter, Lent and Ash Wednesday traditions and you can keep on with other holidays. It may just knock your socks off as how much we still have the ideas from long, long ago in our lives TODAY. Wow, who knew, unless you are a researching, studying person? It even was a big surprise to me and I love doing research. I think maybe a good word to use is “adaptation”. Humans took some of the fun, good, and other aspects of things celebrated in the past and applied them in part to honor a new event. Of course each of us can pick and choose what parts of a specific holiday we want to apply to our lives today.

Please, please don’t interpret that I am advocating witches, discarding Christianity, not believe in God, or any other things that might pop into a human brain when the word “pagan” is said. Research will show facts that some of us may not like. In fact the links to underlined Google search listed above may not be what you want to see. Human evolution and adaptation would be some key words to remember. You have your own mind to THINK, which is a great gift in itself.

We are all living in extremely trying times. If I had a magic wand for wishing good things, one of my first wishes would be to get rid of the hate and distrust we have worked up towards each other. Let’s each of us do something or things to change that. Maybe if each of us did one extra good deed for another person every day, it would be a start to a greatly improved life on earth. Give this grass roots idea a start and see what it leads to!