Tailtu and Mary Too
As we go to press, the nation and our Valley are about to enter the best season of the year, Holiday Season, more dear to Americans than the bland spring/summer/fall/winter seasons invented by scientists.
Credit for starting the Holiday Season goes to the ancient Celts who celebrated with feasting to mark Samhein – a/k/a the beginning of the “Fall” season – and to thank Tailtu for a good harvest.
Tailtu was the Celtic goddess of endurance and harvest. She cleared forests and prepared land for farming, work so arduous that she died from exhaustion. To honor Taitlu, her son Lugh threw the first harvest ‘thanksgiving’ festival in her memory.
[Ed Note: There have been no recent sightings of Taitlu or other gods/goddesses (Zeus, Aphrodite, etc.) worshipped for centuries by our long-ago ancestors. There is no currently active Tailtu congregation in Sonoma.]
As taught in school, our Thanksgiving was started in the 1600’s by the Pilgrims, who fled persecution in England at the hands of other Christians. Together with the local Wampanoags, Pilgrims thanked the Christian god for a bountiful harvest by feasting and firing the guns they would later use to harvest the Wampanoags.
But in America, Halloween – not Thanksgiving – marks the Official Start of the Holiday Season. It, too, is rooted in the Celtic holiday of Samhein, on which boundaries between the living and the dead became blurred, and spirits roamed the earth.
Allegedly. Eventually, Samhein was absorbed into All Saints Eve, a ‘holy’ or ‘hallow’ evening, thence “Halloween,” a Christian celebration which retains Samhein’s traditions of ‘souling’ and jack-o’-lanterns.
Souling, the precursor of trick-or-treating, involved poor people – particularly children – going door-to-door on ‘Allhallowtide’ begging for food and money. In exchange, they promised to pray for the souls of the homeowners’ deceased relatives, to help them in the (alleged) afterlife.
The beggars carried jack-o’-lanterns, representing the spirit of a fellow named Stingy Jack, or “Jack-of-the-Lantern,” who had been cursed (by someone) to wander the earth for all eternity, i.e., forbidden to die. Jack-o’-lanterns supposedly frightened away evil spirits, e.g., witches. In England and early America, “witches” not subdued by pumpkins were hung, burned, abused and discriminated against, traditions that continue to this day even though women have ready access to firearms.
After Halloween, and with a one-day pause for Thanksgiving, the calendar immediately shifts to the season’s Most Popular Holiday of All: Christmas. It begins with Black Friday sales designed to shift merchant balance sheets from red to black by coating godless Capitalism in high-fructose Religion.
The first Christmas reportedly occurred when three Wise Men on camels followed a star across the desert for months on end until it stopped directly over a stable in the Palestinian West Bank town of Bethlehem. Readers who’ve ever tried following a star from Sonoma to say, Petaluma, know how hard that was.
Inside the stable was a teen-aged Joseph, his virgin (alleged) wife, Mary, and their/her/somebody’s newborn child. Bingo – they had found the Messiah, the long-promised savior of the Jewish nation whose followers would – off and on for centuries – persecute and kill Jewish people.
The Wise Men (likely Arabs) gave gold, frankincense and myrrh to the little guy, thereby launching the gift-giving Christmas tradition that in 2024 generated $980 billion in spending in the U.S., far outstripping its Defense Budget ($886.3 billion) and creating a nation where Amazon can deliver gold (yes), frankincense and myrrh straight to your door/manger, leaving no camel-poop in the driveway.
Tailtu – and Mary, too – would be proud.
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