Symbols

As a student of history, I have always been fascinated by the people of Japan.  They were, for centuries, an isolationist country, keeping out influences from both Western and Eastern religions, cultures, thoughts.  And yet, the Japanese loved new ideas, studying them, borrowing them, and then making them theirs – uniquely Japanese.  So they traded with people from the west over the seas, and people from the east over the lands, and their own culture became enriched.

Christians are a rather similar people.  We look at other religions, other cultures and traditions and think – wow, those are pretty neat.  If we just changed how we looked at it a little bit, then it becomes uniquely ours.  We might have been inspired by A, B and C, but with a little of the Holy Spirit mixed in, we've got the Alpha, the Omega and everything in between.

Christmas is one of those times of year when Christians are accused of taking over Pagan symbols, or in the more modern, PC vernacular, practicing cultural appropriation.  In some ways, they could be considered correct, but let's look at a uniquely Christmas symbol, and what it means around the world.  Here, I'm speaking of the Christmas Star.

Now, it's only in Matthew that we hear about the Star in the East that leads the three wise men to come and find Jesus.  But we all know about the star, how it guides, how it shines so brilliantly in comparison to all the other stars in the sky.  Over the years, the star has been depicted as having 5 points, 6 points, 8 points or 12 points.  So just taking those – essentially the ornaments we put at the top of our Christmas tree, to remind us that Christ is what it most important under that star – let's look at how other traditions look the various pointed stars.

A pentagram, or 5-pointed star can be found throughout ancient Sumeria, Greece and Egypt, often used in creation stories to represent the elements found on Earth, i.e. water, earth, fire, air and spirit.  The Chinese have the elements in a 5-pointed star of water, earth, fire, wood and metal.  Today, you'll find most pentagrams in use by modern Wiccans – a pagan religion that actually began in 1954, which takes on the original creation elements, adding in the Pythagorean definition of it symbolizing man.  This symbol is in use all over the world, and no one group or culture has a monopoly on the symbol.  The symbol means what it means to the person using it.

A hexagram, or 6-pointed star, is most often recognized in the west as the Star of David.  It has, however, also been used in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – which would generally tell us that this is probably a regional symbol that then came into use by various religions.  Christians have been known to use a hexagram, and call it the Star of Creation.  Interestingly, Pascal and other mathematicians find the "Mystic hexagram" to be a fascinating use of geometry.

An octagram, or 8-pointed star, is familiar to us as the Compass Rose.  You'll note that as the stars gain numbers of points, they are more and more popular with mathematicians.  In any case, the 8-pointed star is regularly used by Muslims, Hindus, and Venus worshipers in Latvia.

A dodecagram, or 12-pointed star, is pretty much a popular symbol for when you have 12 of anything to keep track of – 12 apostles, 12 tribes, 12 months in a year or signs of the zodiac. 

So the point to all of this trivial knowledge is that a symbol is something used for or representing something else.  It can, of course, be popularized in one culture, be used by another culture and that symbolism takes over the meaning of the original.  A good example of this is the swastika – originally coming from the Sanskrit, and used by Hindus, Jainists and Native American religions as symbols of good luck, divinity and spirituality – and eventually taken over by the Nazi party in Germany to mean racial superiority and anti-semitism.  To use this symbol now is certainly asking for trouble.

But let's take the wisdom of a child about stars.  Mr. Harry Lauder told of a man and his small son who were walking slowly down the streets of a large American city one Christmas time. It was wartime, and the child was interested to see many service stars hanging in the windows of homes. Each star proudly proclaiming the fact that the son was in the service of his country. He clapped his hands excitedly as he approached each new home and each new star, and he was impressed by those homes with more than one star in the window.

Presently they came to a wide gap between the houses and through the black velvet of the Christmas sky there was clearly discernable the Evening Star. It shone brightly as a diamond. "Oh look, Daddy," cried the little boy. "God must have given His Son, for He has a star in His window."

Each symbol that we use stands for something.  It can be used to educate, to remind ourselves, or even to just use a short-cut, like writing X-mas, where the X stands for Christ.  Usually, symbols will help to teach more than one thing.  Let's take the 12-days of Christmas, which begin on Christmas Day and go through Epiphany.  First, it teaches counting, as well as a popular method of memorization – adding one item at a time.  It was probably played as a forfeit game.  Second, be aware that the words to this song have 21 different versions.  The original came from "The Twelve Days of Christmas sung at King Pepin's Ball", as part of a 1780 children's book, Mirth without Mischief.  The version of music and song mostly came from the 1909 version by Frederic Austen.

Rather than playing the game here, I'll give you something to think about when you hear each of the symbols in the song.  And if your question is, was the song written to portray these symbols, the answer is no, but Christians have adapted it to help us teach our children about Christmas.

The partridge in the pear tree is Christ, given to us by "my true love", or God.  Two turtle doves can represent the Old and the New Testaments, together bearing witness to God's self-revelation to us.  The three French hens represent the three theological virtues – faith, hope and love. 

Four Calling birds originally began as collie birds, or black birds.  However, we use them here to remind us of the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Five golden rings are the first five books of the Bible, or the Pentateuch.  We slow down for this to remind us of the history of mankind, and our need for forgiveness, and thus God giving us his son.

Six is the number of the days of Creation.  Seven are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit as outlined in Romans:  Prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading and compassion.  Eight are the numbers of the Beatitudes:  blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

The nine fruits of the spirit from Galatians are next, including love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Ten would be the ten Commandments, which I won't repeat here.  Eleven would be the 11 faithful apostles, excluding Judas.  And finally, 12 would be the number of points of doctrine found in the Apostles' Creed. 

Now if you could teach your children, grandchildren, or even yourself all of these points by the use of the song, then I think the Christian appropriation of the song might be well worth it.  We need to keep in mind that it was "our true love" who gave each of them to us.

We don't have to argue symbols with people.  Their symbol means to them what it means to them.  There's nothing to take away from them – they haven't tried to ban our Christmas season.  And, we haven't tried to take over their own traditions and symbols.  We do have symbols at Christmas that all relate to Christ in one way or another – they are uniquely Christian, but fortunately, we are all one people created by God, and we can decide on which symbols mean what to us.