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December 17, 2023 – It’s that time of year again. Time to wonder – as if we don’t already have enough on our plate to worry about – Should Parents Tell Children the Truth About Santa? The short answer: Yes, there really is – or was – a Saint Nicholas. And actually, there are several foundational figures, prototypes for today’s “Santa Claus.” One of the first was Nikolaos of Myra.

He was a historic, bond fide 4th-century saint and Bishop of Myra (Demre, part of today’s Turkey). He was also called “Nikolaos the Wonderworker,” thanks to miracles “attributed to his intercession.” See Saint Nicholas – Wikipedia, and also Saint Nicholas … Britannica:

Saint Nicholas, also called Nicholas of Bari or Nicholas of Myra [is] one of the most popular minor saints commemorated in the Eastern and Western churches and now traditionally associated with the festival of Christmas. In many countries children receive gifts on December 6, Saint Nicholas Day.

To which I would respond: “He doesn’t seem to be such a minor ‘saint’ these days.”

And speaking of corruption – nothing new these days – that brings up the three innocent men sentenced to death, in the painting atop the page. It was the “corrupt prefect Eustathios” who imposed the sentence. (After accepting bribes to “bring about the deaths of three men.”) This first St. Nicholas “was not one to be intimidated by the power of others, especially the power of the corrupt.” Accordingly, he “stormed into the prefect’s office and demanded that the charges against the three men be dropped.” Eustathios eventually “confessed … and sought the saint’s forgiveness.” Nicholas forgave him, but only after the ruler underwent a period of repentance. Which led me to think: “Boy, we could sure use him today!!!“

Other stories told of Nicholas of Myra’s “love for God and for his neighbor.”  Like providing dowries for three poor unmarried daughters.  (Thus saving them from a life of prostitution.)  Or of three children killed and “pickled” by a butcher – during a time of extreme famine and cannibalism – who planned “to sell them off as ham.”  But Nicholas both “’saw through the butcher’s horrific crime’ and resurrected the three children from the barrel.”

And while it’s true that Christmas is only a week or so away, that famous festival is preceded by the Feast day of Thomas the Apostle (also known as “Doubting Thomas”), on December 21. And Thomas – in a big way – serves as a metaphor for all us “Doubters.”

That is, the term “Doubting Thomas” refers to a “skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience.” But as I’ve noted previously, that’s just what attending church and reading the Bible is supposed to provide: A chance at a direct and personal experience with the Force that Created the Universe. See also The Bible and mysticism, which said that Christianity is all about “obtaining unity with God, through Christ.” So a mystic and a Christian both seek that “direct personal experience with God.:

In plain words there are two sides of the Christian experience:  The “corporate” or business side, and the “mystical” side.  The problem is that so many Christians get hung up on the “business side” of the Christian faith.  Mainly because it’s so much easier…  But it’s only the mystical side that can lead to a direct personal experience with God, and Thomas the Apostle is a reminder that – hard as that may be – it can be done….

On that note there’s the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, “a way to understand our four-sided approach to answering questions about Christian belief and practice.” Those four sides include Scripture, tradition, reason and experience. And of those four: “What Scripture teaches, tradition affirms and reason supports, must be experienced in Christian community and lives. Without authentic experience, we never move beyond the faith of the devils.” Put another way, “Apart from scripture, experience is the strongest proof of Christianity.”

So here’s wishing you first a happy “original Doubting Thomas” day, then a happy “real St. Nick” festival day. And that if you haven’t found it already, that in the New Year coming up you can find that “direct personal experience with God.” (But not necessarily in the same way as those three “innocents condemned to death” at the top of the page…)

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The upper image is courtesy of Saint Nicholas – Wikipedia, with the caption:  “Saint Nicholas Saves Three Innocents from Death (oil painting by Ilya Repin, 1888, State Russian Museum).”   See also St. Nicholas Center … Saint Who Stopped an Execution. 

The Book of Common Prayer reference. The “corporate-mystical” prayer is on page 339, the post-communion prayer for Holy Eucharist, Rite I.

Re: Santa. See also Should Parents Go Along With the Santa Myth? – Psychology Today.

For this post I borrowed from some of my earlier posts, On the original St. Nicholas (2014), On St. Nick and “Doubting Thomas” (2015), There really IS a “Saint Nick” (Virginia…), from 2017, and Santa saves three men, and “Doubting” shows the way (2018).

Re: Quadrilateral. See also The Wesleyan Quadrilateral – The Wesleyan Church.

The lower image is courtesy of Santa Claus – Wikipedia, captioned, “1881 illustration by Thomas Nast who, along with Clement Clarke Moore’s poem ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas,’ helped to create the modern image of Santa Claus.” As to the original, see St. Nicholas Center ::: Saint Who Stopped an Execution, which told of his hearing the news, then rushing to the site of the planned execution:

Informed that their execution was to be carried out that morning, he hurried to the executioner’s field. Here he found a large crowd of people and the three men kneeling with their arms bound, awaiting the fatal blow. Nicholas passed through the crowd, took the sword from the executioner’s hands and threw it to the ground, then ordered that the condemned men be freed from their bonds. His authority was such that the executioner left his sword where it fell…

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I’ll get to Thanksgiving in a bit, but first want to say something about a tendency to go down Rabbit Trails. I do a lot of that in my writing. That’s why my family and others say my writing “goes all over the place.” Like, sometimes I go “off on a crazy tangent” or make crazy turns in writing. But I like rabbit trails, even as I try to follow that rule about Unity and Coherence in Writing. Which brings up a Bible passage I saw in Monday morning’s Daily Office Readings.

The Gospel was Matthew 17:14-2. In the Lectionary – Satucket version, Matthew 17:15 reads, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly.” That made me wonder. I’ve been doing the Daily Office since 1992, and am now on my 15th trip through the Bible. But this is the first time in those 31 years that that passage caught my eye. “Is that how it’s written in Greek? Did the Hebrews or Greeks know that much about epilepsy?”

Which turned out to be another rabbit trail, which is nothing new for me.

Like some time ago my Daily Office reading included Psalm 46:9, “He makes wars cease… He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.” That made me wonder. Why specifically burn shields, those broad pieces of “defensive armor carried on the arm?” So I “rabbit trailed” and learned that in the original Hebrew, the word – translated “shields” – refers to “Something revolving, a wheeled vehicle.” More precisely, a chariot, the offensive tank of its day. Which means going down rabbit trails can be educational, so here’s the latest one.

 It seemed to me – Monday morning – that the term “epilepsy” sounded way too modern for Matthew to use. So first off I went to the Bible Hub website. I wanted to see how the verse got translated in the King James Bible. (You know, the one God uses?) There the passage reads, “Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed.” And most other translations read that the son had “seizures.” So I wondered, was this one of those new, updated translations that conservatives call “undignified?” (As departures from the “real” Bible, as noted by Garry Wills?) As for example, 1st Corinthians 14:6, where the original Greek reads, “Now brothers…” But some updated modern versions read, “Now brothers and sisters.” To that I’d say, “Use ‘brothers and sisters’ now, as long as we know how the original version read.”

Be all that as it may, that Matthew 17:15 rabbit trail led me to “something new under the sun:”

The ancient Greeks also began to speculate on the causes of epilepsy at this time – in fact the word ‘epilepsy’ comes from the Greek word for ‘to seize’ or ‘to attack’ because they believed seizures were caused by demons grabbing or attacking people. Some … also believed that epilepsy was a divine gift and a sign of genius and they called it the ‘sacred disease.’

None of which I knew, but learned about – just this past Monday morning, for the first time – from The history of epilepsy – the ancient world | Epilepsy blog. The article said that Hippocrates – who died in 370 BC, “father of medicine” – took issue with the idea that epilepsy was a “sacred disease ” idea. He said, of “the disease called ‘sacred[:]’ It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more sacred than any other diseases, but has a natural cause … the fact is that the cause of this affection … is the brain.” The article concluded, “This is arguably when epilepsy was discovered.” In other words, some time around 400 B.C., or almost 500 years before Matthew wrote his Gospel, some Greeks knew about epilepsy. (Though the article added that “Hippocrates’s beliefs were not widely understood at the time and most people in the ancient world still thought seizures were caused by demons.”)

Which means there’s no clear cut answer to the question, “Was ‘epilepsy’ too modern a term for Matthew to use?” Or it could be said the answer “lies somewhere in between.” Maybe Matthew didn’t know the full technical term “epilepsy” as we understand it today. On the other hand the general term used back then did cover a lot of linguistic territory. It mostly referred to “seizures,” as generally translated in most Bibles. Which also is nothing new.

That is, the situation also resembles the faulty translation of “leprosy” from the Hebrew word ẓaraʿat. While traditionally translated at “leprosy,” the Greek translation for this word too “covers a wide range of diseases that produced scales.” And the original Hebrew word ẓaraʿat too embraced “a variety of skin ailments, including many non-contagious types.” Which also means, “There he goes again, going down one of those dang rabbit trails!”)

Which means in turn that it’s about time we got back to Thanksgiving 2023. Put another way, “What do all those rabbit trails have to do with the American holiday every November?” I’ll get to that in a minute, but first a note: “Thanksgiving” in America actually started a long time before 1863, when that day was made a nationwide holiday by Abraham Lincoln. And for that matter even long before 1621, with the first “Pilgrim Thanksgiving” in Plymouth Massachusetts.

For Native Americans – the first inhabitants – “gathering to give thanks was already a familiar custom, taking place not just annually, but 13 times throughout the lunar, calendar year – a cycle known as the Thirteen Moons. As one Wampanoag said, “Thanksgivings are a big part of our culture. Giving thanks is how we pray.” (The Wampanoags were the tribe who helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter, when half of them died.)

In other words, special days of thanksgiving have been around a long, long time. And as it also turns out, for a very good reason: “As more researchers dig into the science of gratitude, they’ve found the feeling likely played a key role in helping our ancestors band together and survive.” Which turns up another rabbit trail. “Who knew there was a science of gratitude?”

But there is, and it has a definite healing effect: “Thanking others, thanking ourselves, Mother Nature, or the Almighty[,] gratitude in any form can enlighten the mind and make us feel happier.” Which is why our annual Thanksgiving and all its other forms have stuck around so long: “That legacy continues today, as being in the mood for gratitude shapes who we are as a species and how we connect with the people around us.”

Which could be another rabbit trail, but it’s time to bring this post to an end. To end with the custom in many families for each member, around the table, to say specifically what he or she is thankful for this Thanksgiving 2023. So I’ll start: I’m thankful for the chance to go down all those rabbit trails, and keep on learning new things, every day, through the magic of blogging.

Now, if I could just make those blog-posts all unified and coherent.

Happy Thanksgiving – 2023!

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The upper image is courtesy of Epilepsy Images Bible – Image Results. The image is attributed to “Wilhelm Tell,” not William Tell. (Which is the name I usually got in my Google Search.)

The Book of Common Prayer reference. The “corporate-mystical” prayer is on page 339, the post-communion prayer for Holy Eucharist, Rite I.

The full link to the Rabbit Trail comments is Today’s Idiom Is … Rabbit Trail.

For more on my tendency to go down Rabbit Trails see On Halloween 2023 – and a Sheol “rabbit trail,” which in turn borrowed from “the lower part of the text in On Eastertide – and ‘artistic license,’ from 2016.” Also on the topic of epilepsy see Is epilepsy mentioned in the Bible? | GotQuestions.org.

Re: Garry Wills. In his “What Jesus Meant” Wills noted a general conservatism in Bible translations, as for “reverential archaisms.” The result? Whenever a new translation comes out “it is almost always called undignified,” in that it departs from the King James Version. He added that the original Koine was a rough-hewn, “pidgin” marketplace Greek, often clumsy and muddled so much that translators invariably “try to give more churchiness to the evangelists.” Pages xi to xii, “Note on translation.”

Re: “Something new under the sun.” See contra, Ecclesiastes 1:9, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

Re: “Brothers,” or “brothers and sisters.” The Bible Hub commentary to 1st Corinthians 14:6 said the Greek brothers (ἀδελφοί (adelphoi) – “Vocative Masculine Plural” – referred to a “brother, member of the same religious community, especially a fellow-Christian. A brother near or remote.”

As for Thanksgiving itself, see past post I borrowed from, like On Thanksgiving 2019, On Thanksgiving – 2021, and from 2022’s On Thanksgiving 2022 – and an Unknown American Icon. They detail things like the story of John Howland, who came over on the Mayflower as an indentured servant, who was swept overboard in mid-Atlantic and almost drowned, but who went on to populate America with 2 million of his descendants. And how less than half the original Pilgrims survived the first year, and how of the 18 women, only four survived. (And other juicy details.)

The “giving thanks” quotes are from Thanksgiving is a year-round practice of giving thanks : NPR, and Giving thanks isn’t just a holiday tradition. As Wikipedia also noted, Days of Thanksgivng were celebrated quite often in England. One such nationwide day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed in 1588, after the victory over the Spanish Armada. Another “unusual annual Day of Thanksgiving” began in 1606 following the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, but that day then evolved into Guy Fawkes Day. 

The Wampanoag taught the first Pilgrims “how to cultivate the varieties of corn, squash, and beans (the Three Sisters) that flourished in New England, as well as how to catch and process fish and collect seafood.” (Wikipedia.)

The lower image is courtesy of Thanksgiving – Wikipedia, caption: “Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth, 1914, Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts.” 

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October 29, 2023 – Halloween isn’t just day. (This year coming this Tuesday.) It’s actually one of “three days of Hallowe’en.” More precisely, October 31 is the first of the Halloween Triduum. It’s also called Allhallowtide, and Triduum is just a fancy Latin word for “three days.”

According to Wikipedia, this triduum is a time to remember the “dear departed.” And not just martyrs and saints, but all faithful departed Christians. The main day of the three is November 1, now called “All Saints Day.” It used to be called Hallowmas, and was established some time between 731 and 741 – over 1,300 years ago – “perhaps by Pope Gregory III.” Hallowe’en – literally the “Eve of All Hallow’s” – started with an old-time idea that evil spirits were strongest during the long nights of winter. And that the “barriers between our world and the spirit world” were at their most permeable – the barrier was lowest – on the night of October 31. And by the way, the term “Hallowe’en” developed from the Old English word for “saint,” halig.

Which brings up the masks and costumes that are a big part of Halloween. In the old days – when people thought the barrier between this world and the next was at its lowest – people wore masks or costumes to disguise their identities. The idea was to keep the ghosts or spirits – coming from the netherworld world – “from recognizing live people in this ‘material world.’”

The same is true of bonfires. Literally bonefires, fires where bones were burned. One idea behind that? Evil spirits could be driven away with noise and fire. Also, old-timers thought the fires brought comfort to “souls in purgatory and people prayed for them as they held burning straw up high.” And in Merry Old England there were three types of bonfire:

…one with only clean bones (“bonys”) and no wood called a “bonnefyre”, one with clean wood and no bones called a “wakefyre”, and the third with both bones and wood, called “Saynt Ionys Fyre”. Apparently the original [custom] fell into “lechery and gluttony”, so the church deemed it instead as a fast.

Of course there are other types of bonfire as well, not falling into lechery and gluttony. For example, garden bonfires which – if done right – are a “useful source of potash and may be beneficial in improving the soil structure of some soils.” (While “managed with safety in mind.”)

The day after Halloween, November 1, is All Saints Day. It honors “all the saints and martyrs, both known and unknown.” A saint is defined as one “having an exceptional degree of holiness,” while a martyr is someone “killed because of their testimony of Jesus.” But actually, we should distinguish “Saints,” with a capital “s” from those with a lower-case “s.” Briefly, all living Christians are called to be saints, with a small “s.” A Saint with a capital “s” is usually one who has passed on. (But that too is “another whole can of worms.*)

Be that as it may, November 2 – All Souls’ Day – honors “all faithful Christians … unknown in the wider fellowship of the church, especially family members and friends.’” Observant Christians typically remember deceased relatives on the day, and – in many churches – the service on the following Sunday includes a memorial for all who died in the past year.

With all that in mind: “Have a Happy Halloween Triduum!”

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The upper image is courtesy of Sheol: The Grave or so Much More? – The Israel Bible. An interesting article, citing (for example) Psalm 89:49, or 89:48 in the Bible Hub translation. In the ESV, “What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?” Or in the NLT, “No one can live forever; all will die. No one can escape the power of the grave.” (You get the point.) I was looking for an image I’ve never used before to put in this latest Halloween post, and found the Sheol article. Good, but it opens up a whole new can of worms: Described as the opposite of heaven, Sheol is “a place to reluctantly pass time after dying,” and where the person has “no memory of his life nor the ability to praise God.” Sounds like Hell to me, but like I said, “a whole new can of worms.” (Meaning I’ll have to address the question – Is this just another word for Netherworld? – in a future post.) “Which [also] brings up the topic of rabbit trails.” See the lower part of the text in On Eastertide – and “artistic license,” from 2016. All this stuff on Sheol was definitely a “rabbit trail.”

The Book of Common Prayer reference. The “corporate-mystical” prayer is on page 339, the post-communion prayer for Holy Eucharist, Rite I.

I based this post on past posts including: The Halloween Triduum – 2019, On Halloween 2020 – “Scariest ever,” On the Hallowe’en “Triduum” – 2021, On Halloween 2022 – and a “Samaritan” update, and Between Halloween and Thanksgiving – 2022.

On “Saints” versus “saints.” See What are Christian saints according to the Bible: “All Christians are considered saints. All Christians are saints – and at the same time are called to be saints.” Also Saints, big and small – U.S. Catholic, and Saints with a Capital S – Covenant. See also the note above on rabbit trails and “whole new cans of worms.”

The lower image is courtesy of All Souls Day Image – Image Results.

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Wednesday, October 18, is the Feast Day for St. Luke. He wrote the third-of-four Gospels, and also wrote the book Acts of the Apostles. (The “fifth book of the New Testament.”) And some scholars have called Luke’s Gospel “the most beautiful book that ever was.”

Luke wrote the longest of the Gospels, and so – with Acts – his two books make up a full quarter of the New Testament. (According to Garry Wills in his What the Gospels Meant. He added that Luke’s two books are longer than all 13 of Paul’s letters.) And Luke’s Gospel is considered the most humane of four gospels. Dante said that Luke was the “scribe of Christ’s gentleness.”

Which we could use a lot more of these days.

Isaac Asimov said Luke wrote his Gospel “for the ears of Gentiles who are sympathetic to Christianity and are considering conversion.” (Something to consider in this age of shrinking church membership.) Then too Luke treated Roman authorities “more gently than in the first two gospels, and Jesus Himself is portrayed as far more sympathetic to Gentiles” than in Matthew or Mark. And speaking of polarization, we could use a lot less of that these days. (Polarization that is.) You may be Conservative and think Liberals are “the ungodly,” or vice-versa. But the “ungodly” are just the people Jesus died for.

(That’s Romans 5:6, “Christ died for the ungodly,” in case you missed it.) So if Jesus died for the Ungodly, and since “There is none who is righteous, no, not one,” where do we get off being polarized? And Luke includes some distinct accounts showing Jesus loving just those “ungodly:”

Only in Luke do we hear the story of the Prodigal Son welcomed back by the overjoyed father. Only in Luke do we hear the story of the forgiven woman disrupting the feast by washing Jesus’ feet with her tears. Throughout Luke’s gospel, Jesus takes the side of the sinner who wants to return to God’s mercy… Reading Luke’s gospel gives a good idea of his character as one who loved the poor, who wanted the door to God’s kingdom opened to all, who respected women, and who saw hope in God’s mercy for everyone.

And besides all that Luke was a historian OF THE FIRST ORDER. That’s according to scholars like archaeologist Sir William Ramsay, who said in his accounts Luke accurately described towns, cities and islands, “as well as correctly naming various official titles.” Accordingly (he said), Luke is a “historian of the first rank [and] should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.” Then there’s E.M. Blaiklock, Professor of Classics at Auckland University:

“For accuracy of detail, and for evocation of atmosphere, Luke stands, in fact, with Thucydides. The Acts of the Apostles is not shoddy product of pious imagining, but a trustworthy record… it was the spadework of archaeology which first revealed the truth.”  

But Luke wasn’t just a writer and historian, he also painted: “Christian tradition states that he was the first icon painter,” and that he “painted pictures of the Virgin Mary and Child.” He is said to have painted some 600 icons, including the “Black Madonna of Częstochowa and Our Lady of Vladimir. He was also said to have painted Saints Peter and Paul, and to illustrate a gospel book with a full cycle of miniatures.“ So here’s to the multi-talented Luke the Evangelist, and Apostle, and historian of the highest order, artist and premier “scribe of Christ’s gentleness.”

We could use his example and his prayers over the upcoming weeks and months.

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The upper image is courtesy of St. Luke Apostle Image – Image Results. It goes with a page, “Catholic Prayers.” Also, in writing this post I borrowed from these past posts: From 2014, On St. Luke – physician, historian, artist, On St. Luke – 2015, 2018’s On Luke and the “rich young man,” and from 2022, On Luke, James the Just and Halloween. (Which included notes “for a later post” on topics like how to read the parable of the Good Samaritan, and welcoming “aliens.”) Also, from 2019, On Saints James, Luke – and the lovelies of Portugal, which I posted after hiking the Portuguese Camino, from Porto back up to Santiago.

The Book of Common Prayer reference. The “corporate-mystical” prayer is on page 339, the post-communion prayer for Holy Eucharist, Rite I.

Luke as “scribe of Christ’s gentleness.” See also St. Luke: The Scribe of Christ’s Gentleness | Loyola Press, which added that he “was the only Gentile to write books of the Bible.”

The Asimov quotes are from Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (Two Volumes in One),  Avenel Books (1981), at pages 912-15.

Re: “None who is righteous, no not one.” Romans 3:10, citing Psalms 14:1, Psalm 53:1, and 143:2.

Luke as a historian: New Testament scholar Colin Hemer also attested to the historical nature and accuracy of Luke’s writings.

The lower image is courtesy of File: Maarten van Heemskerck – St Luke Painting the Virgin, and/or “Wikimedia.”  See also Maarten van Heemskerck – Wikipedia, which noted that the artist (1498-1574) was a “Dutch portrait and religious painter, who spent most of his career in Haarlem,” and did the painting above in or about 1532.

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