The Solstice Is Come And So Is The Son

The Solstice is upon us—the shortest day—the day when gods were born and the Invincible Sun was reborn. Officially winter, only four days from the beginning of the ancient Christian Christmas season, it is a day that has had significance throughout human history.
The best scholarship assumes Christ was actually born in the spring—based on the fact that shepherds were in the fields at the time—but the movement he began found its deadliest rivals in the Eastern Mystery Religions that worship Mithras, born at the Solstice.
Mithras—the soldier’s god—became a favorite in of the legions in the fading Roman Empire. Roman troops, pressed on all sides by Persian incursions, German invasions and Arab raids, wanted an invincible god to champion their failing cause.
Legend had it that Mithras could never die—that he was reborn every year at the time of the Solstice—some legends say from a virgin. He was the “Sol Invictus”, the Invincible Sun. The new faith swept through the faltering empire like a wildfire in the Third Century. The very existence of Christianity—the “slave religion”—was threatened by its spread.
Not only were there foreign invaders in the Third and Fourth Centuries, there were innumerable civil wars. The Empire itself was split into four parts—two under men with the title Caesar, two under men with the title Augustus. Needless to say, ambitious men who held these titles, chaffed at holding only a small part of a once vast imperial realm.
One such chap was an able soldier named Constantine. A fervent worshipper of the soldier’s god, he set out to reunify the empire with a soldier’s arts. The Invincible Sun gave him victory on every hand until he had only one rival left to defeat.
This was not a sure thing. The other guy was good, too. As he lay sleeping on the night before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine dreamt. He saw Mithras, the bright and blazing sun, shining in the heavens above him. On TOP of the image of Mithras, he saw a cross and the words, “In HOC signo vinces!” Or “In THIS sign, conquer.”
He woke up in the morning and informed his army that they were all Christians now. They won. Initially he granted Christianity tolerance (something it had never had before—since Christians refused to swear allegiance to the Empire by worshipping the Emperor). Then it became the official religion.
Mithraism disappeared shortly after that. December 25, the first day that ancients could notice a longer period of sunlight, ceased to be celebrated as Mithras’ birth day and became, instead, the date of the Christ Mass. Constantine himself probably actually became a Christian.
Christians wrote books to celebrate the faith of their own martyrs who had been thrown to the lions in the Roman arenas. No one wrote a book to celebrate the faith of pagans whose turn it now became to be torn apart by wild beasts.
Once in power, Christians showed themselves to be no more (and no less) virtuous than those who had preceded them. A decade after the Battle of Milvian Bridge Christians were happily using the Roman army to settle doctrinal differences.
All too quickly they forgot what their founder had said to the Roman official who was about to execute him, “My kingdom is not of this world. IF IT WERE, then would my followers fight for me.”
They outlasted the pagans, took over Rome and much of its pagan symbolism, and the Pope still bears one of Augustus Caesar’s proudest titles, “Pontifex Maximus”, high priest of Rome. Christians established churches that have indeed stood against “the gates of hell”.
But it might behoove Christians to remember that December 25 no longer commemorates the birth of an invincible soldier’s god, but rather one who came among us as a servant, and didn’t even have a proper place to be born.