one of them came up with this ingenious plan.

"We'll appropriate this holiday, you see, and while no capitalism (well, almost no capitalism) can take place on the day of the holiday itself, we'll have lots of capitalism for the rest of the month by coercing people to buy presents for each other! It'll boost sales like crazy, and make up for the one day we're not selling anything!"

And so the elites mumbled to each other, and wondered out loud what sort of mishmash of a holiday they could appropriate. Predictably, the elite consensus began to form around a particular holiday, one that had been especially susceptible to appropriation by groups representing other holidays.

In the year 274 of the Christian Era, the emperor Aurelian decreed that December 25th was to be "Dies Natalis Solis Invicti," the Day of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun, throughout the Roman Empire, to standardize a holiday commemorated by Elagabalus, who ruled from 218-222. In doing so, Aurelian brought together a number of other holidays celebrated on that date, including Mithramas, a celebration of Mithras by the initiates of Mithraism, a mystery religion of the Roman Army, and the birth of Horus, the sky-god of Egyptian mythology (or at least this is allegedly so according to a couple of Roman sources). And then of course there was the old Germanic Yule.

So at some point after the Christian religion became dominant in the Roman Empire, the December 25th holiday became "Christmas," although apparently for awhile it had been January 6th. Nobody really knows when Jesus (who was actually Y'shua (pronounced "Yeshua," given that there was another Y'shua who made it into the literature as "Joshua")) was born. Centuries later, some time after capitalism had been born in what Jason W. Moore calls the "long 16th century," the elites rejoiced.

So it's all good, right? At least maybe we'll spend some time thinking of peace and love, which can't be a bad thing in itself.

Have a good Monday.