Informally known as “mooning,” exposing one’s buttocks is a practice often intended as a sign of defiance or disrespect. - Will Greenlee
Another quiet week, and I’m disappointed there weren’t even any memorable April Fool pranks except for this one from REI discovered by my husband. That is, of course, unless you count has-been comedian Jim Carrey making an April Fool of himself over gun control a few days early; today’s first video mocks the fact that opposing vaccination (as Carrey does) probably kills far more people than guns do. The second video continues our Star Trek theme of the past few weeks, and was provided by Grace; everything above the first video was contributed by Radley Balko, and those between the two by Jolene Parton, Popehat, Lenore Skenazy (two items), Jesse Walker, Amy Alkon and Aspasia (in that order).
Harry Reems, the first male porn star, died of pancreatic cancer on Tuesday (March 19th) at the age of 65. For his role in Deep Throat, Reems was convicted in 1976 of “conspiracy to transport obscene material across state lines”, and though that sentence was overturned a year later the stress of the trial drove him to start drinking; he spent the late ‘80s as a homeless alcoholic before sobering up in 1989, then getting married and going into real estate a year later. Unlike his co-star Linda Lovelace, however, he never regretted his choices or blamed porn for his troubles, and went by his stage name (his birth name was Herbert Streicher) until the end.
I left out the very rarest, but worst type: “[Houma, Louisiana] police arrested 15 men…alleging they solicited a prostitute through [Backpage]…one of [two] prostitutes…[was] issued a summons…[but] the other…was not arrested [because she] agreed to be a part of the sting…” There is absolutely no lower life-form in the whoring ecosystem than a person who collaborates with cops to ensnare others in order to save his or her own worthless hide.
Andrea Castillo’s “When Science Looks Like Religion” explores the territory discussed in Monday’s comment thread: When people blindly accept scientific findings which reinforce their irrational beliefs while rejecting equally-valid results which contradict those beliefs, the result is not science but religion. The last part is doubly germane: it describes Norwegian social scientists’ knee-jerk denial of all data which contradicts their cultic social constructionism.
…Suspicious moms and dads are hiring trained drug detection dogs to sniff out their kids’ drug stash…the RK Agency…[charges] $350…[to] “discreetly perform a thorough inspection of your entire property”…Jeffrey Gardere, a child psychologist …[told] the Today Show… “I don’t know if you can [have a relationship with your kids] if you’re bringing in drug-sniffing dogs”…
According to this post from Dr. Annie Sprinkle, Tracy Elise of Phoenix Goddess Temple has been “deemed…’incompetent’ to go to trial…she will be sent to psych ward and forced to take psychiatric drugs for about 15 months until she’s ‘competent’…I feel that if…sex workers…criticise Tracy Elise…we are in a way colluding with the [police]…and…contributing to the problem, which is exactly what the ‘sex negative society’…wants us to do…” I totally agree.
…women in Ancient Rome [married] sometimes as young as 14…[but] were permitted to own land and houses and have jobs. Women of the upper classes were educated to a high standard…It’s well known that Pompeii…boasted a large sex industry…and…open attitudes about sexuality and prostitution didn’t hold back other women from achieving…
A Chinese brothel madam and her husband have been ordered to pay back £125,000 within six months or she will face another jail sentence and he will join her…Rong Chen…and her husband Jason Hinton…only [have] £125,000 of realisable assets…[namely] their marital home in…Worcestershire, which…will have to be sold or remortgaged…
…Jakarta…has tried…to offer sex workers ways to escape the sex industry…[for] example…sex workers…[given] a dressmaking course…did not return to their villages…but rather…to their old lives in Jakarta…the income from sewing was just too far below sex work…A high ranking health official…[said] it would be better to legalize prostitution; closing Kramat Tunggak would result in the dispersion of prostitution sites to several unidentified locations — making health checkups impossible…Surabaya…is still trying to phase out Dolly, East Java’s famed prostitution site…
…Dolly…consists of at least 300 brothels…employing thousands of prostitutes…[plus] numerous supporting businesses — clinics, mini markets, sexual enhancement medicine vendors, parking lots, banks, rented houses, Internet cafes, small restaurants…University of Indonesia economist Lana Soelistianingsih said that…economic transactions triggered by prostitution [alone] could contribute around Rp 1.5 trillion to Surabaya’s gross domestic product…
Family Research Council…fellow Pat Fagan…claims that Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that overturned a Massachusetts law banning the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, may rank “as the single most destructive decision in the history of the Court”…because it effectively meant that “single people have the right to engage in sexual intercourse…Society never gave young people that right, functioning societies don’t do that, they stop it, they punish it, they corral people, they shame people, they do whatever”…
…Amsterdam’s oldest prostitutes have retired after more than 50 years each in the business. Louise and Martine Fokkens, 70, have decided they are too old…Louise…says arthritis now makes some sexual positions “too painful”…and Martine…admits she finds it hard to attract punters – though one elderly man still has his weekly sadomasochism session…The pair were the subject last year of a documentary Meet The Fokkens and they have written a book called The Ladies Of Amsterdam…
Caty Simon of Tits and Sassinterviews well-known activist Audacia Ray on the Red Umbrella Project, speaking to the media, condom criminalization, the Long Island Killer and why sex workers need to ally with harm reduction and anti-drug war activists.
10 years ago, the Internal Security Act (LSI) penalized public solicitation, including so-called “passive solicitation”…[this] has reinforced the isolation of sex workers, relegating them to more remote places where they are…more prone to violence…since the introduction of the LSI, “the conduct of the police deteriorated sharply. Their attitude is less respectful and humiliation increased…their protective function…has virtually disappeared and [they are]…most often perceived as strictly punitive”…Médecins du Monde demand the immediate repeal of the offense of soliciting…[and] rejects any proposal to penalize customers…
Women’s Rights Minister Najat Belkacem responded in a typically clueless manner; though she promised repeal of the law, she also made the absurd claim that “90% of [sex workers] are victims of human trafficking” and refused to back down on her scheme to impose the Swedish model.
…Portland [has]…one of the largest sex industries of any U.S. city…human trafficking…is a growing problem in Oregon due in part to the traffic permitted by Interstates 5 and I-84 [and] the Willamette and Columbia rivers…the problem [is] one that’s inextricably linked to gangs…“When people think of prostitution, their first instinct is a girl walking on the street,” [police spokesman Pete] Simpson says. “They’re not thinking about the fact that she’s being traded as a commodity, sold as a product”…The change [in strategy] humanizes the victims…
Simpson robs women of agency, then claims he’s “humanizing” whores who were already human before he turned them into things to be acted upon. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Charlotte Shane’s review of An Intimate Life: Sex, Love, and My Journey As A Surrogate Partner, the memoirs of sex surrogate Cheryl Greene (of The Sessions fame), covers much the same ground as my column, and that’s a good thing; the more of us there are speaking out against these artificial lines drawn between types of sex work, the more people will finally get it.
I’m glad to see that others are recognizing that “marriage equality” applies just as well to polygamy as it does to same-sex marriage, and are making good arguments for it:
I’m in favor of leaving marriage to the religious institutions, and registering households in whatever configuration people want to live. If a same-gender couple, or a heterosexual couple, or an elderly couple who can’t have children, or any couple want to be responsible to and for each other, let them. If three people want to be responsible to and for each other, let them. If a gay man and his female best friend want to be responsible to and for each other, let them. Let’s stop worrying about who is screwing who, and just make it easier for people to be responsible in their relationships.
The Georgia attorney general and other law enforcement officials kicked off a public awareness campaign…[which] bears the slogan “Georgia’s not buying it” and includes a [commercial] featuring professional athletes…”We’ll continue to go after the pimps and rescue the victims, but we know that the only way to truly eradicate this evil is by ending the demand,” Attorney General Sam Olens said…It is a problem throughout Georgia, in both urban areas and in small towns and rural areas…
Georgia is indeed “buying it”, wholesale. I’m sure millions in federal grants and an excuse to further erode civil rights have nothing to do with all this.
Sexual expression is a fundamental part of being human…Decades of research have uncovered the many benefits of sex, which include physical health, quality of life, psychological well-being and sexual self-esteem. Unfortunately, because of social taboos and hypocrisy…barriers are created to stop people from fully realising these benefits…Some people with disabilities have limited opportunities for sexual relationships because they lack privacy and are dependent on others…
The video of the Albany Law School symposium is now available! If you don’t have the time or inclination to watch the whole thing (4 hours), my part runs from minute 170 to 185.
Earlier this month, doctors announced that a baby had been cured of…HIV…Now…it appears that 14 adults have…been successfully treated…70 people…[received] combination antiretroviral therapy (cART)…much sooner than…normal…[because] all [were] diagnosed…early…they…stuck to the [regimen] for an average of three years…[but then] stopped…for various reasons…Normally, HIV will return when patients stop taking their ARVs. But this time…14…patients…were functionally cured…
Apparently, the proposed legislative reform in South Australia isn’t quite decriminalization (though it’s a lot closer to it than anything we’ll see in the US anytime soon): “…it makes special provisions for sex work such as special licensing, laws about safe sex and possibly restrictions on location…once a ‘reform’ law has been passed the chances of getting better legislation in the near future drop to zero. So many people feel it’s better to stay with a bad situation and hope to get good reform rather than settle for an unsatisfactory ‘improvement’…”
The desire to write for publication is one which inheres strongly in every human breast…the whole intelligent public are today seeking expression…and yearning to behold their thoughts and ideals permanently crystallized in the magic medium of type. - H.P. Lovecraft
We’re just about back around to our normal configuration; look for next week’s news columns on Saturday and Sunday again (though not yet in the usual order), and we’ll also be back to numbering the links columns rather than naming them. I’ll be coming home from the symposium today (see yesterday’s column) so you may not see me around at all, but I should be back to business as usual tomorrow. Our top link contributor this week was Michael Whiteacre, who supplied everything down to the first video; that one (and “911″) was suggested by my cat. The second video (the beginning of a documentary on the making of A Clockwork Orange) was provided by Jack Shafer, and the links between the videos were contributed by Radley Balko (“desensitize”), Antonio Lorusso (“turn signal”), Cliterati (“vomiting” and “Lovecraft”), Neil Gaiman (“Kipling”), Pee-wee Herman (“magic crayon”), Jesse Walker (“endometriosis” and “Sherlock Holmes”), and Aspasia (“persecution”).
Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. - Chris Rose, 1 Dead in Attic
It’s just not possible to explain Mardi Gras to those who have never lived in the New Orleans area, because they absolutely will not get it. It’s not simply a matter of their never having experienced it, because mere attendance won’t put one into the proper state of mind; I daresay I could sit on a Vieux Carré balcony on Fat Tuesday, guessing whether each person who passed below was a local or a visitor, and achieve over 90% accuracy. It’s not simply that the visitors are the ones who are either stiff as boards or wildly out of control, nor the fact that most of them don’t wear costumes (I rarely did, either), nor the fact that most of the really obnoxious and/or disgusting drunks are hundreds or thousands of kilometers from home. All of those things are merely symptoms of the same general aura of Not-Getting-It-ness which manifests itself either in the belief that the holiday is just another excuse to get totally bombed out of one’s skull, or in that ultimate statement of Carnival Cluelessness, “How can a woman expose herself for a string of plastic beads?” Though the festival has a Christian excuse, it is (like Christmas) wholly pagan; indeed, much of its symbolism and customs have come down through the centuries from the Roman Saturnalia and even older celebrations, and Yule gives way seamlessly to Carnival on King Day. Carnival is also like Christmas in another important way; it is not a day but a whole season, and having the right spirit is far more important than the observation of any single ritual or combination of traditions. A person who goes through the motions during Yuletide but doesn’t have the “Christmas spirit” will not have a true experience of the festival, and the exact same thing is true of Mardi Gras. In a way, the spirit of Mardi Gras is the spirit of New Orleans, and anyone who is unwilling or unable to appreciate her style will never, ever be able to appreciate her signature holiday.
Striving toward a goal puts a more pleasing construction on our advance toward death. - Mason Cooley
Anthony trudged down the filthy street, pulling his cloak down as far as he could to keep out the evening rain. Anyone who observed his erratic course would have thought him drunk, but every sane Roman was out of the beastly weather and Anthony’s weaving route was shaped by the necessity of avoiding puddles while yet getting close enough to the signs to read them in the darkness without having to uncover his head.
He had occupied himself thus every night for most of a week, making inquiries and crossing palms with sestertii in an effort to discover the location of his quarry, and he was beginning to despair; he felt as though he had walked every muddy, narrow, winding back-street in the city, and the foul weather had dampened his spirits as thoroughly as it had his clothes. His schoolboy Latin was insufficient to the task at hand, and his outlandish accent and incredible ignorance of mundane matters marked him as a barbarian at best and a madman at worst; he feared that small-time hucksters were now pointing him out to one another as one who could be taken for a few coins merely by pretending to know of the strumpet he sought so assiduously. If he spent much more he would be unable to pay her fee, however nominal it might be; he therefore resolved that if he could not find her by the end of the night (or maybe sooner than that), he would simply pass her by, move on to the next name on his list and return here after he had done enough research to limit his possibilities to a few easily-investigated locales.
The very worst disappointment was the sheer number of bad leads; in any era the stage-names of whores tended to be predictable and repetitive, and some girls were willing to pretend to be the one for whom he was looking. But so far, none of the six Lyciscas he had met had been the right one; each had been too old, too young, too thin, too ugly or too dark to be the Lycisca he wanted to hire. So tonight, he would follow a different strategy; he would simply go into each lupanar he found, quiz the villicus about the women available that night, and then ask the name of any who fit the correct description rather than supplying them with the means of deceiving him in order to deplete his rapidly-diminishing funds still further.
But just when he was ready to give up, Fortuna smiled upon him. The streets and the buildings had all begun to look alike, so he was not surprised when the cashier at one of the brothels greeted him as a returning customer; he was about to turn to go when he realized he had been asked a question in which the name “Lycisca” had been embedded.
“What you saying?” Anthony asked, realizing the grammatical error as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
“I said, aren’t you the fellow who was looking for Lycisca a few days ago?”
“Yes,” he replied wearily, expecting another con.
“Well, she’s here tonight. She wasn’t last time you came, so I tried to give you another girl,” he said with a grin. “But I promise, this is really the Lycisca you’re looking for. Here, I’ll call her out where you can see her in the light.”
Anthony guessed that the willingness of the villicus to make this extra effort was due to the poor traffic on such a foul night, but he just couldn’t get his hopes up…and then he saw her. The quality of her blonde wig was out of place in such a cheap establishment, and the quality of her health out of place in a low-end Roman prostitute. Despite her imposture of a common whore he could see the hauteur and breeding in her manner, and the difference between her Latin and that of the plebeians with whom he had been dealing for the past few days was obvious even to his foreign ears. He quickly paid her fee and tipped the cashier extra for remembering him, returned with her to her grimy little room and eagerly did what he had come so far and worked so hard to do.
He awakened to firm but gentle shaking, and opened his eyes to the smiling face of Leon, the one orderly he genuinely liked.
“Good morning, Professor! I’m sorry to disturb you, but I know you don’t want to miss breakfast!”
“Good morning, Leon. And thank you for waking me.”
“Did you scratch another name off of your list last night?” Then in response to the older man’s puzzled expression, “It’s the only time you oversleep.”
“How well you know me! Yes, I’ve just returned from a tryst with Valeria Messalina, Empress of Rome.”
“How’d you get an empress to sleep with you? I thought you just saw hookers?”
“Messalina was, as you young people say, ‘kinky’. She liked to sneak out of the palace while her husband was asleep and work as a common prostitute.”
“Wow, is that so? How was she?”
He considered for a moment, cleaning his glasses before putting them on. “Neither as talented as Nell Gwyn nor as beautiful as La Belle Otero, but she made up for that with her sheer exuberance.”
“Gee, Professor, I sure wish I could learn that astro-whatsis…”
“Astral projection.”
“…astral projection,” he repeated, “so I could visit all those historical places like you do.”
“Well, Leon, it takes years of study and practice, but I’m sure you could learn if you set your mind to it.”
“Naw,” he said sheepishly, helping Anthony with his bathrobe, “I’m just big and dumb, I was never good at studies. Who’s the next lady you plan to see?”
“I think I shall brush up on my Greek,” he said wistfully; “I seem to have a yen for empresses these days.”
When you’re less popular than cockroaches, Genghis Khan, traffic jams, and…even Nickelback…it might be time to reevaluate. - Tom Jensen
As if to make up for the holiday lull, this was an astonishingly busy week for links; besides having a record number of them (56 plus the two videos) and a record number of different contributors (17), the average number of links contributed (1.88) was quite high. The top supplier was Radley Balko, who provided everything down to the first video plus the second and third parts of the first one below it; the first part of that one was provided by Grace, who also contributed “25%”, “David Frum” and ”new trial”. In the first video (via the Free Speech Coalition) a former gay porn star helpfully explains that anal sex causes the recipient to give birth to demons from his anus; by contrast, the second is an intentional parody from the TV series Robot Chicken, written by Rachel Bloom and performed by pop star Kesha. The links between the two were contributed by Marc Randazza (“catheter”); Aspasia (“Vestal Virgins” and “criminal cat”); Franklin Harris (“looking gay” and “dinosaur meat”); Kevin Wilson (“delicate creatures”); Cthulhuchick (“Satanists”); Walter Olson (“vegetarianism”); Satoshi Kanazawa (“wrinkled fingers”); Antonio Lorusso (“orange cup” and link above it); Nun Ya (“Lego”); Jesse Walker (“Mother Goose” and “militia”); Popehat (both RPG-related links); the Cato Institute (“libertarian test”); and Paul Reinerfelt (“handy words”). I saw that last when it came out, but since I wasn’t doing links columns yet Paul gets credit for calling it back to my attention.
The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. - Henry D. Thoreau
January 6th means many different things to different people in different parts of the world. In Western Christian tradition it is the Epiphany, the day on which the Magi are supposed to have brought gifts to the infant Jesus; because of this Christmas gift-giving was shifted to this date in the Dark Ages and remained so until the Reformation, when it shifted back to Christmas in all but the most staunchly Catholic countries (namely Spain and Italy). As I explained in my first column for the holiday, children in Spanish-speaking countries still receive their gifts from Los Tres Reyes, for whom they leave out their shoes on Twelfth Night. Italian children also found their gifts this morning, but there the traditional gift-giver is a witch named Befana, a modern form of the Roman goddess Strenia (who in Greece was known as Hecate).
In French tradition, today is the beginning of the carnival season, which extends until Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras), the day before Ash Wednesday; in New Orleans it is the day we traditionally take down our Christmas trees and start eating king cake (though I’ve noticed some creep back toward New Year’s Day among the hasty). Due to an early paschal full moon, Mardi Gras will fall quite early this year, on February 12th; carnival is thus barely over a month long and the celebrations will therefore be relatively concentrated.
In Russia, today is Christmas Eve because the Russian Orthodox Church still uses the Julian calendar with its extra leap day in three out of four centenary years. Their traditional gift-giver is Grandfather Frost (usually accompanied by his granddaughter, the Snow Maiden); during communist rule he began to bring gifts on (Gregorian) New Year’s Eve because the celebration of Christmas (on any date) was strongly discouraged, but since the fall of the Soviet Union the gifting date seems to vary by region or even by family, ranging from December 25th all the way to January 7th. Perhaps in a generation or so it will settle down to a consensus, but given the circumstances it isn’t surprising things are in flux right now.
So, to my Italian readers, Buona Epifania! To my Spanish-speaking readers, Feliz Día de Los Reyes! To my Ethiopian readers, Melkam Gena! And to my Russian readers, S Roždestvom!
The tribune of the people was being conveyed in an essedum, lictors with laurel preceded him; among whom, on an open litter, a mime actress was being carried; whom honorable men, citizens of the municipalities, coming out from their towns under compulsion to meet her, saluted not by the name by which she was notorious on the stage, but by that of Volumnia. A raeda followed full of pimps, thoroughly despicable companions; then his neglected mother was following the girlfriend of her filthy son as though she were a bride. - Cicero, Second Philippic
Cytheris was born a slave in the latter days of the Roman Republic, about 70 BCE. Her parents were probably Greek, and her name (deriving from Cytherea, one of Aphrodite’s bynames) may not be the one she was originally assigned at birth, but rather one she adopted (or was given) later when it became clear what her profession would be. She was the property of the wealthy and ambitious Publius Volumnius Eutrapelus, an enthusiastic patron of the theater, who had her trained as a mime and introduced her to the theater in her early teens. Roman mime was not the silent niche-art it is today, but rather a blend of singing, dancing and acting, much of it improvised; it is therefore more closely akin to vaudeville than to Mummenschanz or Marceau. As I mentioned in “Meretrices and Prostibulae”, most mimes – like most actresses for centuries before and millennia after – were also prostitutes, and Cytheris was probably in the group of mimes who in 55 BCE began the tradition of ending the Floralia with a striptease (the public sex was not added until imperial times).
Cytheris so excelled at both the public and private aspects of her art that her master freed her sometime in the late 50s, but his action was not motivated by altruism; though she was legally free she was still an actress and whore and thus could not hope to rise very high in stratified Roman society. Furthermore, she was bound to her patron by a restrictive contract which kept her from choosing her employment freely, and she was obligated to give him free performances (of both kinds) when asked. In other words he was no longer her master, but he was still her pimp; this is exactly why he freed her. No man of knightly or senatorial rank could associate with a slave-whore unless she belonged to him, but as an ostensibly free delicata she could be hired by the noble Romans Eutrapelus hoped to influence. Cytheris was no exploited victim, however; she remained extremely loyal to her patron for the rest of her life, and he treated her more like a modern businessman would treat an extremely valued assistant than like something out of a prohibitionist fantasy.
About 49 BCE Cytheris became involved with Mark Antony, who openly made her his mistress after Caesar appointed him Master of the Horse (second in command) in the summer of 48. Their relationship did not last much longer; he was forced to give her up by the end of 47 BCE, but the reason it ended is worthy of note because it reveals Antony’s two main personality flaws (politically speaking) and foreshadows his eventual downfall. Though his family connections predestined him to high office, his heart was never really in it; as a youth he was well-known for drinking, gambling and general partying, and even as a man he was well-known for being fond of the company of theater people, especially mimes. But the second flaw was the tragic one: Antony had the unfortunate tendency to fall in love with his mistresses, which of course led to his doom once he took up with Cleopatra only six years later.
Nobody in Rome cared if prominent citizens had affairs with courtesans or other women of lower social class, no matter how many patricians knew about it; what was important was that it be kept out of sight of the plebeians, and given no official recognition. But Antony seemed unable to maintain this necessary discretion, either with Cytheris or later with Cleopatra. Rather than treating his mistresses as a Roman statesman should, he acted like a young man in love who wants the world to know about his wonderful lady. While Caesar was off in Africa wiping out the last army loyal to Pompey, Antony made administrative rounds in Italy with the great procession the conservative Cicero (who knew Cytheris personally and disliked her intensely) describes in the epigram: he essentially treated a courtesan like a wife, even to the point of having her addressed by her nomen (inherited from her former master) as though she were a matron, rather than by the cognomen under which she was famous. When Caesar came back to Rome, he was extremely unhappy about this and insisted that Antony break off relations with her (Cicero mocks Antony by using the word “divorce”) and cultivate a more respectable image.
For the next four years Cytheris worked as a courtesan, being occasionally called upon to seduce one politician or another as her patron required; though he supported Antony until the end, he knew how to play politics and courted the favor of both Caesar’s party and the opposition. Only one of Cytheris’ regular clients from this period has a famous name: Marcus Junius Brutus, who later became one of Caesar’s assassins. Her next major conquest came around 43 or 42, when she took up with the soldier-politician Cornelius Gallus, who was also an accomplished poet; Gallus was so smitten with her that he eventually composed four books of poetry in her honor. It was the tradition in Roman love poetry for the poet to use a pseudonym for his lover; the name so chosen had to have the same number and stress pattern of syllables as the real woman’s name, and so Cytheris became “Lycoris”. The last of these books was written in 40 BCE, after she had left him; when Antony and Octavian began the first of several major quarrels Gallus supported the latter, so Eutrapelus reassigned her to Quintus Fufius Calenus, one of Antony’s generals.
The flower “lycoris” was named after her.
By the time Octavian became Augustus and the Republic became an Empire, Cytheris (now in her early 40s) had largely vanished from history. Gallus’ poetry about her was both popular and highly regarded, thanks in part to Virgil’s tenth Eclogue (published about 38 BCE), which was on the subject of Gallus’ pining away for her. Though Virgil also called her “Lycoris” as Gallus had, her identity was an open secret and she was held in great honor among the mimae; both “Cytheris” and “Lycoris” were popular stage names for the next 300 years. Though we do not know how she spent her later years, we can hazard a guess: the new Imperator loved mime, so as one might expect it grew even more popular during his reign; once she grew too old to work as a delicata any longer, the former consort to a ruler probably returned to the stage, ending her days performing as an archimima (lead comedienne) to thunderous applause.
Snowflakes in the air
Carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share. - Lee Mendelson, “Christmas Time is Here”
As I said yesterday, I suspect the festival we now know as Christmas began about 3900 BCE, when the climate abruptly cooled and dried all over the world. For about 2000 years before that, the climate had been wet and warm enough for agriculture to succeed even in areas which are arid in modern times, and with little irrigation or centralized planning. But once the long drought set in (around the same time copper started to replace stone as the favored tool material), everyone started to crowd into the comparatively small areas of the river valleys: scattered villages gave way to large cities, wars were fought over the limited arable land, and hierarchical social structures appeared in order to keep track of which land belonged to whom and what would happen to it when he died. Because warfare and rigid hierarchies appeal more to the male mind societies became more patriarchal, and because heredity was now important sex laws and taboos started to appear. Now that agriculture was a bit trickier calendars were needed so people would know the best times to plant and to reap, and rituals were developed to appease the gods so as to ensure bountiful harvests.
By the late 4th millennium BCE, the most important of these rites was the one which commemorated the creation of the world by the sky-god Anu after his victory over the forces of chaos; the Babylonians assigned this role to their god Marduk, and personified chaos as the dragon Tiamat. The battle was believed to have lasted for 12 days, so the festival (which the Babylonians called Zagmuk) did as well, and though it occurred at the end of winter (the two weeks before the vernal equinox) rather than at the beginning, this was the origin of our 12 days of Christmas. As in many later cultures, the time between the end of the old year and the beginning of the new was a time of chaos, and the rituals were thought to help Marduk beat back Tiamat for another year. The priests and nobles enacted a pageant (the ancestor of our Christmas pantomime) in which the king played Marduk, and he was supposed to be sacrificed so as to join the god in the underworld and fight by his side. But because it was impractical (not to mention counterproductive) to have a new king every year, what actually happened was this: on the first day of Zagmuk, the king abdicated his power and a condemned criminal was invested as king. He was feted and given homage, and played the part of Marduk in the early part of the festival; he was then sacrificed and the true king resumed his station, receiving the power to rule by consummating a ritual marriage with the entu (high priestess of Ishtar). To provide a mystical balance, another prisoner was chosen at the same time as the temporary king; instead of being sacrificed, he was set free in order to bear the sins of the nation away with him (a similar ritual was later practiced by the Hebrews using goats). And while the ruling classes enacted all this, the common people helped by burning effigies of Tiamat in bonfires.
Sumer was the Great Mother of Western civilization, and her culture infused all which came after it. The Zagmuk festival spread to all parts of the Near East, and though it changed as it spread its influence can be clearly seen. The dedication of a human sacrifice to represent the death of the god, followed immediately by the investiture of another person as the reborn god, was adopted by the Ancient Greeks as part of their primitive festival of Lenaea. And while the human sacrifice eventually vanished in a literal sense from the Babylonian festival (later called Akitu), it survived in symbolic form; during the twelve days of the festival the social order was reversed, with masters waiting upon slaves and one slave chosen to be the head of the household for the duration, just as a criminal had been made king in earlier times (but without the unpleasant conclusion). And after the battle-pageant the common people thronged in the street, rejoicing in the victory of their god with shouted invocations and joyful songs. The festival was extremely popular, and survived conquest after conquest for millennia; the Kassites, Elamites, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians and Seleucids each adopted it in turn. By late classical times many of its elements (including the social reversal and the singing in the streets) had entered the Greek Kronia, descendant of Lenaea and ancestor of the Roman Saturnalia; the latter adopted its practices wholesale in 217 BCE, at the same time (and as part of the same Sibylline reform) as the Venus Erycina was brought to Rome.
Six thousand years ago the climate shifted, driving our ancestors from a pleasant Eden where food was plentiful into a harsher world where winter was a time of crisis. And though the elaborate ritual devised by the ancient Mesopotamians to drive back the chaos is no longer solemn or bloody, many of its elements – feasting, mumming and masking, pantomime, bonfires, caroling and even the twelve-day duration – became traditional parts of our winter holiday season, and have endured even to the present day. From the unnamed festival of ancient Uruk to Zagmuk to Lenaea and Akitu, then via Kronia to Saturnalia to Sol Invictus, and finally to Christmas and Carnival, there runs one long, unbroken cord which none who opposed it, whether king, priest or ideologue, has ever been able to sever.
There are no strangers on Christmas Eve. - Michael O’Brien (Charles Winninger) in Beyond Tomorrow
Christmas is the oldest continuously-celebrated holiday in the world, dating back at least 5000 years to the ancient festival of Lenaea, celebrated by the ancestors of the Mycenaean Greeks; it may be much older still, but since even our oral traditions don’t go back before the early Bronze Age we have no real way of knowing. Personally, I suspect it dates back to 3900 BCE, when the climate abruptly cooled and dried, creating the Sahara and spurring the settlement of river valleys, the first large, centralized governments and the development of agricultural calendars. One can imagine the dread with which those early people would have reacted to the failure of the rains and the shortening of the growing season; over time the stories of how pleasant things used to be would have become exaggerated until they grew into the belief that man had once existed in a paradise from which he had been expelled due to some dreadful offense against the gods. They might have seen each winter as a threat of worsening conditions, and developed religious rituals to placate the gods and bring back the sun. Nearly every temperate-zone agricultural society had some sort of “return of the sun” ritual at this time of year, and even today Christmas is celebrated by a larger fraction of human beings than any other holiday.
To anyone who knows anything at all about the origin and development of Christmas, the insistence by American Christians that the holiday belongs to them and them alone is bizarre indeed; it’s rather like someone buying a used car, giving it a new paint job and then declaring that he was the inventor of the internal combustion engine. What makes this even stranger is that Christmas has been a largely-secular festival rather than a high-religious one for about 2500 years, since the formal Lenaea gave way to the popular Kronia. The early Church fathers were not at all pleased when recent converts associated Jesus with the sun-god and assigned the latter’s birthday to the former; Pope Benedict recently pointed out, “We don’t even know which season he was born in. The whole idea of celebrating his birth during the darkest part of the year is probably linked to pagan traditions and the winter solstice.” But as I wrote in my first Boxing Day column,
…they were [eventually] forced to admit that, like prostitution, Christmas was not going to go away, so by the Middle Ages the Church embraced the celebration and worked to insert as much Christian symbolism into it as possible. Nativity scenes first appeared in 10th-century Rome, and were popularized by Saint Francis of Assisi beginning in 1223 (St. Francis also popularized religious Christmas carols sung in the vernacular). Christian explanations were developed for pagan traditions like the Christmas tree…By the Renaissance Christmas was fully established as an important Church festival…and then the Reformation came, bringing preachers who thundered against Christmas as “popery” or even the dreaded “heathenism”. The Church responded by trying to make the festival more religious, and many German Protestants continued the celebration quietly but replaced Saint Nicholas or other traditional gift-giving figures with the Christkindl (Christ child), a term corrupted in English to “Kris Kringle”…in the English-speaking world the Protestants continued to hammer away at Christmas, which was actually banned in England under the Commonwealth government from 1647-1660…Puritan influence made it unpopular [in America, and]…it was [only] due to German, Dutch, French and Spanish influence that Christmas finally “caught on” in the United States in the first quarter of the 19th century…
In other words, the whole “Keep Christ in Christmas” nonsense is based on a premise as spurious as the fallacy that “Xmas” is a modern abbreviation intended to “X” Jesus out of the holiday (in reality, the “X” is a Greek Chi, short for “Christ”, and the use of “Xmas” dates back to the 11th century). Christmas belongs to the entire world, not just to the most selfish members of one religion, and we cannot allow this Cult of Grinches to steal it and all of its symbols, the majority of which predate their sect by centuries.
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