Southland a Melting Pot of Diverse Yule Rituals

Sophia Santiago, a Catholic immigrant from Mexico, Fariba Enteshari, a follower of the Iranian Sufi mystic Rumi, and John Elder, an El Segundo engineer and family therapist who calls himself a neo-pagan, follow distinctly different spiritual paths. But as Christmas dawns today, each will celebrate the holiday season with the same powerful mythic symbols: the birth of light illuminating the winter darkness.

Santiago, like thousands of immigrants from Mexico and Central America who have made Los Angeles their home, has observed the start of the Christmas season with a candlelit procession known as las posadas. It is a centuries-old Catholic tradition that reenacts the biblical story of Joseph and Mary’s search for lodging before the birth of Jesus.

Enteshari has marked the holidays by attending a concert of traditional Iranian music and poetry to celebrate a ritual known as shabeyalda. The ritual, connected to the ancient Persian god Mithra, celebrates the winter solstice and, for Enteshari, stirs childhood memories of family togetherness, pomegranates, poetry and stories of hope and survival over the long, harsh winter seasons.

In a yule ritual in Northridge last Saturday, Elder’s Southern California neo-pagan group, Reweaving, reenacted the ancient Sumerian myth of the death and rebirth of the goddess Inanna, which symbolizes the seasonal descent into darkness and the return of the light. For Elder, the ritual served as a powerful transformative tool to face his own darkness (controlling behavior he says has damaged his family life), repent and experience a spiritual rebirth.

For most Christians, of course, today is the celebration of the birth of Jesus. The practice dates at least to 336, when, scholars say, the early church began to piggyback on the popular Roman festivals for the winter solstice, gradually turning a pagan festival of the “birth of the sun” into one celebrating the “birth of the son.”

Now, at the close of the 20th century, growing ecumenism and interfaith activity have accelerated the sharing of rituals to mark holiday observances. That mixing is nowhere more prominent than in Southern California, where scholars of religion believe that more people of more faiths and ethnic backgrounds live side by side than at any other place on the planet.

What many of those observances--Christian and non-Christian alike--have in common is what Jonathan Young, a Santa Barbara psychologist and founder of the Center for Story and Symbol, calls the universal symbolism tied to the season: “hope against despair, light over darkness and life over death.”

While Christmas dates back many centuries, the traditional American observances--the tree, Santa Claus, church services that seem hallowed by time--are not, in fact, so very old.

Young notes that New England Puritans outlawed Christmas as a pagan festival in the 18th century. What Young calls the “great stew, a wonderful collage” of Christmas traditions that seem so customary to many today largely took root in the mixing of European immigrant folkways in the 19th century.

Today, some of the “new” traditions of Southern California are long-standing Christian observances from other parts of the world.

In most Latin American countries, for example, las posadas festivities begin Dec. 16 and take place for nine nights leading up to Christmas Eve. Traditionally, celebrants dressed as Joseph and Mary are denied lodging three times before being admitted into a house. Then, a party begins with tamales and hot champurrado, a chocolate-flavored cornmeal drink. Children smash open a pinata, which is believed to represent Satan or the spirit of evil. Breaking it open symbolizes the purification of mankind.

A New Latino-Greek Event in Pico-Union

Today, immigrants are reshaping the posadas to fit their new lives. With many people working long hours in manual-labor jobs, several parishes have chosen one weekend night in place of the traditional nine for the procession so that as many people as possible can attend.

The celebration has also expanded beyond Latino communities. At St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Pico-Union, the largely Central American congregation joined last Saturday with neighboring St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral for the second annual Latino-Greek posada.

Riding a burro down Pico Boulevard, actors in the role of Mary and Joseph were serenaded by a mix of Spanish and Greek hymns. (Most Orthodox churches celebrate Christmas according to the Western calendar, though some celebrate the holiday in early January.)

“The Orthodox and Roman Catholic Church share many similarities,” said the Rev. John S. Bakas, dean of St. Sophia Cathedral. “This is about celebrating old traditions and creating new ones.”

Some Protestant churches with growing Latino congregations have picked up the posadas tradition despite its Catholic heritage. This month, Echo Park United Methodist Church held its annual posada. Last Saturday, the Spanish-speaking congregation of Immanuel Presbyterian Church had its fifth procession.

Performing the posadas has displeased some Latino Protestants, who object to adopting Catholic traditions, citing what they see as Catholic oppression of Protestants in Latin America, says the Rev. Frank Alton, senior pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian.

But “while I respect and honor those feelings, I don’t think that reality exists in the United States. I think we should use traditions like the posadas to break down the walls between denominations,” said Alton.

Celebrants must also break down walls between different Latin American cultures, said Estuardo Bazini, a Bible study instructor at Immanuel Presbyterian Church who emigrated from Guatemala.

“Every country celebrates in their own way,” Bazini said. “We try to negotiate the differences into one posada.”

Santiago, a native of Oaxaca, Mexico, who now attends Immanuel Presbyterian Church, said posadas in the United States are sedate in comparison to the way her village celebrated the holidays.

“The entire village dresses in costumes and there is a big band which plays Christmas music for everyone to hear,” she said. “At the end, we slaughter a bull, so everyone can eat and fireworks are set off all night. There is nothing like it.”

While Latinos celebrate posadas, Filipinos celebrate the days leading up to Christmas Eve with Simbang Gabi, a nine-day novena of Masses.

The roots of Simbang Gabi date to the 17th century, when a monk asked for permission to hold outdoor Masses during Advent--the season leading up to Christmas--because churches could not accommodate the holiday crowds. Simbang Gabi, which means evening Mass in Tagalog, was held before sunrise to accommodate field workers who began their work early to avoid the sun’s heat and fishermen who spent their nights at sea.

Today, Filipinos in the United States have shifted the Masses to the evening for practical reasons. A few churches celebrate for the full nine nights, but in most places, nine churches clustered in a specific region collaborate on the holiday with each church celebrating for one night.

“It’s a way of bringing our community together,” said Remy Baluyot of St. Bernard Church in Glassell Park. “The bonding is there at the Simbang Gabi. When we see everyone and smell all the foods, that’s when we know it’s Christmas.”

Other holiday observances turn a centuries-old historical process on its head. “There’s a long history of how Christianity has taken pre-existing religious traditions and incorporated them,” said Don E. Salier, a professor of theology and worship at Emory University in Atlanta.

The Christmas tree tradition, for example, developed in Germany among pagan tribes and symbolized life in the midst of winter death.

Now, non-Christian groups are returning the compliment and borrowing the Christmas season for their own rituals. In Long Beach, for instance, Christmas has inspired American devotees of Tibetan Buddhism to gather today for a ritual called “taking refuge.”

Similar to a New Year’s resolution, the participants will take vows against killing, lying, stealing, sexual misconduct and substance abuse. The ritual will pave the way for other ceremonies next week: a purifying fasting retreat and an initiation to cultivate a heart of compassion and service to others, said Lara Brooke, an office manager with the Thubten Dhargye Ling, the Long Beach center sponsoring the event.

“Westerners are used to doing something special on Christmas, so those with a mind toward Buddhism can use the occasion to focus on what Christmas is all about: compassion, giving and celebration,” Brooke said.

In Hollywood and around the world, followers of the late Indian spiritual teacher Paramahansa Yogananda marked the holidays last week with an all-day meditation designed to seek communion with Jesus and embrace his spiritual principles of “loving God with all your heart,” said Lauren Landress, spokeswoman for the guru’s Self-Realization Fellowship, a worldwide society based in Los Angeles.

The society was founded in 1920 to disseminate Yogananda’s teachings of the essential unity between original yoga and original Christianity; followers regard Jesus as one of their gurus.

At the Hollywood temple last week, more than 350 people gathered to pray, sing, meditate and give symbolic offerings of fruit and cash. For Rene Lepoint, a Yogananda follower of 20 years, the meditation was a welcome refuge from the stress of Christmas shopping and holiday functions.

“This is a chance for me to renew my relationship with Christ and what Christ means to me: principally, unconditional love, a life devoted to service and loving God,” she said.

Even some atheists say the season inspires them to participate in self-reflection and meaningful rituals with family and friends. For Ron Barrier, national spokesman for the New Jersey-based American Atheists, the season is a time for “socializing, reflecting, sharing your hopes and dreams and sorrows.”

“We are ceremonial, we are tribal; there is no way of getting around that,” Barrier said. “Rituals are a necessary component of human life.”