Word: pagans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Yule Logs: Many ancient winter solstice traditions included lighted candles, bonfires and blazing logs to speed the sun on its way to yearly "rebirth." The Yule log is adopted from these pagan customs...
...believed, Christmas has been celebrated on December 25 ever since Mary placed the Christ child in a manger. Unfortunately, historical documents, legend and law prove this widespread rumor unfounded. Books on the history of Christmas and on holiday traditions show that Christmas festivities have as firm a root in pagan ritual as Christian rite and that Massachusetts itself at one time played the grinch...
...final decision to fix the date was a direct response to an array of pagan harvest festivals, and ignored the philosophical arguments offered by some Christian theologians. Most sun-worshiping early religions--including the Persian, Roman Norse, Gothic, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon--staged lavish winter solstice celebrations to mark the annual rebirth...
...particularly rationalist either, however, since scientific rationalism has as much trouble dealing with luck as theology does. The best it has to offer is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which states that it is absolutely impossible to predict the exact behavior of atomic particles. Luck is a weird, pagan, primitive business. Or else, in modern dress, it is a frigidly heartless existentialism. In any case, whatever its occasionally whimsical moments, luck has a philosophically terrifying core...
...time to bear a truth. The uncustomary fact of defeat, however, was quickly buried, and Americans turned back to what they do best: helping themselves. They jogged, played tennis, meditated and nurtured a reverence for ecosystems. At times it seemed as if Judaeo-Christian civilization had been overrun by pagan-aerobic tribes...