Religious Tradition

The American today lives in an age of technology in which very few people farm--and even those few farms are mechanized--but he still observes a religious calendar that is a carryover of the annual changes in agricultural activities in the Mediterranean world. Americans who have inherited the religious traditions of the Christians of the eastern Mediterranean do not find it strange that a messiah should be born at the time of the winter solstice, when the sun is farthest away from the earth and is about to return. Nor do they find it strange that in the spring, when Nature is renewed in the Near East, the Hebrews should have set out from Egypt to found a new nation and the messiah should be resurrected. 

 

Farb, Peter, Man's Rise To Civilization As Shown By The Indians Of North America From Primeval Times To The Coming Of The Industrial State, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. New York, 1968.