New Year, ancient Illyrian Holiday and European Christmas - By Burim Bardhari

Apart from the undeniable fact that Albanians are primarily Illyrians first and Europeans as well as the religious significance of the holiday expressing the spirit of welcoming peace and love and ultimately salvation, the celebration of Christmas holiday has also been largely influenced and popularized by the Western commercialization emphasizing the exuberance of gift exchanges as tokens of love; also a dogmatic principle at a later period symbolizing the struggle against faithless communism that conveniently selected in close proximity the celebration of the New Year as a Holiday from Antiquity.

However, for the Albanians it is the carried consciousness of our heritage from antiquity since it is related to the Illyrian Holidays celebrating nature that was created by the Divine Mind or God himself, and as such Illyrian Holidays lose no value just because they are deemed “pagan” by the blasphemous word, an insult connivingly unwrapped by the main Middle Eastern religions to indicate backwardness which in strong contradiction actually exposes scientific knowledge enveloped with the philosophy of common hope for the mankind with pre-religious origins and cycling forward annually, from year to year.

As a matter of fact, it brings good tidings, the joy of good news as the sun, our main source of energy, the star on the spruce or Christmas tree, discloses its status on December 21^st, because it marks the winter “Solstice” of our Northern hemisphere (or Nordic Solstice), heralding the shortening of night and darkness or the long winter blues that culminates with the equinox of the “Albanian Summer” of March 14 (believed to have changed from the official day of March 21^st) when nature reawakens and life flourishes again.

©Burim Bardhari