It’s that magical time of year, when Christianity does seem to resemble a solar cult, much to the satisfaction of all the internet scholars who say that Jesus is really just the same as Osiris, Adonis, Dumuzid, Mithras, Sol Invictus, Baldur, etc.
But at the same time, if I had a dollar for everytime someone — usually a Protestant Christian minister — has made the Son/Sun pun at this time of year, I would be drinking my morning coffee in my Teton County mountain mansion with my pet wolves gamboling on the lawn.
My parents being agnostic, I first read of that pun in a column in “Popular Photography” magazine. Some very introspective photographer had a regular column in which he over-analyzed great photos, often citing religious views in them (his columns had that threadbare, shopworn air of an AA regular). Oddly enough, I don’t remember what he was writing about, but it was a strange place to come across the synonym.
What crossed my mind reading this post–The Sun of God illuminates the Dark Night of the Soul and dispels the Fog of Faith with a New Dawn. (I’m feeling kinda proto-Indo-European right now, mythologically speaking…)