Post-Christmas thoughts about the CBC’s future
A visit to Lyon last week got me thinking about how dominant religions absorb and erase competing rites and traditions. France’s second city has been an important focus of Catholicism from the first century onward, but before that Lyon was a centre of worship of the Roman god Mithra. Scholars are divided as to the extent of early Christian syncretic borrowings from the cult and traditions of Mithraism, but other pagan appropriations are in plain view around Christmas time. The streets of old Lyon were festooned with coloured lights and pine boughs, traditions which derive from pre-Christian...
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