Christmas or Holidays?

[kmc]

There is no war against Christians. Only overly dramatic, mundane, and prideful people would want to believe that for the sake of their edification. There is less evidence of such a war than there is of a war on gays, or blacks, or women, or the poor, and we know how much the right woud deny the existence of anything like that.

Please. As if sporadic ACLU decisions anywhere can stem the fact that we have (unfortunately) a Christian Evangelical as President, mega-churches are popping up all over America, and a vast majority of Americans still subscribe to some form of Christianity. This is a plot to divide the electorate at a sensitive time of low polling numbers.

You are an imbecile if you accept the War on Christmas as truth.

[Galactus]

There was a comedian, I can't remember his name, that did a bit about his uncle that could find racism in anything. "You see son the black olives are in a can and the other olives are in jar...They don't want you to see those black olives..." That what this reminds me of.

[phil]

When you start expressing your religious faith
by putting cheap plastic images of Jesus' family
on your front law ...
the war on the true meaning of Christmas is indeed on !!

Maybe the other religions that forbid
the visual representation of God
are on to something ...

[phil]

Last night on the Radio-Canada TV news program, they were reporting on how much money people were putting on their Visa Card, how many transactions per second were made and the average for each purchase ...

The contemporary spirit of Christmas can be found
in every Wal-Mart stores across the world ... !!

[kmc]

This paranoia is a knee jerk reaction from people afraid of America's western secular nature. When meaningless battles over religion at Wal-Mart have to be fought, the other side has already won.

[luke]

Are those by-laws banning white trash lawns really unconstitutional? Don't you sign something before you move into a neighborhood? Many neighborhoods ban things like sheds, mailboxes, and vehicles parked in the front lawn. You sign a contract when you move there.

Me, I'm more than happy with the commercialization of Christmas. It's all about eating too much, getting trashed, gifts, tacky lawn decorations, and watching Christmas Vacation about forty times. Christmas is so fucking commercial that it even made Hanukkah, a dinky little event on the Jewish calendar, into a major force for retail money-making. Nothing like those gift cards with the Menorrah on them.

And Kwanzaa, what the fuck is that? A complete non-event turned into a big deal because everyone wants in on some hot Christmas action. The holiday season, from Halloween all the way through New Years, and let's not forget Mardi Gras, Easter, Mother's and Father's Day, the Fourth of July, everybody's birthday, and even fucking Labor Day are all about some people getting drunk and having fun and other people making a shitload of money.

The War Against Christmas was won decades ago by the retail industry when they replaced Jesus with Santa Claus. If they want to say "Happy Holidays" now, then let them, because without retail, there are no holidays.

It's just funny now that people are bitching that retail, who completely shit all over the "true meaning of Christmas" and transformed the holiday decades ago, are being more broad with their use of "holidays." What people are saying is, "Fuck you, Target, I didn't sleep in front of your store for two days so that I could get Little Billy's iPod Nano and his XBox 360 for the holidays. I spend that $1200 for CHRISTMAS."

Hopefully all this fuss will die now, and everyone can just get fucked up on New Years Eve in peace.

[phil]

Hopefully all this fuss will die now, and everyone
can just get fucked up on New Years Eve in peace.

HÉ ! I object to the use of the term Eve ... !!

Clearly a ploy by the Christian Right to
remind us to stay away from snakes and apple trees
as we're about to pick up new resolutions ... ;D ... ;D ...

[Kensterberg]

Things I learned over the holiday weekend, from watching waaaay too much of The History Channel, etc.:

1. Puritans banned Christmas in the fledgling American colonies. They thought it was a vile pagan festival, and overly commercialized, secularized, and entirely too much fun.
2. Pretty much every significant part of our idea of Christmas in America comes from either pagan practices (Yule logs, Christmas trees) or secular (primarily commercial) culture (the modern Santa Claus was largely refined in famous Coca-Cola ad campaigns nearly a century ago; Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer (an essential part of MY holiday traditions at any rate), etc.).
3. The relics of St. Nicholas are still in a church in Turkey. They were removed for measurements and study in the 1950's, and recently a forensic reconstruction of his face was done. He was a pretty jovial looking Turk, from the computer images anyway.
4. Recent digging around the Sea of Gallilee (sp?) has shown that a site reputed to have been the home of Peter was in fact located at the shore of the lake in Biblical times. Considering that the first shrines on the site went up less than a century after the death of Jesus, it's very likely IMHO that this was indeed Peter's house. It's very rare that you can look back in time 2,000 years and say "this person lived here" with anyone but royalty, etc. There are sites in India that have this kind of reliability associated with the Buddha, but that's about all I can think of. This is just very cool.
5. Early Christians believed that Jesus was born in spring (which makes sense given the accounts of his birth in the gospels). They accepted the December celebration of his birth because the pagan festivals around the Winter Solstice were so well entrenched that they could not be eliminated. Rather than dealing with the embarrasment of having Christians celebrating Saturnalia, they placed a Christian veneer onto the old pagan practices. One of these practices was the exchanging of gifts ... so the commercialization of Christmas actually predates the appearence of Christ on the holiday!
6. I'm a huge nerd.

[phil]

6. I'm a huge nerd.

And that's part of your charm and why
you're so much appreciated around here
and also why the folks can overlook
your bizarre aversion for Jim and Billy ...

[phil]

Puritanism ... The nagging feeling
someone, somwhere, is having fun
and what can we do about it ... !!

[Nepenthe]

As for the nativity scene, yes it is indeed really gawdy. If I were to put one in my yard I would prefer the more natural looking type, made out of wood.

As for the subdivision trying to ban it, then they would have to ban everyone's lawn ornaments including those during Halloween.

[Nepenthe]

Ken, that is interesting what you saw on the History Channel, but you should not believe everything that you see on there. They are sometimes very far away from real research and reliable facts.

Pertaining to the Birth of Christ, in my Companion Bible there is an appendix (#179) in the back that explains this quite well. You can actually date his birth by comparing the events written in the Gospels surrounding the birth of John the Baptist. John and Jesus were cousins. It is very simple using basic math to figure what date Jesus would have been born, September 29th. This would indeed make December 25th the date of the "conception" of Jesus.

You can find this appendix, which has 3 parts, that is in the Companion Bible here:

APPENDIX 179

I. PARALLEL DATINGS OF THE TIMES OF OUR LORD.
www.angelfire.com/nv/TheOliveBranch/append179a.html

II. DATES OF "THE BEGETTING" (he gennesis, Matt.1:18, 20 (see R.V. marg.). John 1:14-) OF OUR LORD AND HIS BIRTH.
(Luke 2:7. John 1:-14.)
www.angelfire.com/nv/TheOliveBranch/append179b.html

II. continued here: www.angelfire.com/nv/TheOliveBranch/append179c.html

III. "THE COURSE OF ABIA" (Luke 1:5)
www.angelfire.com/nv/TheOliveBranch/append179d.html


And of course everyone knows that the Shepherd's would not be in the field tending to their herds in December.

[phil]

And of course everyone knows that the Shepherd's would not be in the field tending to their herds in December.

And why is that ??

Big Annual World Sheep Trade Fair
in Egypt at that time of the year ... ??

[phil]

As for the nativity scene, yes it is indeed really gawdy. If I were to put one in my yard
I would prefer the more natural looking type, made out of wood.


I'd rather have this one ...

[Mary]

kenholzman said:

Things I learned over the holiday weekend, from watching waaaay too much of The History Channel, etc.:

(snip)

6. I'm a huge nerd.

You just learned this over the holiday weekend??