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Quote:IF WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY
OFFENDS YOU, I HOPE YOU CAN GET
OVER IT. IT IS TIME WE FOLLOWERS OF
CHRIST UP AND SAYS SOMETHING
BEFORE IT IS TO LATE! THERE ARE
PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TAKE CHRIST
OUT OF CHRISTMAS BECAUSE IT
MIGHT OFFEND SOMEONE. WELL,
HOW ABOUT ALL OF THE
CHRISTIANS?...YOU ARE OFFENDING
US BECAUSE YOU ARE TAKING OUR
CHRIST OUT OF CHRISTMAS?...CHRIST
IS CHRISTMASL..IF YOU AREN’T
CELEBRATING CHRIST THEN WHY ARE
YOU CELEBRATING?...CHRISTMAS IS
ABOUT THE BIRTH OF OUR
SAVIOR!...CHRISTMAS IS ONE OF A
FEW HOLIDAYS LEFT THAT CELEBRATE
“MY” CHRIST!...LEAVE “MY” HOLIDAY
ALONE!...AND TELL EVERYONE MERRY
CHRISTMAS, NOT HAPPY
HOLIDAYS!...RE-POST IF YOU’RE NOT
ASHAMED.. JESUS IS THE REASON
FOR THE SEASON!
Dear fundamentalist friend, I see from your FB post that it is once again time for the seasonal rant. Please understand that no one, absolutely no one is trying to stop you from saying Merry Christmas. By the same token you should not try to stop people from using Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings if that is their preference.
In the first place, Christmas, December 25, is highly unlikely to have been the birthdate of Jesus. The Bible says absolutely nothing about the date, but it does mention that there were shepherds out in the fields with their flocks. Apparently in Judaea the period December-February has the worst weather of the year, cold and rainy, when shepherds would try to get their flocks under shelter. Some biblical scholars also make a complicated argument that Jesus' birth occurred in late September, based on what Luke says about the conception of John the Baptist followed six months later by the conception of Jesus.
In the second place, and more importantly, Christianity does not have a patent on winter festivals.
The actual reason for the December 25 date is that the church co-opted the ancient Roman festival of Saturanlia, which was observed centuries before the birth of Jesus. The Romans also observed the birth of the god Mithras around that time.
It's not too surprising that other ancient cultures also observed festivals around the time of the winter solstice. The Celtic peoples with their Druid religion were one such, and another was the pagan Germans and their Nordic cousins who observed Yule, a word we still use today.
Modern non-Christian festivals which are still observed today include the Jewish Hanukkah and the Hindu Diwali. So when you don't know people well, it's perfectly reasonable to wish them Happy Holidays and let them apply the version they prefer whether Christian, Jewish or Hindu.
And then there are the modern Japanese who enthusiastically celebrate Christmas even though less than 10% of them are Christians.
Finally, there are the people like me who you might call cultural Christians. I do not believe one bit of the Christian religion any more, but I grew up celebrating Christmas as a time to reconnect with friends and family, to exchange gifts and to have a festive meal. I intend to have my Happy Holidays this ear, thank you very much.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
I know that it's par for the course, what with the abuse of the caps lock key, but the grammar nazi in me is awed at how "we" can "says" anything. And what's this "CHRISTMASL" they speak of? I notice a few punctuation errors. Can we learn to be an asshole and have good grammar? Or are they mutually exclusive?
December 20, 2014 at 8:35 pm (This post was last modified: December 20, 2014 at 8:43 pm by Lucanus.)
(December 20, 2014 at 8:19 pm)Natachan Wrote: I know that it's par for the course, what with the abuse of the caps lock key, but the grammar nazi in me is awed at how "we" can "says" anything. And what's this "CHRISTMASL" they speak of? I notice a few punctuation errors. Can we learn to be an asshole and have good grammar? Or are they mutually exclusive?
With great religiousness assholery comes great ignorance.
"Every luxury has a deep price. Every indulgence, a cosmic cost. Each fiber of pleasure you experience causes equivalent pain somewhere else. This is the first law of emodynamics [sic]. Joy can be neither created nor destroyed. The balance of happiness is constant.
Fact: Every time you eat a bite of cake, someone gets horsewhipped.
Facter: Every time two people kiss, an orphanage collapses.
Factest: Every time a baby is born, an innocent animal is severely mocked for its physical appearance. Don't be a pleasure hog. Your every smile is a dagger. Happiness is murder.
Vote "yes" on Proposition 1321. Think of some kids. Some kids."
Quote:IF WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY
OFFENDS YOU, I HOPE YOU CAN GET
OVER IT. IT IS TIME WE FOLLOWERS OF
CHRIST UP AND SAYS SOMETHING
BEFORE IT IS TO LATE! THERE ARE
PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TAKE CHRIST
OUT OF CHRISTMAS BECAUSE IT
MIGHT OFFEND SOMEONE. WELL,
HOW ABOUT ALL OF THE
CHRISTIANS?...YOU ARE OFFENDING
US BECAUSE YOU ARE TAKING OUR
CHRIST OUT OF CHRISTMAS?...CHRIST
IS CHRISTMASL..IF YOU AREN’T
CELEBRATING CHRIST THEN WHY ARE
YOU CELEBRATING?...CHRISTMAS IS
ABOUT THE BIRTH OF OUR
SAVIOR!...CHRISTMAS IS ONE OF A
FEW HOLIDAYS LEFT THAT CELEBRATE
“MY” CHRIST!...LEAVE “MY” HOLIDAY
ALONE!...AND TELL EVERYONE MERRY
CHRISTMAS, NOT HAPPY
HOLIDAYS!...RE-POST IF YOU’RE NOT
ASHAMED.. JESUS IS THE REASON
FOR THE SEASON!
Dear fundamentalist friend, I see from your FB post that it is once again time for the seasonal rant. Please understand that no one, absolutely no one is trying to stop you from saying Merry Christmas. By the same token you should not try to stop people from using Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings if that is their preference.
In the first place, Christmas, December 25, is highly unlikely to have been the birthdate of Jesus. The Bible says absolutely nothing about the date, but it does mention that there were shepherds out in the fields with their flocks. Apparently in Judaea the period December-February has the worst weather of the year, cold and rainy, when shepherds would try to get their flocks under shelter. Some biblical scholars also make a complicated argument that Jesus' birth occurred in late September, based on what Luke says about the conception of John the Baptist followed six months later by the conception of Jesus.
In the second place, and more importantly, Christianity does not have a patent on winter festivals.
The actual reason for the December 25 date is that the church co-opted the ancient Roman festival of Saturanlia, which was observed centuries before the birth of Jesus. The Romans also observed the birth of the god Mithras around that time.
It's not too surprising that other ancient cultures also observed festivals around the time of the winter solstice. The Celtic peoples with their Druid religion were one such, and another was the pagan Germans and their Nordic cousins who observed Yule, a word we still use today.
Modern non-Christian festivals which are still observed today include the Jewish Hanukkah and the Hindu Diwali. So when you don't know people well, it's perfectly reasonable to wish them Happy Holidays and let them apply the version they prefer whether Christian, Jewish or Hindu.
And then there are the modern Japanese who enthusiastically celebrate Christmas even though less than 10% of them are Christians.
Finally, there are the people like me who you might call cultural Christians. I do not believe one bit of the Christian religion any more, but I grew up celebrating Christmas as a time to reconnect with friends and family, to exchange gifts and to have a festive meal. I intend to have my Happy Holidays this ear, thank you very much.
we realize Jesus wasn't born in December, he was most likely born in April.
After Claudius expelled the Jews (which the early christian were) from Rome, the newly converted Romans, without any leadership, began incorporating their pagan traditions into Christianity to make it more appealing to their culture. This eventually becomes Roman Catholicism, which is full of pagan tradition.
That being said, no need to have to justify why you like Christmas, just enjoy......no one is judging.
(December 22, 2014 at 3:24 am)Huggy74 Wrote: That being said, no need to have to justify why you like Christmas, just enjoy......no one is judging.
No one is justifying anything. The rest of the world is just explaining to Christians what the winter celebration actually means and represents.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
(December 22, 2014 at 11:59 am)Minimalist Wrote: There is no indication of any xtian presence in Rome in the first century.
I wish we could say that of America in the Twenty-First!
Quote:The Great Fire of Rome erupted on the night of 18 July to 19 July 64. The fire started at the southeastern end of the Circus Maximus in shops selling flammable goods.
Quote:Tacitus, in one of the earliest non-Christian references to the origins of Christianity, notes that the population searched for a scapegoat and rumors held Nero responsible. To deflect blame, Nero targeted Christians. He ordered Christians to be thrown to dogs, while others were crucified and burned.
Quote:THERE ARE
PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TAKE CHRIST
OUT OF CHRISTMAS BECAUSE IT
MIGHT OFFEND SOMEONE.
If you take the Christ out of Christmas, you wind up with "mas." Which is Spanish for "more." So it's an example of "less is more."
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
