"Christmas: A Candid History" (of people with a modicum of sense)

[TalkingDog]

MHO is in parenthetically offered in the subject line. I'm mainly offering information.

snip:
"People don't think of it this way, but it's really a secular holiday," said Foster, a Princeton-based pastor in the United Church of God. He last celebrated Christmas when he was 8.

snip:
In researching his book, "Christmas: A Candid History," Forbes discovered that major American denominations--Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, Methodists and Congregationalists--either ignored the holiday or actively discouraged it until the late 19th century.

That rejection was rooted in the lack of biblical sanction for Dec. 25 as the date of Jesus' birth, as well as suspicion toward traditions that developed after the earliest days of Christianity. In colonial New England, this disapproval extended to actually making the holiday illegal, with celebration punishable by a fine.

"Some somehow observe the day," wrote Boston Puritan Samuel Sewall on Christmas Day 1685, "but are vexed, I believe, that the body of people profane it, and blessed be God no authority yet compels them to keep it."



My Favorite Master Artist: Karen Parker GhostWoman Studios

[Buzz Clik]

1. Here at DU, Christmas is the season for telling us the Christmas is a phony holiday.

If you were a knuckledragger, this is the season for reminding the world that Kwanzaa is a phony holiday.

I cannot figure out why so much energy is invested in attempting to get people to buy out of these holidays.

Oh, well....

[JHB]

2. I see this more as a riposte to the "War on Christmas" nuttos...

...and the "Kwanzaa is phony" knucledraggers -- a reminder about tending to planks in one's own eye before complaining about splinters in someone else's.

[Dave From Canada]

5. Exactly. I'm waiting for the threads telling us why Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Ramadan are phony

holidays. All this crap does is feed into the fake "war on Christmas" premise. If you don't want to celebrate Christmas, then don't. Just leave the rest of us alone please.

[msongs]

3. every christian concept is either hijacked or co-opted from a previous belief system nt

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. This is the reason why an "old fashioned" Christmas

is always depicted as happening in Victorian times. Before that, it basically wasn't celebrated, at least in this country. Where it was, it was more of a time for drinking and carousing than anything else.

My grandmother, who was born in 1892, says that her parents didn't give them presents, though they would hang up stockings. They got a piece of fruit and a piece of penny candy. One year her father said he was getting all the children a present. It was a penny pencil. He was a prosperous farmer and had money. His wife came from Puritan stock. They didn't drink, and I believe that they looked on Christmas gift giving as frivolity.

[acmavm]

6. Your grandparents were absolutely correct. The real intent of celebrating

Christmas is not so that everyone can rake in a lot of loot. That's the antithesis of the meaning of Christmas. The real intent is to celebrate the birth of one of the gentlest people ever to walk the planet. One who preached forgiveness and peace for all.

The reason Decembre 25th was chosen was because it would be easier to sway 'pagans' away from their beliefs if they were given another holy day to replace the ones they already had.

<snip>

Pre-Christian origins
Main article: List of winter festivals
A winter festival was traditionally the most popular festival of the year in many cultures. Reasons included less agricultural work needing to be done during the winter, as well as people expecting longer days and shorter nights after the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.<4> In part, the Christmas celebration was created by the early Church in order to entice pagan Romans to convert to Christianity without losing their own winter celebrations.<5><4> Certain prominent gods and goddesses of other religions in the region had their birthdays celebrated on December 25, including Ishtar, Sol Invictus and Mithras . Various traditions are considered to have been syncretised from winter festivals including the following:


Saturnalia
Main article: Saturnalia
In Roman times, the best-known winter festival was Saturnalia, which was popular throughout Italy. Saturnalia was a time of general relaxation, feasting, merry-making, and a cessation of formal rules. It included the making and giving of small presents (Saturnalia et Sigillaricia), including small dolls for children and candles for adults.<6> During Saturnalia, business was postponed and even slaves feasted. There was drinking, gambling, and singing, and even public nudity. It was the "best of days," according to the poet Catullus.<7> Saturnalia honored the god Saturn and began on December 17. The festival gradually lengthened until the late Republican period, when it was seven days (December 17–24). In imperial times, Saturnalia was shortened to five days.<8>


Natalis Solis Invicti
Main article: Sol Invictus

Alleged representation of Christ in the form of the sun-god Helios or Sol Invictus riding in his chariot. Third century mosaic of the Vatican grottoes under St. Peter's Basilica, on the ceiling of the tomb of the Julii.The Romans held a festival on December 25 called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, "the birthday of the unconquered sun." The use of the title Sol Invictus allowed several solar deities to be worshipped collectively, including Elah-Gabal, a Syrian sun god; Sol, the god of Emperor Aurelian (AD 270–274); and Mithras, a soldiers' god of Persian origin.<9> Emperor Elagabalus (218–222) introduced the festival, and it reached the height of its popularity under Aurelian, who promoted it as an empire-wide holiday.<10>

December 25 was also considered to be the date of the winter solstice, which the Romans called bruma.<6> It was therefore the day the Sun proved itself to be "unconquered" despite the shortening of daylight hours. (When Julius Caesar introduced the Julian Calendar in 45 BC, December 25 was approximately the date of the solstice. In modern times, the solstice falls on December 21 or 22.) The Sol Invictus festival has a "strong claim on the responsibility" for the date of Christmas, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.<1> Several early Christian writers connected the rebirth of the sun to the birth of Jesus<11> "O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born . . . Christ should be born," Cyprian wrote.<1>

<snip>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas


The real irony? We should celebrate the message of Jesus EVERYDAY, not just on one day when the message has been changed to 'gimme gimme gimme'.

edit: forgot link