Christians and Christmas

[Fizzer]

I'm not a Christian, but I can say that Jesus's birthday was not traditionally an important Christian holiday.

Easter is the big Christian holiday. Christmas was a season of revelry around the solstice, which got co-opted by the Christians, so if they complain that the "meaning" of Christmas gets lost in the other stuff, that rings hollow.

And of course Easter traditions (including the name) are just as pagan (or more-so) than Christmas traditions.

 

[kerikiwi]

So being a Christian myself [at least officially "on paper"], what is your stance about all the commercial background of Christmas and the meaning of it?

Why does this ungrammatical sentence structure annoy me so much?

 

[kerikiwi]

I'm not a Christian, but I can say that Jesus's birthday was not traditionally an important Christian holiday.

Easter is the big Christian holiday. Christmas was a season of revelry around the solstice, which got co-opted by the Christians, so if they complain that the "meaning" of Christmas gets lost in the other stuff, that rings hollow.

Easter was also stolen by the christians.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

They talked about a number of other "messiahs" in the show. There was one who had a goofy name that I just can't remember. But the details of his life were extremely similar to Jesus. He had a virgin mother, and was born on December 25th. It was considered a "pagan" religion.

Take your pick:

Zoroaster
Mithras
Attis
Heracles
Dionysus
Tammuz
Adonis
Hermes
Krishna
Attis
Siddhartha Gautama
Horus
Prometheus

 

[Whiplash]

Oh, I think it was Mithras. Thank you.

 

[justcharlie09]

Hmm... I'll have to say that I've never met any Christians who totally ignore the commercial aspect or who don't exchange presents, or who celebrate a purely spiritual day, though I'm sure there are some.

But I've always interpreted "Jesus is the reason for the season," "put Christ back into Christmas," and similar popular slogans, to imply that Christmas is generally being celebrated wrong, i.e. too commercially, with too much emphasis on greed, gift giving, etc.

Trivia fact: the LDS church (Mormons) generally believe that Christ was born April 6 (scroll down to the second question at the link) but they celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 because everybody else does.

Never met any Jehovah's Witnesses, then, I suppose?



I could never be a JW...they're really just no fun. Part of the joy of being anything with a spiritual bent (be it UU or RC or Jewish or anything else) is the celebration, myth, and ritual. My husband's mother was before going all New Age Self Help Nut...apparently it was a pretty depressing experience.

Although he did say it was entertaining when he put up some ill-fated Halloween decor one year and the nut decided to have the place "exorcised".

 

[fuelair]

So being a Christian myself [at least officially "on paper"], what is your stance about all the commercial background of Christmas and the meaning of it?

In other words: While I see a lot of American Christians complaining about things like Gays, Abortion etc, I didn't sense a big controversy about the commercial aspect of Jesus's birth yet.

So what's wrong with you Christian people, are you more concerned about abortions, gays and socialism than the fact that Christmas day turned into a "Buy our stuff and **** that guy's birthday"-fest? :"p

Oliver, you may remember I have mentioned before that therer are large holes in your knowledge of the details of how things fuction (at least) in the US (re: the notes two years or so ago that online sampling of US newspapers would be a really good idea for you to do). Still goes - the complaints about the commercialism of Christmas have been going on since before the 1900's and were common and clear to me by the early 1960s. Still are.
There is no gigantic push about it because it is such an old crassness the religious are mostly used to it. Occasionally somone wil get a nettled rump over it (the 'War on Christmas" being a sublimely humorous vision of that) but that's about as far as it goes anymore.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Easter was also stolen by the christians.

Huh?

Could you elaborate on that please?

Easter celebrants could point back to a reasonable time frame, before we all got standardized calendars, that was based on the old Passover formula since the Passion was considered to have occurred during the Passover week. This is part of the explanation of the formula for determining Easter each year:

First Sunday after the First Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox.

I still have to work hard to get the Greek Easter right (my brother is now a practicing Greek Orthodox since he married into it). The formulae is typically a week different from "western" Easter.

DR

 

[kerikiwi]

Huh?

Could you elaborate on that please?

Easter celebrants could point back to a reasonable time frame, before we all got standardized calendars, that was based on the old Passover formula since the Passion was considered to have occurred during the Passover week. This is part of the explanation of the formula for determining Easter each year:

First Sunday after the First Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox.

I still have to work hard to get the Greek Easter right (my brother is now a practicing Greek Orthodox since he married into it). The formulae is typically a week different from "western" Easter.

DR

Easter started long before christianity. Eostre, the mother goddess of the Saxons. Easter was originally a celebration of spring and is an apt symbolism for the rebirth/resurrection of jesus.
really, the christians stole it and made it their own.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Easter started long before christianity. Eostre, the mother goddess of the Saxons. Easter was originally a celebration of spring and is an apt symbolism for the rebirth/resurrection of jesus.
really, the christians stole it and made it their own.

What?
Keri, I don't think you have that right. A few bits from an easy, if not perfectly authoritative source, wikipedia.

Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover not only for much of its symbolism but also for its position in the calendar

The ecclesiastical historian Socrates Scholasticus (b. 380) attributes the observance of Easter by the church to the perpetuation of its custom, "just as many other customs have been established ...

Perhaps the earliest extant primary source referencing Easter is a mid-2nd century Paschal homily attributed to Melito of Sardis, which characterizes the celebration as a well-established one.

Easter was celebrated in the Eastern Med and the Levant well before Christianity encountered Saxons up in the Germanic and Britannic lands. IIRC, it was Charlemagne who converted the bulk of the Saxons to Christianity, in the eighth or ninth century.

Your reference to the Germanic/Saxon etymology, for a word, not a feast/holy day, is also pointed to somewhere around the eighth or ninth centuries.

Did European/Christians borrow a word that we now use? Sure.

Was the holy feast/celebration established well in advance of that linguistic adaptation? Yes. The Greek Christians didn't need no Saxons to show them how to celebrate their holy day.



DR

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

As a matter of fact, I have heard Christians complain about the commercialization of Christmas. Most of them were Roman Catholics who had emigrated from countries where Christmas is a religious holiday celebrated in very traditional ways, granted, and were confused by the mass shopping and the constant pimping of Santa Claus on everything from Coca Cola to Happy Meals.

 

[CurtC]

Didn't the Romans just make Jesus' birth date coincide with the winter solstice/Natalis Invicti? Same as his conception coincidently landed on or close to the Vernal Equinox?

Not just do the dates match, so do the themes; Vernal equinox was the time of fertility rites and Natalis Invicti means birth on the unconquered one.

I heard that a conception date around the vernal equinox was rationalized because that would make Jesus's existence some whole number of years, given that he died around the equinox. But that was after the Dec 25 date was pegged to celebrate his birthday.

 

[Darth Rotor]

I heard that a conception date around the vernal equinox was rationalized because that would make Jesus's existence some whole number of years, given that he died around the equinox. But that was after the Dec 25 date was pegged to celebrate his birthday.

Yep, that's one of the strands of the weave. I stopped trying to guess which one was most correct, since the non standardization of things in the early church (first three hundred years) led to people doing quite a bit differently. Mixed bag.

DR

 

[Hux]

Fox Noise seems quite exercised by this. O'Really, Ingraham et al berate the move towards commercialism every night.

Every year I used to think there was too much religion creeping into Xmas. When it comes down to it, when you are sweating on getting a PS3, you arent going to give a **** about Midnight Mass or the little Baby Jesus.

 

[gnome]

Fox Noise seems quite exercised by this. O'Really, Ingraham et al berate the move towards commercialism every night.

Until a store decides NOT to blather about Christmas to attract more buyers... then they berate the store anyway.

 

[themusicteacher]

Fox Noise seems quite exercised by this. O'Really, Ingraham et al berate the move towards commercialism every night.

Every year I used to think there was too much religion creeping into Xmas. When it comes down to it, when you are sweating on getting a PS3, you arent going to give a **** about Midnight Mass or the little Baby Jesus.

Those troglodytes at Faux couldn't give a rip about whether or not the holidays are commercialized or not. In fact, with all their blustering about "socialism" and whatnot they should be exhalting the rampant over-indulgence (a hallmark of American-style capitalism) of the holidays. What those @$$hats rail against is people saying "happy holidays" rather than "merry christmas" thereby creating phony outrage and manufacturing some sort of non-existant controversy.

 

[slyjoe]

Huh?

Could you elaborate on that please?

Easter celebrants could point back to a reasonable time frame, before we all got standardized calendars, that was based on the old Passover formula since the Passion was considered to have occurred during the Passover week. This is part of the explanation of the formula for determining Easter each year:

First Sunday after the First Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox.

I still have to work hard to get the Greek Easter right (my brother is now a practicing Greek Orthodox since he married into it). The formulae is typically a week different from "western" Easter.

And Mardi Gras is 46 days before this - which is way more important.

DR

Close. My understanding is that for church purposes the Vernal Equinox = March 21. Which it may or may not really be.

More importantly, for my purposes, 46 days before Easter is Mardi Gras.

 

[Hux]

Who really gives a toss? Its a few days off work, a chance to get smacked off your tits, maybe a few good presents and cake. Yes there is cake.

 

[Elizabeth I]

Riiiiiiiiiiight.

Then you are blind. You also don't live here. Criticisms on the commercial aspect of Christmas are an annual event, and I hear them yet again each year.

Yeah, Oliver has a bad habit of issuing these absolute pronouncements on any number of subjects with which he has only a passing acquaintance.

 

[Egg]

We celebrate the arrival of Santa Claus on the 25th December and before that stack presents to each other under the traditional tree. We stuff our selves with good food and have a great family celebration.

While Jesus plays no part in our life or our celebrations many Christians choose this time year to celebrate the notional birthday of Jesus. Most buy each other presents and lots of them also pretend that Santa brings some of them.

Obviously there will be commercialisation around Christmas. A fact of life is; when you have lots of people are looking to buy presents there will be lots of businesses looking to sell them.

I have never met any Christians who complain about the commercialisation of Christmas.

Lothian, meet Larry Norman

Santa Claus is coming and the kids are getting greedy
It's Christmas time
They know it's in the store because they've seen it on the TV
It's Christmas time
It used to be the birthday of the Man who saved our necks
It's Christmas time
Now it stands for Santa Claus they spell it with an X
It's Christmas time