I say MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! You got a problem with that?

[Foxfyre]

The OP (minus my Jewish friend's joke)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Religious demographics were almost 100% Christian when America was founded.
Christmas was established as a Christian Holiday.
76% or more of Americans list some form of Christianity as their religious faith.
America has welcomed and accepted people of many other religious faiths but these still make up a relatively small percentage of the population.
In one way or another, Christmas is observed by almost 100% of the U.S. population either as a religious holiday or as a secular holiday.
Christmas, as Americans have observed it, is largely an American cultural tradition.

Most of my non-Christian friends celebrate Christmas as enthusiastically as the Christians and ad their own traditions to it.

The point, is why should it offend ANYBODY to celebrate Christmas as Christmas in churches, in the community, in the schools, and in our homes? If you don't believe in Jesus, there is still Santa Claus and the Grinch. For more than 170 years, American schools enjoyed Christmas plays, Christmas concerts, decorated classrooms, put up a Christmas tree, and enjoyed all the great traditional music, religious and non religious, of the season. Somehow none of the Buddhist or Jewish or Hindu or Atheist kids were corrupted or left out in the least during all this time and most participated and had a ball. It was non coercive, a joy to participate in whether or not somebody was religious, and the high point of the year for many communities.

When there were kids of other faiths in our groups, we learned about and celebrated their religious festivals with them, sang their songs, and learned their traditions too. They didn't demand that Christmas accommodate their beliefs and we Christians didn't demand that they accommodate ours.

Why can't we still do that? Who or why is Christmas being made a derogatory term that 'might be' offensive to somebody and therefore should be avoided or put in the back someplace? What is it to you Atheists, anti-religious, anti-Christian, or others that finds Christmas such a threat? Why is that creche in the public square so offensive to you?

And you Christians and others who love Christmas? Don't you miss the freedom to celebrate Christmas that we once had?

Merry Christmas everybody!!!!! I want to celebrate it!

 

[syrenn]

The OP (minus my Jewish friend's joke)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Religious demographics were almost 100% Christian when America was founded.
Christmas was established as a Christian Holiday.
76% or more of Americans list some form of Christianity as their religious faith.
America has welcomed and accepted people of many other religious faiths but these still make up a relatively small percentage of the population.
In one way or another, Christmas is observed by almost 100% of the U.S. population either as a religious holiday or as a secular holiday.
Christmas, as Americans have observed it, is largely an American cultural tradition.

Most of my non-Christian friends celebrate Christmas as enthusiastically as the Christians and ad their own traditions to it.

The point, is why should it offend ANYBODY to celebrate Christmas as Christmas in churches, in the community, in the schools, and in our homes? If you don't believe in Jesus, there is still Santa Claus and the Grinch. For more than 170 years, American schools enjoyed Christmas plays, Christmas concerts, decorated classrooms, put up a Christmas tree, and enjoyed all the great traditional music, religious and non religious, of the season. Somehow none of the Buddhist or Jewish or Hindu or Atheist kids were corrupted or left out in the least during all this time and most participated and had a ball. It was non coercive, a joy to participate in whether or not somebody was religious, and the high point of the year for many communities.

When there were kids of other faiths in our groups, we learned about and celebrated their religious festivals with them, sang their songs, and learned their traditions too. They didn't demand that Christmas accommodate their beliefs and we Christians didn't demand that they accommodate ours.

Why can't we still do that? Who or why is Christmas being made a derogatory term that 'might be' offensive to somebody and therefore should be avoided or put in the back someplace? What is it to you Atheists, anti-religious, anti-Christian, or others that finds Christmas such a threat? Why is that creche in the public square so offensive to you?

And you Christians and others who love Christmas? Don't you miss the freedom to celebrate Christmas that we once had?

Merry Christmas everybody!!!!! I want to celebrate it!

Celebrating the christmas holiday at home is one thing...

celebrating the christmas holiday in public schools is a different thing.

 

[geauxtohell]

Why can't we still do that? Who or why is Christmas being made a derogatory term that 'might be' offensive to somebody and therefore should be avoided or put in the back someplace? What is it to you Atheists, anti-religious, anti-Christian, or others that finds Christmas such a threat? Why is that creche in the public square so offensive to you?

And you Christians and others who love Christmas? Don't you miss the freedom to celebrate Christmas that we once had?

Merry Christmas everybody!!!!! I want to celebrate it!

This post, in no way, has anything to do with the "War On Christmas".

Also:

"Ignore the man behind the curtain.........."

 

[CMike]

Happy Chanukah.

 

[CMike]

Try reading what I have written, including re Jewish families. Already answered.

Christmas is not a Jewish holiday. I have no problem whatsoever with Jewish people celebrating Hannukah or Yom Kippor or whatever they wish to celebrate. I am not the least offended by Jewish greetings nor Jewish customs nor Jewish imagery and symbols and in fact find them charming.

I'm not asking if you're offended by Hanukkah. I'm telling you to talk to some Jewish families and see if they want their kids to be saturated in a month of Christian religious traditions at school.

I don't.

 

[CMike]

I would have a big issue with trying to force my children to participate in worshipping your god.

 

[Foxfyre]

I'm not biting guys. There is nothing in the OP nor in anything I have posted on this thread or anywhere else or in anything any of the other pro-Christmas people have posted that suggests that anybody should be asked or required to worship anything. That is not the thesis of this thread and you're off topic trying to push it in that direction.

 

[Jroc]

Celebrating the christmas holiday at home is one thing...

celebrating the christmas holiday in public schools is a different thing.

Umm..I'm going to have disagree with you and my friend Ropey. I see nothing wrong with Christmas traditions in schools, as they are American traditions. It isn't about religion, unless you are a Christian. I remember in Jr high school I played trumpet in the CHRISTMAS concert, with my Jewish grandparents in the sitting in the front row, they loved it

 

[SAT2]

I'm not biting guys. There is nothing in the OP nor in anything I have posted on this thread or anywhere else or in anything any of the other pro-Christmas people have posted that suggests that anybody should be asked or required to worship anything. That is not the thesis of this thread and you're off topic trying to push it in that direction.

You see it all as neutral, but trees, and Santa, and reindeer, all are part of how we celebrate a Christian holiday.

 

[Ravi]

Happy Chanukah.

Happy Ramadan!

 

[Ravi]

Santa is the reason for the season.

Anyone that disagrees hates the free market.

 

[zzzz]

Some factoids about the beginning of Christmas.

A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

F. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”[3] Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4] However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

G. Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”[5]

H. As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.”[6] On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

The Origin of Santa Claus

a. Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.

b. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil”[11] who sentenced Jesus to death.

c. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.

d. The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.

e. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.

f. In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

g. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…” Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.

h. The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.

i. In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.

Origin of Christmas | The Real Story of Christmas | How it Began
l]

 

[Ravi]

btw, Foxfyre, I negged you because you're acting like a stupid, hateful ***** and I am a Christian.

And Jesus really does want you to go **** yourself.

It must be sad to be you.

 

[Sunshine]

Try reading what I have written, including re Jewish families. Already answered.

Christmas is not a Jewish holiday. I have no problem whatsoever with Jewish people celebrating Hannukah or Yom Kippor or whatever they wish to celebrate. I am not the least offended by Jewish greetings nor Jewish customs nor Jewish imagery and symbols and in fact find them charming.

I'm not asking if you're offended by Hanukkah. I'm telling you to talk to some Jewish families and see if they want their kids to be saturated in a month of Christian religious traditions at school.

The ones in my hometown who own the stores don't seem to mind.

 

[Sunshine]

I think our GNP would mourn Christmas if were to be pushed underground which is what it seems like a lot of folks want these days. Of course, I don't hear anyone objecting to having the day off. Maybe they should do that so they could show how they stand by their convictions!

 

[Sunshine]

Some factoids about the beginning of Christmas.

A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

F. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”[3] Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4] However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

G. Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”[5]

H. As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.”[6] On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

The Origin of Santa Claus

a. Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.

b. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil”[11] who sentenced Jesus to death.

c. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.

d. The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.

e. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.

f. In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

g. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…” Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.

h. The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.

i. In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.

Origin of Christmas | The Real Story of Christmas | How it Began
l]

Nobody cares.

 

[strollingbones]

i work with people of all faiths....from hard core christians to fellow pagans.....we just try to remember what the season is about for all of us...it takes some give and take....on the 22nd i will come in to some handmade solstice cards...i wish everyone a happy winter solstice...on the 22nd and then switch to merry christmas and we even do the festivus ....okay we are just a party bunch....but there are no ill feelings over who does what...and we all enjoy the grumpy jw's lol....

every department at work has christmas decorations.....but ours.....i ask for them each year.....and get a grimace from the jw grinch i work for....and we cant fool him with the 'winter party'...he still wont participate...says it sets a bad example for his kids...

 

[Sunshine]

Bottom line, nobody knows when Christ was born. All the lights and partying for every culture is more about getting through the long dark nights of winter than they are about anything else. If we didn't already have Christmas, we would have to invent it. All my life, the day after Christmas, I would look out the window and think, "Ok, time for spring." Now with a little global warming, I almost get my wish. I know that by mid January I can tell the days are getting a bit longer and the feeling that all I do is sleep and work will soon give way to beautiful flowers and long soft summer days. Christmas is a survival technique, as are most of the winter celebrations.

 

[Foxfyre]

You know Ravi, I don't really care why anybody negs me. I do the best I can here like most people do, and if that offends you, well I'm sorry about that, but neg repping somebody for expressing a perfectly reasonable and civil opinion is your problem and not mine. So oh well. Into every life there is likely to be some neg rep.

Anyhow, thanks to all of you who do have a clue and do know what this thread is about. I honestly don't CARE how anybody else celebrates the season or what they are celebrating when they celebrate. If it is meaningful to them and it makes them happy or whatever their reasons, power to them and I'll put it all on the line for their right to do that.

I just want to preserve what for me is an important part of uniquely American culture and that is how we celebrate Christmas. For the shop keepers who need it to make their annual profit to the charitable organizations who capitalize on extra good cheer to collect for the needy to the school children who are excited beyond belief in anticipation of Santa Claus coming to the lights and decorations and the glorious music, both religious and secular, to special worship services and other observances--it is all part of our American heritage. It should be celebrated in the neighborhoods, in the city streets, in the village square, in the schools, and everywhere. It doesn't hurt anybody. It won't turn pagans into Christians. And the widely eclectic concept called Christmas Spirit makes most people feel better, at least for a little while.

I don't want to dilute that as a sacrifice to the great god of political correctness.

 

[SAT2]

Our schools are secular. Sorry.