Christians and Christmas

Oliver

Penultimate Amazing
Oliver
Joined
Aug 12, 2006
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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
 
Well this guys sums it up nicely!
http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/sns-200912181859tmstuemitchctntm-a20091220dec20,0,1989015.story

You can blame Ralph Waldo Emerson for the brazen foolishness of the elite. He preached here at the First Church of Cambridge, a Unitarian outfit (where I discovered that "Silent Night" has been cleverly rewritten to make it more about silence and night and not so much about God), and Emerson tossed off little bon mots that have been leading people astray ever since. "To be great is to be misunderstood," for example. This tiny gem of self-pity has given license to a million arrogant and unlovable people to imagine that their unpopularity somehow was proof of their greatness.

And all his hoo-ha about listening to the voice within and don't follow the path, make your own path and leave a trail and so forth, encouraged people who might've been excellent janitors to become bold and innovative economists who run a wealthy university into the ditch.

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite "Silent Night." If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.
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Oliver said:
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
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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.
 
Oliver said:
So being a Christian myself
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Riiiiiiiiiiight.
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.
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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. But it need not be all drudgery ...
Here are two satires on that topic:

Tom Lehrer's A Christmas Carol

"Christmas Time is here by Golly ..." http://www.tsrocks.com/t/tom_lehrer_texts/a_christmas_carol.html

Also Green Christmas, by Stan Freberg

SCROOGE AND CHORUS:
Christmas comes but once a year,
So you better cash in,
While the spirit lingers,
It's slipping through your fingers,
Boy! Don't you realize
Christmas can be such a
Monetary joy!

www.wepsite.de/Freberg,%20GREEN%20CHRI$TMA$.htm
 
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CurtC said:
I'm not a Christian, but I can say that Jesus's birthday was not traditionally an important Christian holiday.
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You might want to give some context, or time frame, to that comment. From my reading, the first two centuries of Christian practice focused on Easter, and such authorities as Origen considered celebrating the birthday of God as a pointless imitation of birthday celebrations of mortal Kings, and such. Over time, that changed. Christ's Mass was observed and celebrated variously all over Europe. It seems that the 18th and 19th centuries laid the framework for what has become the current Christmas habits in "the West."
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.
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Hollow? Not hardly. The various celebrations of the Advent season (which I first learned of as a boy in Germany) had the point of acknowledging and celebrating the coming of Christ. That arrival was indeed a big deal, else Easter would not have happened. ;)

DR
 
Oliver said:
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
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I don't have a problem with gays. I just assume that if God made them that way, he did it for a reason. I don't have a problem with abortion, either. It's not great that it's used as birth control, but it's still better that women have control over their own bodies, destiny, and health. Socialism? Not particularly worried about that, either. Especially not in the US...:rolleyes:

I'm well aware of the colorful history of Christmas, it's blend of Pagan elements, and the commercial aspect. I'm also aware of the historical connection to what were essentially street riots and chaos in addition to the attempts to ban it :rolleyes: by certain groups in the UK and the Victorian influence on the whole matter....etc...etc...etc...

All that said, as a Christian, the thing about Christmas to like is the spirit of charity, peace, love, family that can **sometimes** be squeezed out of the rest of the insanity.

As for the commercial crap and kitsch... yeah, that annoys the heck out of me. But, doesn't it everyone? I mean, who DOESN'T get tired of constantly being instructed by the media to go buy more plastic crap you can't afford???
 
From my reading of history, the religious aspect of religious festivals has never been the big draw. A lot of religious festivals have fun stuff to do, like have big meals or lots of candy or special wine, and, oh yeah, there's some religious significance to it. Easter is every bit as much about marshmallow peeps as it is the resurrection.

And as best I can tell, it has been like that for a long time. As I recall, Pope Gregory, back in the early Christian era, (3rd century?) even told Christian evangelists that it was ok to use the pagan festival trappings, but repurpose them for Christianity, because the people were more attached to the trappings than to the religious elements. That's how we got evergreen trees inside our houses at the Winter Solstice Christmas.
 
Oliver said:
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
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Maybe they're finally getting the message.;) Christmas as a religious celebration is an archaic concept in our materialistic world today, as outdated as riding donkeys and sowing wheat by hand. It might have been natural in the past to treat it as a religious event when religion played a big role in people's lives, but we have little in common with those times. We're an affluent, materialistic society so we celebrate the season with consumerism.

Anyone who complains about commercialism only at Christmas and not any other time of the year is being a bit of a hypocrite, and that goes for everyone. Christians and atheists can differ on philosophical and social matters, but we're all equal partners in consumerism. You could say consumerism is The Great Unifier.:)
 
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.
 
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It was the Roman who converted to Christianity after he saw the cross in the sky that did it. I'm sorry, but I can't remember his name at the moment.
 
Hipatis Hopitis Eastern's On Its Way!

Give it 2000 years Dec. 25th will be officially be Santamas or Annual Gift Day and Xtians will still be complaining about "their" holiday being co-opted (Jesus wasn't born in the winter). To add insult to injury the Easter Bunny will completely overshadow Christ after the candy conglomerates successfully sue the Church for rights to the holiday. "This Easter is brought to you by Hershey"!

By the year 3000 the Trekkies and Trekkers will have resolved their differences by creating a religion. After this epiphany they'll proceed to conquer all inferior religions bringing them under the umbrella of the Federated Church of Trek. In the Church of Trek bible (or log) Lt. Jesus is a red shirt that beams down to a hostile planet only to be killed by an M-113 salt sucker that "resurrects" Lt. Jesus through shape shifting. Luckily Captain God isn't fooled and all is made right after two commercial breaks. Now that's religion!
 
What I find interesting is to note how much of the current fuss over the "war on Christmas" is Christians complaining, effectively, that Christmas isn't being commercialized ENOUGH. They want private businesses to attract you with Jesus and Christmas talk MORE and will get angry if they don't.
 
Red3 said:
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.
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There was a good show on the History channel last week.. I've tried hard to remember the name, but cannot find any info on it. It was on the premise of Jesus and Christianity having early competition, before Rome adopted it as the official religion.

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.

The program went on to show that in the couple of hundred years between the death of Christ, and it's official adopting by Rome, a number of these other "pagan" belief systems were rolled up into Christianity as a means of making it more palatable to those who still celebrated those beliefs. And they used this guy as an example, suggesting that the entire idea of the Virgin Mary, and December 25th, were lifted completely from this other mans story.
 
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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 said:
I have never met any Christians who complain about the commercialisation of Christmas.
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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.
 
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