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Storm
SFN Regular
USA
708 Posts |
 Posted - 12/13/2004 : 18:55:13
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So here we are the twelve days of Christmas. But what does that mean? When I was a little girl I once heard Rudolphs bells upon my roof, as I grew into my teens the Lutheran Christian Theology dominated my beliefs Jesus is the Reason for the Season. Now older and wiser I have learned that the tradition of Christmas has roots longer than that of Christians and Jesus. My family and I celebrate Yule like our Ancient Ancestors of the Nordic race. Although my Christian beliefs have not been completley forgotten. I wonder what all you celebrate in this time and what it means to you. When I listen to Handels Messiah it is like the divine speaking. Any Holiday comments?
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Storm |
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tw101356
Skeptic Friend
USA
333 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2004 : 18:58:30 [Permalink]
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I sacrifice worn out superstitions on the altar of reality until the sun returns. So far, knock naugahyde, it's worked.
- TW
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- TW
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2004 : 19:29:23 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Storm
So here we are the twelve days of Christmas. But what does that mean? When I was a little girl I once heard Rudolphs bells upon my roof, as I grew into my teens the Lutheran Christian Theology dominated my beliefs Jesus is the Reason for the Season. Now older and wiser I have learned that the tradition of Christmas has roots longer than that of Christians and Jesus. My family and I celebrate Yule like our Ancient Ancestors of the Nordic race. Although my Christian beliefs have not been completley forgotten. I wonder what all you celebrate in this time and what it means to you. When I listen to Handels Messiah it is like the divine speaking. Any Holiday comments?
Alas Storm, no more Rudolph. I shot him over the jack-light last year and we ate the last of him this past June. 
Me, I don't much celebrate, but my family does. I am the elder and my presence is required. We all get together and have good time playing music, eating and, in my case at least, drinking too much. Gifts are exchanged, and even my house 'possum gets a whole can of sardines. I guess that we all have pretty much of a secular good time.
Christmas, what ever one's befiefs might be, is simply a time to get together and like our ancestors, before commercialism turned Christmas into a great spasm of potlatch, enjoy the pleasures of family. The grandkids seem to take on a special glow during this time, even the older ones. I enjoy Christmas, although I hate the sugary carols that ooz fron every speaker in the land.
Agree on Handel's Messiah.
Comments? 'K, wishing that you and yours have the best of the season, as I do to all frequenting these boards. Even and perhaps especally those that I am at odds with.
Peace....
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Storm
SFN Regular
USA
708 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2004 : 19:53:21 [Permalink]
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Great post Filthy the Divine shines through!!! Peace to you tooo... |
Storm |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2004 : 01:42:21 [Permalink]
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I can't make sense of most of your posts Storm....
If you can't be bothered to use the tools of grammar, then I'm not sure I can be bothered to try and read your posts.
Please. minimal punctuation and the occasional paragraph break is all I'm asking for. It doesn't even have to be exactly correct. Just throw in the occasional comma and period. Try to include some minimal sentence structure.... subject and verb. Would go a LONG way toward making your posts readable.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Siberia
SFN Addict
Brazil
2322 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2004 : 04:11:29 [Permalink]
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I, for myself, enjoy Christmas very, very much.
My family consists exactly of my mother and I, now my older, only sister's got married, and my dog I love dearly. My father's long since vanished into thin air (fled, the coward; he was unable to deal with his daughter's illness), and the rest of the family I don't regard as family at all. I enjoy Christmas; the good food my mom always cooks (she's great at it, too!), the happy-go-lucky movies on the tv, the love. Motherly love - what else could I want I don't celebrate anything in particular, nor does she.
Agreed on Handel's Messiah, although I'm closer to Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. |
"Why are you afraid of something you're not even sure exists?"
- The Kovenant, Via Negativa
"People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs."
-- unknown
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2004 : 06:01:42 [Permalink]
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| "what ricky said" |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2004 : 07:47:12 [Permalink]
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| Christmas in our family usually consists of the common secular things, a Christmas tree, presents, Santa, a lot of food and a little bit of football. Most of my family does not go to church or only goes on Easter and Christmas. My wife and kids go on Christmas Eve and enjoy prayer time on Christmas. We try to separate the religious and secular traditions that go along with Christmas. Our family agreed two years ago we would only exchange gifts between our immediate family members and not get a gift for every person in the family. Grandkids seem to be the exception. Everybody likes to get gifts for the kids. This has worked well on alleviating stress on people and checkbooks and we have enjoyed being together more as a family. |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2004 : 09:53:28 [Permalink]
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Christmas Holiday = Christ Mass Holy Day, some folks seem to let presents cloud their vision on that issue. Oh and see the red states Santa thread on the link between Jesus and Santa, notably that they require faith in something you will never ever see, ever.
I suggest a critical thinking day for your children, set up various experiments for your kids and have a gift for each one. It may take them months to solve some of them but they will learn vital skills and hopefully thank you for it on inaguartion day. Damn thats a good idea, good thing I dont have any kids to do all that work for. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Storm
SFN Regular
USA
708 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2004 : 09:53:34 [Permalink]
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| What would you call it? Does anyone know the symbolism behind many of the things that we do at Christmas? i.e. The Christmas Tree |
Storm |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2004 : 09:56:34 [Permalink]
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| The pagan symbolism has been wholly absorbed by the christians, just as they have done in numerous other cases. Im still waiting for my christmas dradle set! |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Storm
SFN Regular
USA
708 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2004 : 10:17:54 [Permalink]
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| Just as many religions and rituals have been aborsbed and collected so too have the Christians absorbed the pagan religions. Chritmas being one of them. But what is Christmas and the symbolism even behind the birth of Jesus Christ? i.e. The Sun King |
Storm |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2004 : 10:34:44 [Permalink]
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| Well unlike BigPapa and Ricky I do enjoy Christmas. We have no religious beliefs but much of our extended family does (Grandparents, cousins ect...). So we "play along" with them and for us it's just a very fun time with family and the kids. I do have mixed feelings about the whole Santa affair with the children but I figure there just might be a good "road to skepticism" lesson in there for the kids as they get older and start to figure things out. I don't know. It really is a mixed bag for me. A little hypocrisy is ok I guess as long as you are fully aware of your reasons for doing it. After all I did get married....and in a Catholic Church for christ sake! Why, because of the In-Laws that's why. Family is very important to my Wife and I and NOT getting married in a Catholic Church was NOT an option. It would have driven a wedge between us and her folks, and that was not something I was willing to risk. Now....very slowly over the last decade, I have let my beliefs be known. Only because I knew that my relationship with them was strong enough to support it. Sometimes, you just need to fit in as well. We are pack animals, and my beliefs have already separated me enough from the crowd...so occasionally, I give in just to get along. |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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Storm
SFN Regular
USA
708 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2004 : 11:07:42 [Permalink]
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Here is some interesting info on Christmas? The Sun is the Reason for the Season. Mithra? Jesus? Same thing? What would Verlch think? Read from the Golden Bough:
If the Mithraic mysteries were indeed a Satanic copy of a divine original, we are driven to conclude that Christianity took a leaf out of the devil's book when it fixed the birth of the Saviour on the twenty-fifth of December; for there can be no doubt that the day in question was celebrated as the birthday of the Sun by the heathen before the Church, by an afterthought, arbitrarily transferred the Nativity of its Founder from the sixth of January to the twenty-fifth of December. From the calendar of Philocalus, which was drawn up at Rome about 354 A.D., we learn that the twenty-fifth of December was celebrated as the birthday of the Unconquered Sun by games in the circus. These games are mentioned by the Emperor Julian, who tells us that they were performed with great magnificence in honour of the Unconquered Sun immediately after the end of the Saturnalia in December. The motives which induced the ecclesiastical authorities to transfer the festival of Christmas from the sixth of January to the twenty-fifth of December are explained with great frankness by a Syrian scholiast on Bar Salibi. He says:
The reason why the fathers transferred the celebration of the sixth of January to the twenty-fifth of December was this. It was a custom of the heathen to celebrate on the same twenty-fifth of December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and festivals the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnized on that day and the festival of the Epiphany on the sixth of January. Accordingly, along with this custom, the practice has prevailed of kindling fires until the sixth.
The custom of holding a festival of the Sun on the twenty-fifth of December persisted in Syria among the pagans down at least to the first half of the sixth century, for a Syriac writer of that period, Thomas of Edessa, in a treatise on the Nativity of Christ, informs us that at the winter solstice "the heathen, the worshippers of the elements, to this day everywhere celebrate annually a great festival, for the reason that then the sun begins to conquer and to extend his kingdom." But the pious writer adds that, though the power of the Sun waxes from that day, it will afterwards wane again; whereas, "Holy Church celebrates the festival of the Nativity of Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, who begins to conquer error and Satan, and will never wane." This opposition between the natural Sun of the heathen and the metaphorical Sun of Righteousness of the Christians is a rhetorical commonplace of ecclesiastical writers, who make use of it particularly with reference to the Nativity. The pagan origin of Christmas is plainly hinted at, if not exactly admitted by St. Augustine in a sermon wherein he exorts his Christian brethren not to solemnize that day like the heathen on account of the sun, but on account of Him who made the sun. Similarly Leo the Great rebuked the pestilent belief of those who thought that Christmas was to be observed for the sake of the birth of the new sun, as it was called, and not for the sake of the Nativity of Christ.
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