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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
 Posted - 11/29/2008 : 20:20:16
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Seriously, I always considered the whole idea of the war on Christmas to be another example of the paranoid persecution complex of the religious right.
However, in the past week, we have started to be hit over the head by the consumerist brainwashing machine and I still have to notice a single mention of Christmas.
It is funny, the war on Christmas, to me, seem to have been won by people that never realized they were fighting it...
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 11/29/2008 : 20:56:37 [Permalink]
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Oh, damn. From the title, I thought this was going to be a poll. I would have voted "war."
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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DtheB
New Member
USA
22 Posts |
Posted - 11/30/2008 : 01:15:28 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by HalfMooner
Oh, damn. From the title, I thought this was going to be a poll. I would have voted "war."
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Oh man! And here I brought my pitchfork and pistol for nothing  |
The misuse of a tool does not negate its existence. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 11/30/2008 : 04:27:36 [Permalink]
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There is indeed a war on Christmas, a vicious one. We've just seen a skirmish at a Wal-Mart in Long Island, NY as a mob rushed to seize whatever they could get their hands on, killing an innocent, nearly killing a pregnant lady and causing her to miscarry, and destroying all in their path including any semblance of their own decency and indeed, their humanity. This practice is commonplace during Yuletide and a far cry from the original meaning of the celebration, which had nothing to do with some insane rabbi rabble-rousing about in the Middle East (it has been my observation that people who claim to be the son of God have either gone far 'round the bend or are trying to rip you off, and quite possibly both).
The Yule Season, always during the Winter Solstice, has, since the dawn of civilization and before, been celebrated world wide by almost every culture. And churchs and kings have tried to adapt it to their own benefit, the latest being Christianity claiming it to be the date of birth of the afore-mentioned nut-case. Scholarly thought has it that said nut-case was probably born in Summer, but nobody is willing to nail it down with a date except the Christians -- and really, nobody much cares beyond getting to Wal-Mart early on Foul Friday, and exchanging their money for dubious goods at the speed of light.
Yule celebrations at the winter solstice predate Christianity. Yule is a feast celebrated by sacrifice on mid winter night 12 January, according to Norwegian historian Olav Bø. [7] There are many references to Yule in the Icelandic sagas but few accounts of how Yule was celebrated beyond the fact it was a time for feasting. According to Adam of Bremen, Swedish kings sacrificed male slaves every ninth year during the Yule sacrifices at the Temple at Uppsala. 'Yule-Joy' with dancing continued through the Middle Ages in Iceland but was frowned upon after the Reformation. The ritual of slaughtering a boar on Yule survives in the modern tradition of the Christmas ham and the Boar's Head Carol.
On Yule Eve the best boar in the herd was brought into the hall where the assembled company laid their hands upon the animal and made their unbreakable oaths. Heard by the boar these oaths were thought to go straight to the ears of Freyr himself. Once the oaths had been sworn the boar was sacrificed in the name of Freyr and the feast of boar flesh began. The most commonly recognised remnant of the sacred boar traditions once common at Yule has to be the serving of the boar's head at later Christmas feasts.
According to the medieval English writer the Venerable Bede, Christian missionaries sent to proselytize among the Germanic peoples of northern Europe were instructed to superimpose Christian themes upon existing local pagan holidays, to ease the conversion of the people to Christianity by allowing them to retain their traditional celebrations. Thus, Christmas was created by associating stories of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure of Christianity, with the existing pagan Yule celebrations, similar to the formation of Halloween and All Saint's Day via Christianization of existing pagan traditions.
The confraternities of artisans of the ninth century, which developed into the medieval guilds, were denounced by Catholic clergy for their "conjurations" when they swore to support one another in coming adversity and in business ventures. The occasions were annual banquets on December 26,
"feast day of the pagan god Jul, when it was possible to couple with the spirits of the dead and with demons that returned to the surface of the earth... Many clerics denounced these conjurations as being not only a threat to public order but also, more serious in their eyes, satanic and immoral. Hincmar, in 858, sought in vain to Christianize them."[9] |
In short, Christmas ain't what it used to be and yet, has changed scarcely at all.
God rest ye merry merchants, may ye make the Yuletide pay... ~~ Tom Leherer
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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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| Edited by - filthy on 11/30/2008 04:46:47 |
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Merry hollidays or the war on Christmas!
