Banning Christmas?

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no jews got the 7 day week from OT it took God 6 days for creation 7th day he rested creating the jewish 7 day week. Satan actually means advisary/enemy (hebrew) and the first time it was used was in the OT in the book of numbers and actually refers to God being an enemy of Balaam. This is before captivity in Babylon. The idea of satan being a goat-person goes back to OT days of Moses also before captivity.
Yes many things in our culture come from pagan ideas and some from christian the problem is forbidding christians from displaying anything during their holiday. To prevent other religions in america from displaying their's is hateful but to accept anything christian during christmas is also considered wrong... and if you think christmas started out pagan look to middle eastern or african history just a couple of hundred years after J'shua's birth it was being celebrated, but not exactly like we do now.

 

Well, the celebration of christmas is a fairly recent christian thing, if I am not mistaken it didnt really start until almost 1000 years after the birth of Jesus as a way to push out out the pagan midwinter feasts and have only been the big christian thing for merely a century or two. Easter has always been the biggest christian holiday and still is if you look at it from a purely religious perspective.

 

Yet easter is celebrated by non-christians also - especially the female choc-a-holics.

 

Christmas has many origins which I will detail below. It is safe to say that Christmas is definately not a Christian holiday so no offense can/should be taken.

. It is an appropriation by early Christians of a day on which the birth of several pagan gods, Osiris, Jupiter, and Plutus, or the ancient deified leader Nimrod, was celebrated.

2. It is an appropriation of the pagan Midwinter festivals, such as the Germanic Yule and the Roman festival of the birth of Unconquered Sun, celebrated on the day after the winter solstice, or the Roman festival of Saturnalia.

Santa Clause is just a horribly mispronounced version of the Dutch word Sinterklaas which means Saint Nicholas so maybe the holiday should be called 'Coke Day' (that should please all those PC extremists) which I will explain below:

Santa was born in march 1930, designed as the Christmas season mascot of coca cola. the whole fatman in red with black snowboots was a creation of a Jewish artist called Hoffman. How ironic.

 

The christmas tree is not christian. It came from Germany and is a recent addition to the Holidays. Everygreens as decoration date way back before christianity. Wasn't anything else in northern Europe to brighten up the winter. Smelled nice too.
Actually IMO the only people who should find 'Christmas' offensive are dedicated Christians.

 

Different variants of "Santa Claus" have existed since before 1930 but that was when the modern one was introduced. Here in the north we had "tomtar" which is best translated into goblins, elves or somesuch. Small humanoid creatures who lived in the farms and helped out if you kept them happy. The only thing you really had to do to keep these creatures happy was to put out a bowl of porridge on christmas eve for it to eat, in the anglican world I reckon the milk and cookie has replaced the porridge while here we eat the porridge ourselves instead. If you didnt keep the little goblin happy it would wreak havoc on your farm. The gifts were handed out by a man dressed as a goat just 100+ years ago hereabout and that creature wasnt the pleasant jolly being that Santa Claus is. This goat creature was based on Pan from the Greek mythology but with the entrance of christianity it got strains from the devil as well. All this is said from memory so I am sure there are plenty and plenty of mistakes here.

 

Christmas tree is neither pagan or christian so essentially you can use it for both...
if you go back to the original settlements of man decorating bushes and trees was always around including streamers or decorations hung around the houses (if you can call them that). People did stuff like this atleast from what I can find in history bookds around 3000bc. Just because europeans did this before christmas for other religions doesn't mean its pagan, because everybody did this in ancient times for religious and non religious joyous occassions. It was done because they decorated on limited technology and resources.

 

Slightly off topic, but to answer a previous question, the days of the week were originally named for the seven known celestial bodies in the solar system, in thier thought-to-be order of increasing distance to the earth. The sun was thought to be the closest (ergo Sunday was the first day) followed by the moon (ergo Monday was second). The names have been bastardized since then, and the only one that remains someone close to it's actual meaning is the last day of the week - Saturday - named after the furthest known celestial body, Saturn.

 

I'd rather see people enrich themselves with some more knowledge about several cultural happenings etc, then loosing them.
If you celebrate Christmas, then I'd be glad if you can tell me what it was and what it became.
Same for Chanuka, Easter, St.Nicholas-eve, St.Patricksday etc.

I love Easter (Pasen in Dutch), so I can tell you something about it if you like. But I have little to do with Haloween, and so I know little about it. There are thousands of people who celebrate Christmas, but have no idea what it is all about. I don't say that these people shouldn't celebrate Christmas. Not at all. Invite your friends and family, buy presents and have a good meal. Nothing wrong with it. But I'd like to ask these people to learn a bit more about what Christmas really is.

Perhaps when I learn a bit more about Chanuka, I'll celebrate this too with whoever wants to.

And about the days of the week: Everybody should know that. You learn that at school.

Edit:
Aldeth: The 7 days of the week are named after the sun and the moon and 5 German deities: Tyr, Wodan, Thor(or Donar), Frya and Satur.
But this also depends on where you live, I guess, since the southern european countries may have different names for their days then western europe. Mercurius is indeed a planet, just like saturnus. But these planets are named after gods, too.

"Oh, who am I trying to fool? I'm bored out of my skull"

[ January 04, 2005, 17:09: Message edited by: Master of Nuhn ]

 

Trying not to change the topic its terrible what happened to St Patricks day in the US, it makes me cringe with its tackiness. Most people don't know anything about him or even where he is buried.

Back on topic yes its great to learn the different aspects of Christmas, not just what coke came up with.

Joacqin I know that 'santas' appeared before 1930's, many cultures have their own versions. I just think its a shame that ancient holidays can become commercial shopping days.

 

Santa was pre-1930's, but generally decked out in Green. The jolly man in a red suit and white beard was the change Coca-cola made.

 

thats what I said earlier...

'Yule' is represented by a sunwheel (swastika) which is the symbol of the sun. Yule (Christmas after Christianity) is a feast for the sun. Germanic, Celtic and Ugric tribes thought that everything begins from darkness and Yule is celebrated on the darkest time of year, midwinter. It is a new beginning, morning of the world.

[ January 05, 2005, 10:30: Message edited by: Cesard ]

 

but you know this topic was created for the opinions of banning christmas, and I think we're talking about the USA. If not disregard.

I probably will anger a few people with this, but the problem is in the US they take all christian meaning out of christmas based on separation of church and state. This statement is not in the constitution it was coined by Thomas Jefferson to explain to people how the government could not establish its own religion (i explain religion later) by forcing people to worship god in any specific way like the catholics did in europe. If you read US constitution, speeches from founding fathers, how the Supreme court interpreted laws, and many historical documents of the founding fathers of the US... freedom of religion meant freedom of denomination. Christianity is the basis of the original US government, there was even a law that forbid saying "god dammit" by the Supreme court. It claimed that since the US constitution was 90% based on the Bible that saying anything against the God of the Bible is treason. So should we ban christmas based on todays interpretation... I don't know but why has it changed so much in the US?

 

Because quite a few people, albeit less in the US than many other places, have tossed off the superstitiouns of the past.

 

They are trying to not offend people by getting rid of the word Christmas, and in the process of doing so they are offending everyone else! It's maddening how f-ing dumb some people can get.