Between the stroke-induced brain damage and the religion-induced brain damage, Sorbo is pretty much at the point where we should wrap him, put in a bow and throw him in the nearest dumpster.
Because Christmas is as much about Christianity as my rear end. It’s a nice festivity that comes from old customs, and nobody has a problem with keeping the nicer parts of culture and customs while filtering out the crappy parts.
I am (s)lightly joking. I’m referring to this passage which does seem to describe Christmas trees. Although if you’re actually doing a deep theological study you can make a good argument for how it’s referring to a specific form of idolatry — but it is amusingly close!
Jeremiah 10 NIV
1 Hear what the LORD says to you, O house of Israel. 2 This is what the LORD says: “Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the sky, though the nations are terrified by them. 3 For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. 4 They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter.
One of the main reasons to believe that the birth date of Jesus is not reliable is because we have historical records of when there were censuses, and they tended to not to be in the winter months for fairly obvious practical reasons. There is no record of one occurring in December or anywhere near that time around the supposed date of his birth, so how could Jesus have been born on the way to a census if there wasn’t one in December?
The only option is that the date of the birth is out by about 10 years (there was a census in December 10 years earlier) or the month of his birth is out by about 6 months. Which of those two options we don’t know but we definitely know he wasn’t and couldn’t be born at the date that the bible says. The reason people go for the summer birth hypothesis is it’s easier to understand how the date could have been moved six months a lot less easy to understand how people could have thought he was 10 years younger than he actually was.
The story of the census appears in the gospel of Luke, which was written around 100 CE and edited for a while afterwards.
It places Jesus’ birth during the census of Quirinius, which happened in 6 CE.
That’s flatly contradicted by the earlier gospel of Matthew, which has Jesus being born during the time of Herod the great who died in 1CE.
There’s no historical evidence that Roman censuses required people to go to the town they were born in; it’d be such a big disruption that it seems fairly implausible. It’s more likely that the story about the census was made up by early Christians who were trying to edit details of the story to make Jesus fulfill more prophecies.
I’m french and I have always been told that our Gaullish ancestors had festivities going on at that date already and the roman empire made sure to destroy our culture and traditions by replacing our celebrations. They also built churches on the exact same spots as our previous cult places. Like, they even built a new city (Tours) from scratch to make Amboise become irrelevant. Christmas was part of the violence inflicted to our ancestors
One (contested) theory is that the date of Christmas is based on a roman celebration, Sol Invictus.
Of course it’s highly likely winter solstice was important for other cultures as well, and we do have some neolithic evidence (Stonehenge, Goseck, etc), it’s impossible to say who did what where when, and how important it was, since all written evidence from those areas is from way after Christianisation.
Also, unless you can actually trace your ancestry back more then 2000 years (which I kinda doubt), it’s not „your“ culture and traditions. Most likely, you wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the Romans.
I agree. IMO celebrating the shell of a religious holiday without actually being religious is pathetic. I’m an atheist - in this moment I am euphoric, or maybe I’m sad because abandoning religion has cut me off from the culture of my ancestors. But at least I’m not pretending that I have something which I actually don’t.
That reminds me… In the Soviet Union, loyal communists didn’t celebrate religious holidays but Santa Claus, gift giving, and decorating Christmas trees (they weren’t called that) were all moved over to New Year’s instead. Also Santa Claus was assisted by his good-looking granddaughter.
Atheists celebrate holidays because the actual thing real people celebrate is never, and really was never, about religion.
Thats why christians were able to subsume pagan traditions, because the traditions of gathering together, eating good food, and enjoying each others company was the real reason for the season.
If the worship mattered more than the communal celebration for the sake of community, christians would never have allowed pagan traditions into the holiday.
The first references we have to Christmas trees are in 16th century Germany. They probably didn’t come directly from any pagan traditions seeing as Germany had been Christian for multiple centuries at that point.
I’ll do you one better: Why is Easter a fertility celebration? None of the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection directly tie it to fertility. These became popular as Christians became exposed to cultures that had spring fertility festivals.
The religious celebration of Christmas includes Advent wreaths, church services, and traditionalist music (Joy to the World, Silent Night, etc.) Everything else is the secular celebration.
Lol it’s so deeply ingrained right in front of everyone’s nose. Magic Santa, magic reindeer, magic elves and that’s just the stuff before propaganda like Rudolph and Frosty came around.
God forbid I get a Harry Potter book on Christmas and being magical thinking into this mess.
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