Kinda Sad?

[Eamonn]

I like Christmas.

It's nice that we have at least one time a year when we go out of our way to be nice to each other. - Not just our families but, just nice.

 

I'm at the stage of my life when I really don't need anything.

Chances are that if I need something I either go and buy it or I can't afford it and if I can't afford it then I don't expect or think that others will.

I'm not in any way anti gift giving.

I enjoy giving and receiving presents as much as anyone.

Still I can't help but think things are going a little too far.

 

Stores are out there to sell stuff and lure people in so that they will spend their money.

Still I like to think and hope that there's more to Christmas than buying stuff that people can't really afford, don't really need and just buy because it seems like a good deal a deal that's too good to pass up on.

I get and understand that things aren't cheap and people want stuff.

As a parent I suffered my way through buying video game platforms, each better and more entertaining than the last.

I paid through the nose when my son decided that only a Mac acceptable and Windows was seen as being for losers.

I don't see that every room in the house needs a 60" high definition TV.

 

I read somewhere that two people shot at each other over a parking spot at Wal mart.

Come on guys!

This isn't being nice, this isn't what Christmas is all about.

 

A co-worker was telling me that she has spent over $6.000 on Black Friday and can't wait till Monday to phone the credit union to have the limit on her credit cards raised.

She has two little girls, one 12 and one 9 years old. She doesn't want them to feel cheated.

I wonder if the $6,000 this year will become $10,000 next year? And where it all stops?

I wonder if it's worth her having to work all the available overtime away from her kids to prevent them feeling cheated?

Ea.

[Eagle732]

It all stops when you can't make the house payment or put food on the table.

[ghermanno]

Eamonn,

 

"This isn't being nice, this isn't what Christmas is all about."

 

Christmas, or more correctly Christ Mass, was a day spent in church for the Christians. The Pagans celebrated the birth of the Sun God that the Christians later used as the Son of God.

 

The celebration that we now have, is a conglomeration of religious myths and corporate greed. Each year we consumers add to the drive by demanding the most for the least. The reason Thanksgiving ws moved from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday of November was to give the shoppers an extra week for shopping.

 

As to peace on Earth & good will towards men, that should be an everyday item. Not an advertising phrase to use to sell corporate goods.

 

I still celebrate Yuletime and will give/exchange gifts with the kids/grandchildren but am trying to stop killing myself looking for gifts for the wife. I get her what she wants when I can afford it and she is lacking nothing that I know of. She complains of having too much stff and needs to get rid of some.

 

I wish you and ALL that read this, Good wishes (happiness, health, family,...) for you and your family throughout the years.

 

My $0.02

 

Rick

[NealOnWheels]

No, it is not kinda sad. It is sad.

[DeanRx]

"It all stops when you can't make the house payment or put food on the table"...

 

Na, it doesn't even stop then. We now have government programs to bail you out of your house payment and EBT / debit cards issued by the state so you can continue to buy groceries because you spent all your "disposable" income on the latest iPhone, tattoos, and cigarettes.

 

Its gotten so bad, we have members of both political parties that openly espouse that you are a bad American if you fail to continue to consume... because to spend money means you are helping stimulate the economy!

 

It used to be if you didn't have the money, you waited until you EARNED it to buy the thing you want. Then came store credit and credit cards, now you get it now... try to pay for it later. That has morphed into, already got it, its value has depriciated, I have yet to start paying on it and I can't afford to, so I default on the bank, and the bank goes to the government for a handout to cover that loss because they are "too big to fail"... all is forgiven and written off, so the lesson is never learned and the cycle begins anew.

 

That's pretty much where I see our economy and country headed at this very moment.

 

Not to politicize the comment, but much was made about Romney's 47% comment in the election. Well, it might not be 47% - but there IS a growing faction within the US that not only views the government's role as one to help you when you fall on hard times by no fault of your own, but also when an individual makes poor personal choices that place them in dire straights! Our current administration would have you believe that the majority of folks in the red in this country are there because of no fault of their own... the economy is to blame, and of course, their and the government's spending and borrowing habits had NO effect on the state of the economy! The lack of accountabilty at both the personal and regional / national governmental levels is staggering and very scary to me. I'm not a big history buff, but the fall of the Roman empire comes to mind when I look at the US and western society as a whole. Unabashed consumerism can only be sustained for so long, before that society fails. Are we at that point as a nation? I don't know. I know if we were Rome, we'd be expanding the empire and subjugating those we conquer (see Iraq / Afganistan / middle east in general) and exploiting their riches (i.e. oil) to sustain the need of the empire to consume. We're not even doing an effective job of that!

 

Eamonn - kudos to the mom in your OP, for at least being willing to work the OT to afford the overexpendature she is incurring. If, God forbid, she looses her job, she would no doubt be one of those in the red, "through no fault of their own..." looking for Uncle Sam to step up tot he plate and help he get out of the hole she's dug for herself and her family.

 

But at least her daughters will not have felt cheated... at least not until they reach working age and get their first job / paycheck and find the tax bracket they are in to attempt to pay down the debt their mother's generation bestowed upon them.

 

Its been going on in this country since the end of WWII. The greatest generation passed the debt to the flower children, they have passed it on to generation X, the gen x'ers will give it to the millinums... and so it goes. Maybe we just raise the debt ceiling, keep borrowing (assuming some country our there will still loan to us) and keep the status quo going? I don't know?

 

I have huge faith in this country and in my fellow man. However, one of my largest fears in life is that my children's(and more so my grandchildren's) generation will be virtually sold into endentured service to China in order to payback all the debt this country contimues to accumulate, with no plan or path to pay down. Eventually, those notes will come due... and the US is NOT too big to fail.

 

My grandfather, before he died, told me his generation's greatest fear was having to fight a war with China - because they would overwhelm and control us with shear numbers of people. Well, my fear is that China will take us over without firing a shot. They will just buy us out over time and get the last parts at the fire sale as the US goes out of business.

[AZMike]

"Christmas, or more correctly Christ Mass, was a day spent in church for the Christians. The Pagans celebrated the birth of the Sun God that the Christians later used as the Son of God."

 

Well, that part is historically inaccurate but I agree with the rest.

[moosetracker]

Why is it wrong AZMike..

 

Don't know if the Sun God moving to "Son of God" is accurate, but I also have been told from religion historians that December 25th is not the true birthdate of christ, it was a date for a Pagan holiday, along with many christmas traditions being from pagan celebration traditions.. When Christians attempted to spread Christianity to pagan communities they altered things to allow Pagan communities to feel comfortable..

 

But, here is a link giving 2 different ideas.. The first talking about the popular belief of the blending of pagan traditions, and an different belief that Christ was conceived on the same day of the year which he died, so therefore they put Christmas on a Date 9 months after conception..

 

http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp

 

Is this the one you believe, or do you have a different theory then that?

 

[CalicoPenn]

Sorry to burst some bubbles but "Black Friday" (known now in some circles are "Greed Thursday") is exactly what Christmas is all about in the United States. Most of the "traditions" that surround Christmas - whether it be Santa Claus, Christmas Trees, decorating the house, yule fires, feast days, and yes, even religious celebrations, were imported to the US from other cultures. We can argue all we want about how those foreign cultures were in turn influenced (or out right stole) from even earlier cultures (AZMike, you may not like it but most religious historians agree that the December 25th tradition of celebrating the "Son of God" comes from the Church (and at the time, there was only one "Church") re-purposing the northern celebrations of the "Sun God" to the "Son of God" in order to make converts of "pagans" that they knew they couldn't defeat with military force, as they had done with the southern tribes).

 

But the consumerism that's led to "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday"? That's a wholly United States invention - you can say its the US contribution to the culture of Christmas. Is it sad? Sure - but it must not be that unwelcome since the US contibution has been embraced by other countries as well.

 

Dean - I'm just not as worried about China "taking us over without firing a shot" - the same thing was said of Japan back in the 1980's when a Japanese firm bought Rockefeller Center in NYC. China is using the debt they hold to prop up their own economy - they don't want us to pay them back. If we did, it would drop their economy into a tailspin that would be far worse than what we've been going through for the past 6 years. By the way, China may be our largest foreign investor, but they only hold 8% of US Debt. Know who holds most of the US Debt? The United States of America. Some of that is private investors, but most of that is the government itself. Yes, the US Treasury is the single largest holder of US Debt. We're borrowing from ourselves for pensions, social security and other future obligations. But don't let folks get you to panicing about that - they love doing that because they know that Americans are way to lazy to dig deeper so they can get away with it. Every month, the United States gets a lot of money from companies and people for Social Security contributions. That money isn't used to pay current benefits - it's "invested" in treasury bonds that mature in about 35 years (yeah, all that panicky stuff about SS is only funded for 35 years? It's really SS has 35 years worth of investments that is constantly being refreshed - next year, we'll be funded for only, gasp, 35 years). The bonds SS bought 35 years ago and have now matured? Cashed in to pay current benefits. The biggest problem with our debt is not "entitlements" (know why they're called "entitlements"? Because you've paid for them in the past and you're entitled to the funds in the future). Again, stop listening to the clowns that treat you like sheep. The biggest problem we have is overspending on the military coupled with reduced revenue. Consider that about 1/3rd of our budget is "entitlements" - but they're paid for. Another 1/3rd is the military - and that includes more than the DOD - it includes intelligence, it includes things in the Dept. of Energy, in the Dept. of Interior, Department of State, and other cabinet departments. The other 1/3rd is everything else we do. Modest proposal: DO we really need the Marine Corps anymore? Isn't everything they do redundant to everything that the other branches do? Army can handle infantry - and we can train them to ride on boats. Air Force and Navy have plenty of pilots. The Navy and the Army have their own special forces groups (If the Marines are so "elite", why are we sending the Navy Seals in to ground missions?). I know it's tradition, but do we really think naval power is the end all and be all in our modern times? As for the 16 trillion of debt - one last point on that - the GAO estimates the value of US assets throughout the globe at approximately 2 quadrillion dollars. A Quadrillion is a Thousand Trillions. 16 Triilion against assets? Imagine going to a bankruptcy court with $100,000 in assets and debt of $100 - the court will laugh at you and possibly fine you for taking up their time. We aren't anywhere near bankruptcy.

 

 

[OldGreyEagle]

First, and only because Mike started it

 

Christmas is a contracted phrase, the compelte sentence is "Christ's Mass". The expression Good-Bye is a contracted phrase as well, it's from "May God be with you".

Related, Santa Claus is a contracted phrase from Saint Nicholas.

 

I always thought that the "Keep Christ in Christmas" crowd only had it half right. Unless you plan on attending Mass on Demcember 25th, the Phrase "Merry Chirstmas" rings a tad hollow. You can't base a media campaign on half a word/phrase ignoring the other half.

 

Then again, in our culture many times words become associated with meanings not originally intended.

 

AstroTurf is a brand name which is accepted generically for any artificial turf surface, there are several such examples, Brillo pads, BVD's, Chapstick, Dixie Cups and perhaps its time to accept Chistmas as another victim to proprietary eponymism

 

The exact date is not important. Easter, which actually is the most sacred Chirstiam Holiday, is a movable feast. It's not the date that is important. Its the celebration of the event. Its the time to relect on the event's meaning in our lives.

 

Our society has deemed December 25th as the date to celebrate Chirst's birth. That alone, God became man, is worth celebrating and a whole dose of wonder. Born to die for our salvation. That is worth remembering, at least once a year if not every day.

 

The commercial appeal of Christmas?

 

I will settle back to work with my wite-out, wiffle ball, thermos, TV Dinner, Q-Tip, Pop Tart and magic marker and think about what words should mean and how they are used and how baaaad is that?

[CalicoPenn]

"The reason Thanksgiving ws moved from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday of November was to give the shoppers an extra week for shopping."

 

Well, yes and no - because it doesn't always work out that way.

 

In 1939, FDR moved the holiday from the last Thursday to the 2nd to the last Thursday at the behest of retail merchants who were hoping for an extra week of holiday shopping - considering the times, the argument made a lot of sense. Remember, it was Lincoln that declared Thanksgiving as a National Holiday on the last Thursday of Thanksgiving - between the Civil War and WWI, the US added it's constribution to Christmas traditions by adding a dollop of consumerism to the mix.

 

At the time of FDR's change, Thanksgiving wasn't a Congressionally authorized holiday, it was a Presidentially declared holiday - and the states were free to accept or reject the proclamations - and that's just what happened - despite FDR's proclamation that Thanksgiving would be the 2nd to last Thursday in November, a significant number of states kept it as the last Thursday of month. This was confusing so Congress stepped in and went to pass a bill declaring that Thanksgiving would be the last Thursday in November nationwide. An amendment was offered and accepted to make it the 4th Thursday of the month rather than the last Thursday of the month because there are November that have 5 Thursdays in them - this was to make it even more consistent - it's always the 4th Thursday of the month.

 

How does this jibe with giving shoppers and extra week? Well, that works some of the time and doesn't other time. This year, Thanksgiving was on November 22. Next year, Thanksgiving is on November 28 - almost a full week later. So much for the extra week.

[Trevorum]

"AstroTurf is a brand name which is accepted generically ..., there are several such examples."

 

Such as (dare I say), "Kool-Aid"?

 

[AZMike]

Moosetracker Don't know if the Sun God moving to "Son of God" is accurate, but I also have been told from religion historians that December 25th is not the true birthdate of christ, it was a date for a Pagan holiday, along with many christmas traditions being from pagan celebration traditions.

 

Which Christmas traditions might those be, Moosetracker? And what evidence have your religious historians provided that those traditions survived over 2000 years to the present day?

 

This remains one of the biggest problems for those claiming that practices such as the Saturnalian practice of gift-giving survived through the collapse of the Roman Empire, the rise of the Carolignian Empire, the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation and the rise of Puritanism, etc. - there are simply no primary historical texts that support this claim.

 

Likewise the claim from hacks like Dan Brown that many other supposed messiahs and gods claimed December 25 as their birthday. There are precisely NO historical records for this claim, which both the Puritans, the new-agers, and atheists make with a complete absence of textual evidence.

 

And which Pagan holiday are we talking about? Of the various pagan holidays that have been proposed (Mithra, Sol Invictus, Apollo), none fall on December 25, with the possible exception of a minor feast day of Sol Invictus. But Professor Steven Hijsman at the University of Alberta has, in the view of most scholars, demolished Useners claims in the late 19th century that the Feast of Sol Invictus was either a major holiday for that deity (his main feast day was in the summer), or that the one reference in a primary text predated the Christian celebration of Christmas on 12/25. As you are probably aware, the Romans loved them some holidays, and would be hard to pick a date out of the Roman calendar that did not fall on a celebration for some damned Roman god or another. As you may also know, the dramatic and unprecedented rise of Christianity caused quite the opposite of what you suggest - pagans attempted to co-opt Christian celebrations in many cases in an attempt to stem the tide of Christian conversions in the Empire.

 

There are also NO patristic references to a decision to co-opt celebrations of Mithra, Apollo, Sol Invictus, or any other pagan deity. On that basis alone, we can shuck the argument.

 

As far as the date, you are partially correct. We simply dont know (so its not accurate to say December 25 is NOT the birthday, and there are traditions that say it was that might be correct). Dates of birth for other than royalty were not recorded for common people in the ancient world (and still often arent, in rural communities of the middle east - many people from that area that I know just say January 1 when asked their birthdate because they dont know and were never told their birthdate.) The Jews did not celebrate birthday parties (partly due to the lack of inflatable bouncers for rent in 1st-century Palestine), and despised astrology, so had no need to record birthdays. Emperors or kings would likely have their births recorded for posterity and to help cast a horoscope, but the poor son of Mary and Joseph? No.

 

As birthdays of holy people were unknown, most often the date chosen to celebrate a saints feast day or the celebration of a holy event was chosen at a later time to commemorate another date, if the original date was unknown. Thus, the date of the Feast of the Transfiguration (whose date was not given in the Gospels) was chosen by Pope Callixtus III to honor the date of the victory of the forces of Christendom at the Siege of Belgrade, which was considered an extremely high honor by those involved.

(This message has been edited by AZMike)

[AZMike]

Likewise, the feast days of the saints are usually based on the dates of their deaths/martyrdoms rather than their birthdates, which usually werent known and were considered far less important than the day of their martyrdom and ascension into Heaven. Accordingly, we celebrate the Feast of the Nativity, like many feast days, on a date that seems appropriate because of its association with another event - in the same way we can choose a date for the birthday of a foundling whose date we dont know. As we shall see, those dates were sometimes based on astronomical events, as Christians viewed the universe as created by God as an ordered place that operated on knowable principles (in opposition to the pantheistic pagan view of the universe as governed by fickle and changeable spirits inhabiting the stars and planets.) Ill get into the reason why December 25 was chosen below. It certainly COULD be December 25, as there is nothing in Luke to disprove it, and Im happy to celebrate it then. Puritans and atheists often claim there is no way that sheep could be in the fields in winter, but thats also nonsense.

 

The sheep argument originated with a fanatically anti-Catholic 19th century Scottish cleric named Alexander Hislop (who authored an unbelievably turgid screed on the Catholic Church titled The Two Babylons Or: The Papal worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and his Wife), and maybe in Scotland you dont keep sheep out in the winter, but in Bethlehem, they sure did and continue to do so. The Navajo live on the same latitude line and elevation as Bethlehem, and Ive seen their sheep out at Christmastime. My sheepherding friends (of whom I actually have three) assure me that it is healthier for sheep to not be corralled during the winter. Keeping sheep inside in temperate climes like Bethlehem (and Arizona) is bad for the sheeps feet, for their metabolic adjustment, and it aids in the spread of disease. If you pen the sheep, you will also have to supply them with hay (which would have been in short supply and an additional cost for the owners of the herd in 1st century Palestine, who could have been either nomadic Bedouins or poor Jews), so it would have been more economical to leave them outside and let them graze. The sheep of 2000 years ago were presumably of tougher stock than modern breeds and more able to survive the cold.

 

Anyway, as that argument usually comes up..

 

So as Professor Steve Hijmans at the University of Alberta wrote, numerous other dates had been proposed by the early Church Fathers: Clement of Alexandria, for instances mentions (and dismisses) proposals that Christ was born on April 19 or May 20 and himself calculated the date as November 17, 3 BC. Other suggested dates included March 28 and April 2, but not December 25th None of the dates were influential, or enjoyed any official recognition. Their basis varied from learned calculations to pure guess-work. It was only in the 330s, apparently, that December 25thwas first promoted as a feast day celebrating the birthday of Christ. Initially, this happened only in Rome, but in the 380s it is attested as such in Asia Minor as well, and by the 430s in Egypt. Nonetheless, other churches, as we have seen, continued to maintain Epiphany January 6th- as the birthday of Christ, and do so to this day.

 

 

Moosetracker, again: When Christians attempted to spread Christianity to pagan communities they altered things to allow Pagan communities to feel comfortable..

 

Here is the first problem with your argument, and maybe you just misstated a commonly-held belief, but nothing was altered to make pagans feel comfortable. Certainly, by the time of the establishment of December 25 as the date to celebrate Christmas, the number of professing pagans was almost miniscule, so there would be no reason to change anything to appeal to them. While earlier on in the spread of Christianity, some of the patristic fathers would describe elements of the Christian faith and compare them to pagan beliefs, this was a rare event (I can count maybe two or three such references from this period). The core beliefs were in no way altered. Tertullian made the very reasonable argument that some familiar elements of paganism - such as the use of white wedding gowns and wedding rings - were allowable in Christian services, as they did not require idolatrous worship, or forbidden pagan practices such as child sacrifice. That makes sense. As St. Paul urged, we should teach non-Christians by using things with which they are familiar. Thats not cultural piracy, its respecting and incorporating things with which new converts are familiar to ease their transition into a new life. Theres nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesnt change any doctrinal issues.

 

The Church also, shall we say, appropriated old pagan temples and possessions as part of the process of rebuking the old beliefs (and it went both ways - under the pagan Emperor Julian, the pagans seized and destroyed Christian places of worship), but in the same way as the Jewish neighbor I had as a kid would show me the Luger pistol he took off a Nazi officer. This was not adopting pagan beliefs, it was collecting war trophies, to impress on people that Our Side Won. Its why the Vatican has such a nice collection of Roman art.

 

[AZMike]

Moosetracker, again: But, here is a link giving 2 different ideas.. The first talking about the popular belief of the blending of pagan traditions, and an different belief that Christ was conceived on the same day of the year which he died, so therefore they put Christmas on a Date 9 months after conception..

 

http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp

 

Is this the one you believe, or do you have a different theory then that?

 

The first idea (of a blending of Christian and pagan beliefs) is nonsense, in that the early Christians adamantly resisted any adulteration or admixture of pagan and Christian worship, even to the point of martyrdom. Pagan worship would have been okay with a blending of faiths, as it was syncretic, and frequently combined gods or claimed that gods in newly-conquered territories could be worshipped as the same gods in the Roman pantheon. The Romans did make efforts to roll the God of the Jews and the Christians into their own rites, and even attempted to worship in the Jewish temples. They couldnt understand why they were rebuffed, as the Romans saw all religion as ultimately political and local. The Christians, like the Jews, would have none of that. While elements of Roman (and Greek) culture unavoidably became part of Christian culture (as with the use of Greek philosophy to explain elements of Christian theology), there was no blending of pagan and Christian doctrinal belief. (The need to maintain a separateness from pagan beliefs is the source of a lot of the admonitions in the OT that sound odd to modern ears.)

 

It is also important to remember that the Christians, like the Jews, considered the pagan gods to be false gods, not in the sense that they didnt exist, but that they did, and were unclean spirits, fallen angels, and demons who were fooling their followers and whose unholy worship must be rebuked. The historical evidence on this is quite clear. When you consider the elements of real pagan worship, which included practices that were anathema to the Christians and Jews (ritual infanticide, castration, bestiality, etc.), its not hard to come to that conclusion. Do you honestly believe the Church would include ANY beliefs from paganism in their practices?

 

The second argument is often claimed, although youve misstated the original argument somewhat- The date of the Annunciation was based on a older Jewish tradition that the world was created on March 25. The Jews also believed that a great man would die on the same day as his conception. The early Christians (who were of course, also Jews) therefore concluded that Jesus had been conceived on March 25. This made it the date of the worlds creation, and the start of the worlds redemption (and therefore the new creation). So, to do the math, if Christ was conceived on March 25, then he was born nine months later on December 25. The date for Christmas is therefore determined by the date of the Annunciation... and has nothing to do with the Roman celebration of the Saturnalia or the celebration of the birthday of Sol Invictus.

 

An additional argument, of which the author you linked is apparently unaware but has become more popular of late, claims that we can calculate the approximate day of Jesus birth from the dates of events given in Luke for the conception of both Jesus and his cousin, St. John the Baptist, based on the time of the year when members of the line of Zecheriah (St. Johns father) would have been scheduled to offer the sacrifices in the temple, which we know from a reference in the Dead Sea Scrolls. As we know the dates when Zecheriahs line in the priesthood would offer sacrifices, and we know his wife Elizabeth conceived around the time Mary conceived, some basic math gives us a date in mid- to late-December. So again, its possible we are on or about the right date. The date is less important than the fact it happened and that we celebrate it.

 

The Church had previously celebrated Christs birth on January 6, which was believed to be on the same date as the Epiphany, based on an oral tradition that was passed down as part of the Deposit of Faith. Christs birth, as the Incarnation of the Infinite into the finite world, was considered a wonderful thing and worthy of commemoration, but it wasnt until the Gnostics became a threat to orthodoxy that the Church began a separate feast day to specifically celebrate Christs birth. As the Gnostics (like the Basilideans and the Manichaens) denied the corporeality of Christ, and claimed him to have been merely spirit masquerading as flesh (part of the warped mentality that made them fanatically anti-woman, anti-sex, and anti-birth), the Church chose to establish a feast day that drew attention to the fact that Christ assumed humanity and was a real, flesh-and-blood person, even as he was God, and that the physicality of the universe was both God-given and a very Good Thing. (The Gnostic Arius, a hippie balladeer who promoted the claim that Christ did not have a physical body, got knocked unconscious by good St. Nicholas at the Council of Nicea, BTW, so theres your Christmas connection right there!)

 

 

 

 

The earliest (and thus, probably best) explanation for the dating of December 25 for the event was given by St. Augustine. Generally, in history its best to go to the earliest primary texts to understand the reasons WHY they did things, Moosetracker, and not to try to ascribe modern perspectives to them. The best explanation why the date was chosen was, simply, astronomy. The ordered nature of the heavens was frequently used as symbolism in the OT and NT - look at how many times the appearance of clouds is used as symbolism of Gods power working on earth, and stars, the moon, and the sun - and the use of the winter solstice, commonly recognized in all agricultural societies, was the best symbolism for the birth of Jesus as the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah. After the days of darkness and coldness grow longer and longer, and as it appears the sun will not reappear, on or about December 25 (depending on which calendar you were using at the time), the days grow longer at the solstice as the sun regains its power. As Jesus is linked with his cousin St. John the Baptist, whose feast day is celebrated around the summer equinox on June 24th (with a later feast day for his beheading in August), because as he said, He (Jesus) must increase and I must decrease - just as the longest days of sunlight begin to shorten at this time. Thus, the twin feast days for Jesus nativity and St. Johns feast day complemented each other in the eyes of the early Church. St. Augustine felt that Christ actually chose his date to be born to mark the symbolism of the return of light to the world. In one of his Christmas Day sermons, St. Augustine said:

 

Because even the day of his birth contains the mystery of his light. That, you see, is what the apostle says: The night is far advanced, while the day has drawn near; let us throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us walk decently as in the day (Rom 13:12-13). Let us recognize the day, and let us be the day. We were night, you see, when we were living as unbelievers. And this unbelief, which had covered the whole world as a kind of night, was to be diminished by the growth of faith; that's why, on the day we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the night begins to be encroached upon, and the day to grow longer.

 

So, brothers and sisters, let us keep this day as a festival; not, like the unbelievers, because of that sun up there in the sky, but because of the one who made that sun. That which was the Word, you see, became flesh, in order to be able for our sakes to be under the sun. Under the sun, indeed, in the flesh; but in divine greatness over the entire universe, in which he placed the sun. Now, though, he is also over that sun even in the flesh, the sun which people worship instead of God, because in their mental blindness they cannot see the true sun of justice.

 

 

So clearly, this was not an attempt to take over the holiday of a Sun God, - pagans dont own the solstice anymore than anyone else does, and the symbolism of Jesus with the light and warmth of the sun existed from the beginning of Christian worship. In fact, none of the traditional feast days for Apollo, the Sun God, corresponded with any astronomical events, such as the solstice or the equinoxes. So, what were the Christians supposed to be supplanting, Moosetracker?

 

I could go on at greater length about this, but probably have gone on at too great a length already. Simply, the record of the early Church and other sources reflects that the celebration of the Feast of the Nativity, whatever date it happened upon, was not an attempt to mix Christian and Pagan beliefs.

 

So let's all have a nice, refreshing glass of Kool-Aid, or even Flavor-Ade.

 

(Or, my favorite, Funny Face... I miss Goofy Grape and Jolly Olly Orange.)(This message has been edited by AZMike)

[packsaddle]

"As Jesus is linked with his cousin St. John the Baptist, whose feast day is celebrated around the summer equinox on June 24th..."

On most calendars, that would be more like a summer 'solstice'.

I'll gladly have a cup of either Kool-Aid or Flavor Aid...as long as I get to mix it , not the leader of some cult.