To ask a question about Christmas, and celebrating it....

[mcrvamp]

Right! Over the last couple of months I have read many threads slating Christians and how spreading the word of God and Jesus is wrong, I hate religon..... etc, etc.

So I would like to ask a question to those of you that feel this way.

Why do you celebrate Chritmas, when it is so clearly a religous festival?

Isn't it alla bit hypocritical (sp?)

Oh calm down all of you. Christmas is Christian and all of the holly, ivy mistletoe etc are quite recent additions to the English celebration of Christmas. It actually wasn't that big a deal in this country until a couple of hundred years ago. I learnt that at a museum.

You could argue the Nordic Gods were just copies of earlier pagan gods/festivals ffs. Does it matter?

I don't think non-christians are being hypocritical. They are obviously giving into a very human need to celebrate the darkest days with similar symbology to the rest of the human race. However, why giving into that need but not the need to many feel to belong to a religion is ok but being religious is not is a leetle bit picky and choosy...

But with atheists celebrating Chrismas I get more presents.

Oh COME ON!! Did you really not know that christmas was highjacked by Christiansm and christmas trees, festive food and present giving and a celebratory festival was around long before? Yule?? ffs. I'm sick of the god squad preaching about this. It's not exactly very christian to question why people are wanting to buy gifts and spend time with family.

In fact, I'd be all in favour of scrapping the title 'Christmas' and replacing it with the more generic and inclusive Winterfest.
The christians can still go to church and pretend Jesus had anything to do with it if they like.

Bollocks. It was celebrated enough for Cromwell to think it needed to be banned in 1645. It was huge in the middle ages.

you know what i am not that bothered if christains want to celebrate the religious aspect of it but i dont see why it is a crime to like christmas for being well JUst christmas why is it so wrong for santa to come to children eating with family and having a nice day

And holly, ivy etc are only recent additions if you consider 1200 years ago to be recent.

Didnt Prince ALbert introduce the Christmas tree from germany as he missed German Christmases of 'something'
ROman emperor and scholars decided how christian religion would work long after jesus was supposed to be crucified so the 'people' would stop arguing about dates then they lost passages of the bible to suit themselves ,

The Christians nicked the whole christmas thing from the Pagans anyway didn't they?

As for why we (and I mean myself and my family) celebrate it, it's fun, we all get a better chance to meet up because often there is no work as normal life has been suspended for a few days and christmas food is awesome.

FWIW I was raised CofE and went to church loads as a kid. I do plan to take my 2 to the crib service this year and others (assuming they enjoy it) as I loved the nativity story when I was little and the christmas hymns.

Could you get your facts right, please ethelb before patronisingly telling the rest of us to "call down" .

A mid winter festival was around a long time before Christianity. It was re-named by Christians who deliberately chose 25th December as the birth date of their "messiah" in order to fit in with it.

All of the traditions we associate with Christmas are a mixture of secular & Christian additions.

Christmas belongs equally to everyone.

"calm down" I mean. Fecking keyboard.

Oh, and for those whinyarses who obejct to non-Christians using the term Christmas for the midwinter festivities: Get over yourselves, yet again.

Christmas is the name most commonly used for this festival these days, irrespective of whether or not one chooses to buy into any particular brand of mythology. Next you'll be complaining that the only people allowed to use the names of the days of the week are Vikings, and only Romans are entitled to call the months by the names they are generally known as.

People from all cultures over the world have been celebrating the winter solstice for over 200,000 years.

It's very arrogant for "christians" to claim that the celebration festival is their invention.

Seasons greeting to all.

I agree with everyone else who said Christinas was around before christianity and it was having fun and eating loads and that,i mean,i didnt know that but thats what im going to say from now on because it sounds good to me!

An aethiest friend of mine always maintained he didn't celebrate Christmas, he just enjoyed it.

'The Puritan community found no Scriptural justification for celebrating Christmas, and associated such celebrations with paganism and idolatry' (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_in_Puritan_New_England wiki]] - quite interesting. I hadn't realised that the Cromwellian parliament abolished Easter and Whitsun celebrations too.

JWs don't celebrate christmas either, I think for similar reasons.

I just remembered something that could really get OPs knickers in a twist.

I was chatting to a Hindu friend of mine and she asked what my thoughts on her putting up lights for Diwali and just keeping them up for Christmas. We agreed it made far more sense to buy some decent fairy lights and put them up properly for a six week period than have multiple sets of decorations.

As stated above, Christmas is a pagan festival.

Good idea - though maybe best if she doesn't actually have them on for the whole period, bit wasteful on the electricity.

You know that Christmas is a holiday and celebrated all over the world in non-christian countries? India, Malaysia, Indonesia, even China.

As a Pagan I celebrate the Midwinter Solstice, with a healthy dollop of Saturnalian revellry thrown in.

The fact that my celebrations coincide with the celebrations of my Christian and atheist friends, just helps to make it a more special time of year.

We shall be bringing in greenery and light, encouraging the sun to rise on the Solstice, going to the Children's Nativity to celebrate with our Christian friends, and the atheists will just enjoy the sharing and togetherness of a secular Christmas (yes I know that's an oxymoron).

Many people, throughout history, have thought the Winter Solstice a significant enough time of year to celebrate and/or mark. So why should atheists or non-Christians be any different?

There is a question to be asked though over whether Christmas would have been celebrated at all if pagans had never existed.

I think it would have tbh, as other faiths do celebrate the birth of central figures. Sikhism for example.

My point was that a lot of our "english" traditions are actually pagan scandinavian or germanic.

Christmas is a pagan festival.
that's perhaps going a bit too far. I'd say its a genuinely multi-cultural festival. One which everyone can bring to what they want and take from what they want. I'm very happy to take some elements introduced by Christians - including the phrase:

'Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all people'

The germans might have brought in the Xmas tree, but we had decorated boughs long before that, and a long pagan history of tree worship, so it was hardly a big change.

Of course the traditions are a mish mash of other countries, you're talking about the UK. But most of them are far far older than you seem to think.

alright fair enough. I suppose the holly and the ivy is a v old song!

but you do need to remember that in the middle ages christmas was one of many, many important religious festivals. They had 40. Christmas wasn't the biggest one then, like it is the biggest festival in England now. I don't have a problem with that, but I think people are suggesting the movement from 'pagan' traditions to modern day traditions is a lot more linear than it actually is.

There is a stong argument that Christmas and the virgin birth is actually a rip of of an Egyptian myth. Egypt was the first Christian country after all...

sorry, 40 equivalent of bank holidays.