Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays???

Mike T. > writes:

[Christmas]

> It never HAD any religious significance. Just about everything
> to do with the way Christmas is celebrated got its start going
> back CENTURIES before "Christ" is alleged to have been born.

How do you get from there to the idea that Christmas "never had"
any religious significance? If there's a change over time in the
way a holiday is celebrated, why would that mean that later forms
of celebrtation have no religious meaning?


> Before the late-December festivities were called "Christmas", the
> Christians wanted nothing to do with the holiday. In fact, it was
> banned in certain areas as the religious objected to the merriment.
> Eventually, it was realized that the winter holiday could not be
> stopped, so the religious TRIED TO TAKE OVER THE HOLIDAY by declaring
> (in spite of good evidence to the contrary, as written in their own
> "Bible") that the Christ child was born on December 25th.

The Roman holiday of Saturnalia was co-opted and conflated with
Christmas, just as many other pagan holidays were co-opted by
the Christian (particularly the Catholic) Church, as a way to
get and retain converts. It's easier to win people over if in
the process, your church doesn't deny them the festivities
they're accustomed to celebrating -- in form, at least, if not
in substance.

Your putting sneer-quotes around "Christ," "Christmas," and "Bible"
would seem to reveal a certain hostility on your part toward all
things Christian.



Geoff

--
"I'm so anal that I weigh each of my cd's to the nearest microgram,
fifty times, on a quartz crystal microbalance and then arrange them
by standard deviation. Chicks dig that." -- Michael H. Alaimo