The whining over Christmas

The incessant whining over Christmas is getting old so I did some research on the origin of Christmas. I thought I would share it.

December 25th occurs about the time of the Winter Solistice, the shortest day of the year. The shortening days were taken as a sign that the Sun was getting weaker. After the Solistice, the days begin to get longer ...... and pagan peoples thought that was an indication that the Sun was getting stronger.

Thus, the Winter Solistice became the "birthday" of several gods: Attis, Frey, Thor, Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis, Mithra, Tammuz, Cernunnos and so forth. It is a "solar holiday," marking the time that the sun becomes apparently stronger day by day.


Mithra, by the way, was born on December 25, of a virgin. His birth was witnessed by shepherds and magicians . Mithra raised the dead and healed the sick and cast out demons. He returned to heaven at the spring equinox and before doing so had a last supper with his 12 disciples (representing the 12 signs of the zodiac), eating mizd, a piece of bread marked with a cross (an almost universal symbol of the sun). Any of that sound familiar?

The Pilgrims outlawed Christmas. They also refused to use the 1611 King James Bible!

The Winter Solistice was the season of a major celebration of fertility in ancient Rome called "Saturnalia," starting on December 17th. This honoured the "good old days" when the god Saturn ruled a supposed "Golden Age", and there were no masters and no slaves, and everything was easy.



It should come as no surprise then that the Christian Church co-opted this seasonal holiday, celebrated by the city that ruled the world -and- celebrated by Christianity's major competitor (Mithraism). It was simply a very astute political move.



The Puritans banned Christmas altogether and during the Cromwellian period in England, anyone celebrating Christmas was jailed for heresy.



In America, Christmas was generally outlawed until the end of the last century. In Boston, up to 1870, anyone missing work on Christmas Day would be fired.

Christmas did not even begin to be a legal holiday anywhere in the United States until very late in the nineteenth century CE, with Alabama being the first state to make it so.

http://www.locksley.com/6696/xmas.htm

To send to ANY wingnuts who try to spam me with "defend Christmas" bullshit.

Thanks. K and R

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The danger is not in the originally pagan symbols, nor in it's establishment by the Bishop of Rome, but in the commercialization and secularization of the holy day; we are losing the real meaning of the holiday to an orgy of spending and politically correct saccharine cuteness. The meaning of Christmas is not found in how many presents we can give or get, nor in how much money we can spend on it, nor in how prettily we can decorate our home, but in the Message of the Child.

Christmas (call it Yule if you want to!) is a holiday and holy day that can be kept by Christian and pagan alike, and one that brings joy to the world indeed.

And if the devil has been trying to "pervert it's symbols thru the ages, giving them pagan meanings," then to view them as such is to fall into Old Scratch's trap, isn't it?

Little Children: Love One Another!

And for all you Grinches out there that think we should outlaw Christmas ..... well, go read this, and this, and think on what is written in I Corinthians 13.... you may have a lot of Faith, and a lot of Hope, but darn little Charity.

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