That strange Iconography of Christmas

I consider the commercialization of christmas an amusing revenge for the ignorance of most christians as to how all the "true meaning of christmas" bullshit means practically none of them realize christ wasnt even likely born in december and the holiday is a mishmash of traditions from various pagan festivals.

That is also amusingly true.

Wasn't Christ born in August or so, and a couple years earlier than the calender would tell us...?

Snowman@The people to first celebrate Christmas in the December months were the Catholics when the Puritans came around the banned the pratice because it was too Catholic but around the 1700's America celebrated Christmas again after the view of it became more accepting.

Also I really hate the tone you are going for.Jesus's birthday might not have been in December but Christmas just serves as a surrogate date.

It annoys the fuck out of me when I try to tell people that Jesus wasn't born on Christmas

and they don't believe me

goddamn, guys, it's common fucking sense.

well, the tone is mostly born out of a bitterly cynical view of a lot of the sorts of christians I've been exposed to most of my life.

For every decent christian family I've met, I've met at least 3 whose sole purpose in life seems to be blatantly forcing jesus into every aspect of their life, including any interaction with the rest of the world. You can only take hearing people post on facebook about every single tiny little incident in their life as "Satan trying to make them sad" before you just want to slap them and tell them to take goddamn responsibility once in a while.

That, and given I live in the midwest, every christmas you can watch the fun of people freaking out the second anyone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" as though the first is some devious attempt to take Christianity out of the holiday.

edited 5th Sep '11 7:58:07 AM by Midgetsnowman

I know he wasn't born on Christmas day and you might call me an ignorant sap but its a surrogate date for his birthday since we don't know when he was born.Sure,maybe we could hold a special celebration for his birth in whatever he could have possibly been born but then where would it be.

When Christ comes back I could ask him when was his birthdate and things can be cleared.

But you can't deny Christmas has a strong faith surrounding to it.I prefer "Merry Christmas" it just sounds so right and so great.

Besides Santa Claus probably wouldn't even exist if it weren't for Christianity because remember he started as Saint Nicholas of Turkey.

edited 5th Sep '11 8:08:19 AM by jazzflower14

Midget, I dunno, people around here just default to Merry Christmas, and nobody cares.

I don't understand why you wouldn't say Merry Christmas. All the other holidays in close proximity are fairly minor, most of the country is Christian, and even the non-Christians aren't liable to care unless they're very religious themselves, since, well, they're all taking part too...

For the Muslims,Jews,and Jehovah Witnesses its time to go somewhere else.For the Muslims and Jews I will give them a present anyway for the spirit of the holiday.For the Jews I might tag along and celebrate Hannkah because techinally any Christian is kinda an adopted family to the Jews and becuase it would be fun to celbrate more Jewish holidays.

For Muslims I believe we should celebrate by not forcing them celebrate and to give them peace on earth.And not giving them any pork products by accident.

edited 5th Sep '11 8:09:33 AM by jazzflower14

I don't know of anyone who took offense to "Merry Christmas" before the fundies started weaponizing it. The Yahoo!Answers link on the previous page is a perfect case in point. There's nothing wrong with hedging your bets and saying "Happy Holidays" (or "Season's Greetings," which also has a lovely ring to it). There's also nothing wrong with saying "Merry Christmas" in a friendly-like way. If someone responds with anything other than "Merry Christmas to you too" or "I don't celebrate Christmas, but thanks anyway," then they are a dick.

I can't remember where this was, but I once saw someone make the very wise observation that the problem in America is that there are two holidays celebrated on December 25, one religious and one secular, and both called Christmas. To that I would add that a whole lot of people celebrate both simultaneously, and think they're the same thing.

...I imagined a big Christmas tree-shaped nuclear warhead and it was awesome.

True. No sense in changing it, though. Too much money to be made for harmless (relatively) fun.

Santa Claus or Saint Nick had a demon following him in his earlier depictions who grabbed naughty children who.He was popular in the 1800's and was omitted when the idea of a child grabbing demon was too scary.I think then the idea of coal was set into place at that time in the later 1800's; coal would have brought warmth to the family.

The demon taught children to be good or be grabbed away. Coal gave their family warmth for the blistery season.

edited 5th Sep '11 8:22:07 AM by jazzflower14

@Jazz: for me, as a mostly secular person, any religious meaning to christmas has long been sucked out of it by fundies who think any non-acknowledgement of how amazing jesus is is me trying to stab their religion in the face with a cleaver.

Ironically., this mostly means I want to stab their religion with a metaphorical cleaver just to piss them off.

Snowman@But you gotta admit Santa Claus does have alot of Christian orgins that go back centuries.If you look up Saint Nicholas you will know what I mean and the evolution of Santa Claus as well.

I think its the over commercialization of Santa Claus that really gets people feeling that they focus too much on him.I like Santa Claus and I will pass that tradition to my kids.However,I would also say that even though Jesus wasn't born on September it is good to remember that this is his day as well.

edited 5th Sep '11 8:24:51 AM by jazzflower14

well, yeah. But thats the case for a lot of things. Hell, it can be argued pretty well that a good deal of jewish faith traditions are just slightly rebranded stuff from older religious texts.

Santa Claus as we know him is pretty much equal parts Nicholas of Myra and Odin, with a dash of the Celtic Holly King for good measure. Funnily enough, I "believe" in him more as an adult than I ever did as a child. Being Neopagan and somewhat animistic will do that to a person.

It's really hard to reconcile my mental image of you, Karalora, with the idea of you believing in Santa.

Santa Claus is hardcore. You don't fuck with him, man.

I think I'm closer to believing in the Hogfather.

In England (or at least my part) you get snow at the end of January/beginning of February which means that I've enjoyed more snow on my birthday than ever at Christmas. "Snow at Christmas" is just a thing for people with Gambling habits to be tempted over just before they buy the presents.

A cousin from The Old Country was bemused by the fact that my family celebrated Christmas despite having lived in Switzerland for most of her life. There must be something different about the Swiss. I argue that we don't really celebrate Christmas with my family- it's a day when all the shops and banks are closed and there's nothing good on TV so we stay in, eat and get ourselves some games to pass the time. It just so happens that this is what all the Anglicans do.

Oh the pine tree in the corner of the room? Nothing to do with Christmas, we just do it to honour Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

The word "believe" is in quotes for a reason. I don't literally think there's a magic man at the North Pole (or in Finland, or wherever) who brings presents to the kiddies on Christmas Eve. But I do entertain the notion of gods and spirits, and if there can be a goddess of smallpox, there can be a god of midwinter generosity. I don't think the Santa legend is just to entertain and fascinate children and bribe them into behaving. I think it comes from a very profound place in the human psyche.

~shrug~

If you don't enjoy amusing mental images, I don't know what to tell you.

In any event, I hope you'll excuse me if I don't find the idea of idealizing human psychology to a religious level to be personally appealing...

The whole "be good and you'll get presents" is just an extension of the Christia afterlife idea.

The Krampus.

Gee, wonder why it scared children?

Slightly NSFW relevant Monty Python reference.

edited 5th Sep '11 11:52:13 AM by Justice4243

I just don't want you to get the wrong idea about me. (Though you probably already have.) If it amuses you to picture me as an Adult Child getting all giddy over the thought of presents from Santa, you're welcome to it. But if you start using that as an excuse not to take me seriously as a debater, then mister, you are in for a world of intellectual hurt.

Not sure what you mean by this. I will say that whatever else gods are, they are definitely archtypes that fulfill human psychological needs. They don't have to be literally real to be valuable and worth worshipping. I hold that non-Christians should attempt to be Christlike to the extent that Christ is seen as a compassionate, forgiving, self-sacrificing being. So too should we all be Santalike—generous and merry—at midwinter, when we need it most.

I can't speak for Australians, though.

edited 5th Sep '11 12:41:49 PM by Karalora

0_o

Edit: Also, my "idea" of you, in the abstract, is someone who is very passionate about what they believe, but also someone I tend to not agree with on some issues...

I got the wrong idea because you made a very overly-complex show of saying "just because they may not have been god/may not be real doesn't mean they can't be a good example," in which case yes, I agree with you...

I don't get the Australia joke...

edited 5th Sep '11 12:25:32 PM by USAF713

Justice@I wonder if Hollywood should do a movie about Krampus and it would probably be a horror movie.It would be that Krampus is trying to strike back at Santa after he abandoned him because he took his job too far.And now he is going to take over Christmas to regain his job but this time he will kill all the naughty children instead of just punish them.Yep,I am thinking like a Hollywood writer for horror.

I mean if this guy didn't get kids to behave then what did.