I am decidedly not a participant in the Christmas wars, and I’ve repeatedly criticized the AFA in particular for its overhyped and often silly boycotts. I’ve also written that I’m not super-keen on the idea of taxpayer dollars being spent on religious displays, because even though my faith is dominant now, it may not always be. I definitely don’t want my tax dollars spent on, say, Eid celebrations, and I understand that non-Christians do not want to subsidize my holiday. But this really ticked me off: Imagine A White House Christmas Minus Christ.
The idea of having a Christmas display and specifically excluding the ‘reason for the season’ is ludicrous. I’m perfectly fine with doing nothing at all. Frankly, in a lot of ways I’d prefer it. Government should be cutting back in every possible way. If you want to go all multi-culti, call it a ‘holiday season’ and acknowledge everything, including the fact that non-Christians have events they are celebrating this time of year, that’s acceptable. But if you say you want to have a “non-religious Christmas” I say that you are a jackass, an idiot, a moron, and worse.
There is no such thing as a non-religious Christmas. Christmas is by definition religious. It’s all about Christ. That’s the point.
I don’t particularly care if the Obamas attend church (Reagan didn’t while President) and if Obama is a Muslim like his grandmother, so be it. He lied about everything else during the campaign – why not religion? But don’t hijack the name of my holiday and gut all meaning from it. If you don’t want to celebrate Christmas, don’t. Just don’t call whatever secular or multi-culti event you replace it with Christmas, because there is no such thing as a non-religious Christmas.
Actually, there is no such thing as a religious Christmas, either. We do not know when Jesus was born and there is no command in the Bible for making observance of the birth of Jesus. The early Christians up until the time of Constantine the first did not celebrate Christmas and neither did the apostles either during the life of Jesus or after. Constantine appropriated the Roman holiday of Sol Invictus and turned it into Christmas. All the traditions associated with Christmas are pagan and we are forbidden from observing pagan traditions by the Bible. It is far more likely that Jesus was born during the Feast of Tabernacles in Sept/Oct. which is an observance of the time during the Exodus when God dwelt among the Israelites in spirit, leading them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. It would be fitting that God should manifest himself in the flesh during that time at as well. Christ was never in Christmas and would be most displeased at our placing him there among the pagan traditions.
Way, way late, but Sol Invictus wasn’t even created until rather late in the game, about 275 AD– scholars suspect that, if it was related to Christmas at all, it was probably the other way around.
There was a Jewish tradition that great people left the world the same day that they came into it, which is how they got the date for the Annunciation. Now, count nine months past God asking Mary to carry Jesus….
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Thanks, I didn’t know that.
Welcome! You know how I am about stuff I think is neat!
Heck, there are Church historians who start from the assumption that it’s a baptized festival, so it’s really an “everybody knows” thing.
I would be really interested in finding out if shepherds would be out with the flocks only during lambing season– my great grandfather was a shepherd, and hired a lot, and they lived with the sheep year-round to deal with predators. I don’t think the Roman empire would order everyone to move around if the weather was so bad that they COULDN’T be doing lambing, and I don’t know if they even had a lambing season there and then. My folks’ calving season is different than everyone else in the valley, and that’s not odd.
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