Didn't the Puritans outlaw Christmas as a pagan holiday or something like that?
But a problem is that Luther is said to have brought in a Christmas tree. I haven't seen that debunked so I assume it's true.
We COULD ignore the holiday but as long as nobody is celebrating any of those pagan deities I'm not worried about it. Why not have an all-out pretty glittery holiday once a year? I don't celebrate it any more myself anyway, it's something you do for others, and all the others in the family live far away. I usually see them after Christmas, which I will this year too.
But since Protestantism is so firmly grounded in Catholicism, ... .
Luther didn't completely free himself from the trappings, but there's not a shred of Catholic doctrine left standing even in his theology. Anglicanism is a similar situation but they too got doctrinally pure for a while. There are some great Anglican preachers but no recent ones. Aside from that it all got purer after Luther. A thorough purge was done of all the Catholic accretions, leaving the Bible and its earliest interpreters who knew nothing of the Roman corruptions. There's no way it's right to say it has anything to do with Catholicism.
Presentations I've seen about Xmas have included evaluations of shepards being in the fields with their sheep. What I've seen presented have pointed out that that would have only happened while the lambs were being born, which would have been in the Spring, not at the Winter Solstice.
The Winter Solstice is a very important celebration, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. The dichotomy between Light and Darkness is also important in Christianity, isn't it? That importance does remain regardless of whatever deity is being attributed to it, right? After all these months that Darkness is crowding out The Light, isn't the Winter Solstice when The Light does finally triumph against The Darkness?
Why not have an all-out pretty glittery holiday once a year?
Precisely. We do all seek to have the Light vanquish the Darkness. That is precisely what happens at the Winter Solstice!
I don't celebrate it any more myself anyway, it's something you do for others, and all the others in the family live far away. I usually see them after Christmas, which I will this year too.
Which is exactly as it should be! Happy Holidays for you and yours!
But we all know Jesus wasn't born in the winter, and sheep on the hillsides at night is a clue that He wasn't. Christmas is just an opportunity to celebrate His birth since we don't know when it was, and it displaced some pagan celebrations which was a plus. The Solstice hardly even enters into a Christian's mind. I always take note of it myself just because even though we're headed into real winter and it may be pretty miserable, I like to notice how the days are getting longer as a cheery note in the midst of it.
All that the Protestants had to work with was handed to them by the Catholic Church, including what the Biblical texts were.
But that is in fact not true. Both Erasmus and Tyndale had Greek manuscripts of the Bible, which I understand to have come through the priests of the Eastern churches who fled into Europe from the Islamic conquerors of the time. The route was not the Roman Church. The Greek texts were used to correct the Latin Vulgate.
Wikipedia has:
Tyndale's translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek ...
The Roman Church was the repository of the writings of the early Church Fathers I suppose. Or maybe even copies of those came along with the Eastern priests. Being a repository doesn't make those writings Roman Catholic. The early church had plenty of doctrine for the Protestant Reformers to draw on that doesn't support the Roman corruptions. They also had contact with groups like the Waldensians who had been dissidents from the RCC from very early times, having their settlements high in the Alps. And they had their own Bibles.
But we all know Jesus wasn't born in the winter, and sheep on the hillsides at night is a clue that He wasn't.
Yeah, well duh and fuck you too! We already said that!
Christmas is just an opportunity to celebrate His birth since we don't know when it was, and it displaced some pagan celebrations which was a plus.
Yeah, well duh and fuck you too! We already said that!
The Solstice hardly even enters into a Christian's mind.
Now this begs the age-old question: Does anything ever enter a Christian's mind?
I always take note of it myself just because even though we're headed into real winter and it may be pretty miserable, I like to notice how the days are getting longer as a cheery note in the midst of it.
I didn't mean to be insulting you, why are you so angry? I know you had just mentioned the fact that sheep don't graze at night in winter, I was just echoing you. It may not have sounded like that, I didn't write it very well, and part of it was that I thought you might not know I knew that, but mainly I just meant to be saying yes to your statement.
All I was saying about the Solstice is that Christians don't celebrate it and although I keep track of the lengthening days that's not a celebration either, it's therapy for my Seasonal Affective Disorder or something like that.
Please, cheer up. It's supposed to be a cheery season and I really had no intention of insulting you.
Your song has nothing to do with the birth of the Savior. It is a secular screed with secular notions and secular emotions. It is just another shot at christians in the ongoing War On Christmas.
Mine is quite different. It speaks of tragedy, belief, healing, overcoming personal struggle and a warning to friends and neighbors, a witness to any that have the heart to hear. And it actually says "Merry Christmas" at the end.
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