Give christmas back!

[Rapscallion]

Christmas - mass of Christ. So far, so good.

Commercialmess - my current favourite corruption of the season of greed that befalls us at this time of year.

I have a problem with christmas. Now, I'm not religious, but the religious origins of it are not a problem for me, any more than the origins of the easter bank holiday present a problem. I'm more incensed that in the UK (not sure about the US), most people who cheerfully celebrate this festival are not christians. Some are nominally religious - attending to be christened, married, see others married, see funerals, and be the guest of honour at funerals. Most, however, don't even care for that.

I see the decorations go up earlier and earlier every year. I see more and more open talk by high street retailers about what their profit expectations are. I see many people looking miserable as they shop for the season of gluttony. None of this is to do with the real christmas celebrations. It's a religious festival - stop celebrating it if you're not religious!

Exchanging presents at christmas? Why? Sure, the three wise men gave presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (not the latest fad of differently shaped plastic), but they never got anything in return.

It's now a season of excess and gluttony. I'm all for the general aspects of these two vices, but I'll be damned if can see why it should be tacked onto christianity's main celebration.

Ban christmas, I say, save for services in churches and small private parties in houses. Let's bring back some sanity into the winter months. The celebration has been stolen - let's have it mean something genuine to those it has meaning for.

I know someone's going to go on about how the celebrations were stolen from other religions (saturnalia etc), but that's not the point. Christmas is a christian celebration celebrated by christians - why should it be a major season of profit?

Rapscallion

[TNT]

Throughout the history of the church, most Christian scholars have considered Christmas to be a decidedly minor event in the grand scheme of things (which leads to the speculation that the celebration was designed mostly to give a religious meaning to the pagan Winter Solstice festival). Last year Christmas was on a Sunday, and it was big news here in the states that a lot of megachurches canceled even regular Sunday services due to a projected lack of attendance.

The major holidays on the Christian calendar are Good Friday (the most solemn day) and Easter (the most joyous day). Without the death and resurrection, Christ would be remembered -- if He were remembered at all -- as just one of many self-proclaimed messiahs wandering about the Middle East in those days.

[Rapscallion]

By those standards, it's true that it's not a major festival in the christian calendar. However, how many people actually celebrate the season as a the christian event what we know came from?

Very few. Some people do make an effort to turn up to church at that time of year, but that's not what I would call making it a religious festival.

The fact is that the modern 'popular' version of christmas is nothing to do with where it came from, or where it's claimed it came from. Leave the real christmas to the christians, and let's be honest about the festival of gluttony and greed that happens every year.

Rapscallion

[AFPheonix]

I like christmas in both of its manifestations.

Because hey, who doesn't like a nice pie and some prezzies?

[stormtreader]

I also like christmas even though neither i or my family are religious.

Its the only time of year for me where everybody has time off at the same time. I get to go home for a solid week, we eat nice food, and get to go see young relatives get excited over sparkly lights and presents.

The presents arent a huge part of our christmas though, my parents didnt have a huge amount of cash, so computers etc were never in the running.

I think part of the problem is the whole mentality of expecting a lot, and people putting themselves into debt to pay for it. Im sure the wise men didnt buy their gold, frankincence and myrrh on a debenhams store card.

[rahmota]

I'm not a fan of christmas as we see it now. Not because I'm an aethiest. I dont care if you celebrate this time in the pagan solsctice festival, hannukah, kwanza festivus or the traditional christams. What makes me dark about it is the gluttonous requirements to consume, spend and compete in who can be more cheery. Who can get more presents. Who can have the bigger and better light show.

I am also one of those people who generally get depressed around christmas (having several close friends and family die around this time or year will do that to a person) so all this be cheery and merry or your not cheery enough BS is sickening.

I'd love to see the lights and music and all the insanity involved in this "holiday" just go boom and shut the ypocritical jerks up. Let each person have their holiday the way that makes them happy and stop all the competition as to whose tree is bigger.

[Giggle Goose]

Well said, rahmota!!!!!!! I like the whole giving gifts and the being with family concept, but I hate how people will get mad at me because I'm not "in the Christmas spirit" or whatver. It's just pretty hard to do so when there is so much going on in the world today and meanwhile a bunch of over-zealous grandmas in their snowman sweaters are getting ready to have an all-out brawl over the last tickle-me-Elmo, and there are traffic jams, cussing out store employees for not knowing when the Wii is coming, and people just being pushy and rude to others. Call me jaded, I think it's just a bunch of overrated bulls**t. I just like to relax with my friends and family and eat some good food, and get a few nice gifts and write nice cards. But for the most part, it's just a really depressing time for a lot of people and I wish that more people realized that.

[rahmota]

Giggle goose said:

the being with family concept

Exactly goose. I get so sick of people asking what I'm doing for the holidays and then looking at me like I'm nuts when I say we're having a nice quiet dinner with the family. Thats all I ask and all I need.

But for the most part, it's just a really depressing time for a lot of people and I wish that more people realized that.

I know. I am fortunate in that I have my wife and kids close to me. I still have a decent home. But unfortunately there are many people who are much, much worse off. Alone in every sense of the word this time of year. Unsafe, unsecure places. Huddling in a tent in the middle of the desert like my cousin in afghanistan,or who knows where in that land he is. Or even worse huddling in a box under a bridge in America or another "developed" nation. On the outside looking in.

All those people going apesht over the wii or PSX or whatever hot thing are the ones who are really the saddest though. Replacing a healthy sense of love, selfworth and connection to each other with a shallow selfcentered instant gratification greed. Isolating each other in their own little narcissictic world.

[ArenaBoy]

Christmas for me is a time to spend with family and I do so. Presents are a nice add-on but it really bothers me that some go over the top at times when it comes to presents. People willing to go into debt just so they can impress someone is stupid in my opinion but come on.

Last year, my mom and I had to work Christmas because of a basketball game that day. My mom got us tickets (connections to the box office are wonderful, she gets away with murder in there) and I punched out earlier than usual and went to the game. Now I dislike basketball but I didn't care because A. I was with my family and B. it was a great way to enjoy the day and I got to see my cousins also at that game too. Oh and C. I met Eva Longoria.

To me Christmas should be more family less materialism. It's sickening to see Christmas displays up in October when we haven't had Thanksgiving yet. And Rahmota a Christmas wish to your cousin in Afghanistan, I myself have a friend who may be in Iraq right now and I worry about him because he was an awesome running partner.

[rahmota]

Arenaboy: Thank you. My cousin has been over there now for going on three tours. One nice thing is we occasionally get an email from him so we know he's still alive through the military so its not as bad as it used to be when a letter might take months and catch up with the GI and all a person can do is worry without info. Now we can worry with info. Though not much as he can't talk over email about much of anything.

And as for materialism I'd like to see all facets of culture be less concerned about materialism and more concerned about home and hearth family.

[Luna]

I agree with the being with family part. It's nice to just have a quiet day off to spend with what little family I have left. People at work asked me what I was doing, parties I was going to, movies I was running out to go see. I told them I'm sleeping in and making a nice dinner with hubby and celebrating that we have a day off - together for once.

They looked at me like I was nuts. *shrugs*

[Will-Mun]

Okay, okay... Get this outa the way. I know Raps already mentioned it, but lets just spell it out. Christmas, as it exists, is false. If Jesus were real, all data from the story points to a spring-birth. March or April, due to the farmers and the fact that a child born in mid-december desert would freeze to death.

One of the Popes ages ago decreed that Christmas would be celebrated in December to kind of smudge over a Roman Pagan holiday. But thats all heresay...

But the story continues. I THINK about 80 years ago (I honestly cannot remember I read this so long ago), there was a large push by the Christian churches to get Christmas accepted as a Secular Holiday. It was, and this today is what causes Religious nuts to go all out claiming a "War on Christmas"

So as it exists there are two holidays that fall on the same day, with the same name. There's Christmas, the birth of Christ, he who is god in flesh, and all that. Holy Ghost, Three Wise Man, and a man who believed it when his wife said he was carrying God's child.

Then there is Christmas, Santa Claus, gifts, the holiday season and all that. The meaning behind it is charity and family love...

Now, I think what Raps has a problem with is not Christmas, but the Christmas Season... And I agree. I made a post AGES ago in an online Journal (when I still had one...)

Okay, let me get this off my chest. I HATE the holiday season. Now let me say, I do not hate the Holidays themselves. Hanukkah and Kwanza are great, and I've Celebrated Christmas for 20 years now, even though I'm not Christian. Holidays are good, they give a chance for Families to come together, and be happy. What I HATE is the season. One month before any of these Holidays begin (and in some places two) the season begins... Do you know how aggervating it is to see Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving? The season parades itself on spreading cheer and good will. But it's a bunch of corperate lies. Brainwashing consumers into spending more money. People being trampled in the WalMart entrances, and a woman getting punched in the face over an iPod is NOT cheer. It's insanity.
I remember not too long ago, shopping was not so intense, you casually walk around your local mall or Shopping Center, and pick out a gift for the ones you cared about. Now if little Jimmie gets anything but 2 gig iPod Nano, they're be hell to pay. I just don't believe in it. Not that my work cares, as the "Official" Radio Shack Phone Answering phrase is now "Happy Holidays, Thank you for calling Radio Shack, this is (insert name here), how may I help you?" I haven't answered the phone right BEFORE the holidays, why would I start now?

I think we need to not ban Christmas from the non-religious perspective, because it can be a good holiday, what we need to do is make it smaller, remove the corperate feel of it that has been squeezing it for the past few years.

[Rapscallion]

Only a month or two before it?

I saw christmas trees (fake ones) in shop windows in September, one year.

I have to admit that it's not the celebration itself by those who believe in the message and so forth. It's all the hangers-on who get riotously drunk simply because of a religious festival. It's all the commerce encouraging greed because a religious figure was born on a certain day. It's the way that everyone is expected to act in a certain way, not just bankrupting themselves, on a certain day or in a certain time period (and they do) whether they believe or not.

I'm with a colleague of mine on this - we don't celebrate. It's a day off.

Rapscallion

[Greenday]

Ah, this was one of my more favorite essays I've written about. It wasn't on just Christmas, it was about all the main holidays and how they are losing their meanings. Christmas is about presents now, not about Jesus's birth. Easter is about candy and eggs, not Jesus coming back to life. Hannukah isn't about a miracle, it's about presents for eight straight nights. Now I admit, I enjoy giving and receiving presents, but it seems like it's just gone too far at this point to ruin the actual meanings of these important holidays.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Is Raps the reincarnation of Cromwell? He banned Christmas, I believe. XD

And I celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday meant for spending quality time with my family. ^^