Happy birthday Jesus... You are the reason for the season!!! (Pagan propaganda refuted)

Originally posted by nixie_nox
reply to post by RevelationGeneration

 

Jesus, save me from your followers.

Sounds to me like you feel a little threatened.

As a Christian, I do not celebrate the pagan Santa Claus with the yulelog, mistletoe, and all of those trappings. There are Christians who do because they believe those are mere traditions and nothing more. I do not watch tv shows or movies that display Santa Claus with elves and reindeer.

When you claim they are pagan in origin, please define which traditions you are referring to. I would think you should be happy seeing all those pagan traditions celebrated and embraced. Go,have yourself some egg nog and appreciate that your pagan views are celebrated on the holidays.

Some of us Christians don't celebrate Santa Claus, we are happy not having him be a part of our tradition.

Ooop's silly me.
I thought refuted meant you could prove something.

When we are talking about "season" you are talking natural or nature cycle which is the Pagan religion. Christmastime or Yule apart from Jesus' supposed date of birth (highly speculative) is Pagan symbols/decorations. The season is more Pagan than Christian and ties into the Winter Solstice aka Yule. I always celebrate Yule instead of Christmas.

Originally posted by LunaKat
When we are talking about "season" you are talking natural or nature cycle which is the Pagan religion. Christmastime or Yule apart from Jesus' supposed date of birth (highly speculative) is Pagan symbols/decorations. The season is more Pagan than Christian and ties into the Winter Solstice aka Yule. I always celebrate Yule instead of Christmas.

That is exactly what I had meant LunaKat. I think so many people celebrate with those particular traditions, they have always associated them and try to fit them together. They present the pagan traditions as nothing faith based, but just fun things to do.

I have a problem with telling children to sit on the lap of a creepy man who will give them presents if they are good, and then people forcing others to kiss under the mistletoe. But, that is just me. I think the Christmas (secular) day is a celebration of traditions found among pagans, and they are taking part in rituals they don't consider are faith based for someone else.

If you were to ask the average person, and there are more secular people today than 100 years ago, if they consider themselves pagan when keeping those traditions, they will say no. They have commercialized paganism also and I am sure it must be frustrating when people deny it is indeed a faith system.

There are a few of us Christians who do not celebrate the pagan traditions, but not many. You also have to consider that many Christians are simply by name only, they don't keep the traditions of Christianity except for twice a year, or so they believe. To me, it is an every minute of every day faith, but many Christians have just attached a name to themselves because it is what their families have always done.

Glad you are back on the threads, your voice was missed. Hope you had a good holiday season.

Originally posted by WarminIndy

Originally posted by LunaKat
When we are talking about "season" you are talking natural or nature cycle which is the Pagan religion. Christmastime or Yule apart from Jesus' supposed date of birth (highly speculative) is Pagan symbols/decorations. The season is more Pagan than Christian and ties into the Winter Solstice aka Yule. I always celebrate Yule instead of Christmas.

That is exactly what I had meant LunaKat. I think so many people celebrate with those particular traditions, they have always associated them and try to fit them together. They present the pagan traditions as nothing faith based, but just fun things to do.

I have a problem with telling children to sit on the lap of a creepy man who will give them presents if they are good, and then people forcing others to kiss under the mistletoe. But, that is just me. I think the Christmas (secular) day is a celebration of traditions found among pagans, and they are taking part in rituals they don't consider are faith based for someone else.

If you were to ask the average person, and there are more secular people today than 100 years ago, if they consider themselves pagan when keeping those traditions, they will say no. They have commercialized paganism also and I am sure it must be frustrating when people deny it is indeed a faith system.

There are a few of us Christians who do not celebrate the pagan traditions, but not many. You also have to consider that many Christians are simply by name only, they don't keep the traditions of Christianity except for twice a year, or so they believe. To me, it is an every minute of every day faith, but many Christians have just attached a name to themselves because it is what their families have always done.

Glad you are back on the threads, your voice was missed. Hope you had a good holiday season.

Hi WarminIndy I hear where you are coming from. My brother is Pentecostal. Both he and I left Catholic church about same time (him a few years earlier). I even attended a charismatic type church for a couple years because he and I were discussing Bible a lot. So I decided to check it out. Now in his religion and in that one I was briefly with, you don't celebrate the secular Christmas. I know other Christian denominations feel differently and think its ok. He never put up a tree or anything like that. And this is many years now. Our parents still celebrated it but neither of us kids did. It was rough going getting away from it due to our parents. Its just not seen as "normal" not celebrating Christmas with all the hoopla (decorations) and Christmas mass and all that. Friends kept trying to make us celebrate it too.

When I became Pagan I could use all those decorations again (but I changed them, I handcrafted all my ornaments and made them to work again for me religious wise) because the roots of them go back mostly to the turn of the seasons. Darkness gives way to Light. And most "Christmas" decorations feature Light in some way. Its the natural cycle of nature.

I'm not gonna tell someone they should or shouldn't celebrate Christmas. Its really an individual decision. This year I didn't do much of anything actually except focus on the return of the Light. I looooove that the days are becoming longer. I'm a summer person and the long dark days are depressing and cold (in Chicago). So I truly love that. I've had Yule logs because I celebrate it on the Winter Solstice and in the past I went to a Unitarian church and they had a really really lovely event acted out as a play kind of of the return of the Light with the kids doing the parts. And then we all had an individual candle that we lit as the Sun returned. It was sooooo beautiful. I like stuff like that. I get pretty tired of all the traditional Christmas decorations -- a lot of it to me is just really tacky. And they start almost before Halloween..by the time the day arrives I'm so sick of it, lol. So I prefer the quiet stuff myself.

But yeah nodding about creepy Santa..he used to spook me a little when I was a kid, hahaha.

Its great to see you in this thread too And I do hear where you are coming from

Originally posted by caladonea
reply to post by RevelationGeneration

 

To me Christmas is the celebration of Christ's birth....he allowed himself to be born into this world...to teach us and give to us the gifts of salvation, redemption and forgiveness. He let us know that we can change and have a new beginning in life.

So...in my heart..when I give a gift to someone at Christmas time ....it is a symbolic gesture of the gifts Christ gave to human kind.N

Happy Birthday Jesus! Thank you for giving us all a chance.

He was born into this world for one reason alone........ and that is to give parents a reason / date on which to spend uncontrollably on useless toys, gadgets, nickknacks, pollywhacks, and a partridge in a pear tree...... But that is only if he was born at all because as all thinking beings know Christmas was the celebration of pagan beliefs from which Christians created "the Greatest feel good Bedtime Story Ever".....

Hell yah, Festivus for the rest of us......