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The War on Christmas is Over... Christmas Won but only In Canada, Pity

Wetcoaster

By Wetcoaster
in Off-Topic General

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hudson bay rules Canucks Third-Line

hudson bay rules

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I know many Sikh, Chinese and other non-Christian families that "celebrate" Christmas as a family friendly gift giving event. All of them call it Christmas and aren't bothered in the slightest by the festivities they encounter in their new found home.

On a side note, they start playing Christmas tunes in Sept in the Philippines. :shock:

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McBackup Canucks First-Line

McBackup

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Holidays in the winter have existed long before, and will continue to exist long after Christmas. People like to celebrate when it gets dark at 4pm and it's always cold. Cheers up an otherwise bleak season.

Christmas traditions existed long before Christianity, and were adopted to help pagans phase over into a monotheistic religion. It's fun to celebrate. Food, family, gifts, all the seasonal specials on tv, etc. No matter what your religion, it doesn't matter, people can celebrate what they want.

I would say I'm baffled that people legitimately get offended by someone wishing them well, but given how PC and easily offended people are these days, I would be lying.

People need thicker skins.

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Phil_314 Canucks Star

Phil_314

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Good. Interesting that this came up - our pastor gave a sermon on Sunday about "what next? we have to take the Christ out of our homes as well"?

However you want to celebrate this time of the year is fine by me.

Just don't tell me that I can't say Merry Christmas - that's would be the real "pity".

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Wetcoaster Canucks First-Line

Wetcoaster

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Sorry, that's can't be proven in a court of law.

FYI, it was the Romans that "stole" it as you word it. - Not the Christians.

"Emperor Domitian (AD 51-96) may have changed Saturnalia’s date to December 25th in an attempt to assert his authority. He curbed Saturnalia’s subversive tendencies by marking it with public events under his control. The poet Statius (AD 45- 95), in his poem Silvae, describes the lavish banquet and entertainments Domitian presided over, including games which opened with sweets, fruit and nuts showered on the crowd and featuring flights of flamingos released over Rome. Shows with fighting dwarves and female gladiators were illuminated, for the first time, into the night.

The conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in AD 312 ended Roman persecution of Christians and began imperial patronage of the Christian churches. But Christianity did not become the Roman Empire’s official religion overnight. Dr David Gwynn, lecturer in ancient and late antique history at Royal Holloway, University of London, says that, alongside Christian and other pagan festivals, ‘the Saturnalia continued to be celebrated in the century afterward’.

The poet Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius wrote another Saturnalia, describing a banquet of pagan literary celebrities in Rome during the festival. Classicists date the work to between AD 383 and 430, so it describes a Saturnalia alive and well under Christian emperors. The Christian calendar of Polemius Silvus, written around AD 449, mentions Saturnalia, recording that ‘it used to honour the god Saturn’. This suggests it had by then become just another popular carnival.

Christmas apparently started – like Saturnalia – in Rome, and spread to the eastern Mediterranean. The earliest known reference to it commemorating the birth of Christ on December 25th is in the Roman Philocalian calendar of AD 354. Provincial schisms soon resulted in different Christian calendars. The Orthodox Church in the Eastern (Byzantine) half of the Roman Empire fixed the date of Christmas at January 6th, commemorating simultaneously Christ’s birth, baptism and first miracle.

Saturnalia has a rival contender as the forerunner of Christmas: the festival of dies natalis solis invicti, ‘birthday of the unconquered sun’. The Philocalian calendar also states that December 25th was a Roman civil holiday honouring the cult of sol invicta. With its origins in Syria and the monotheistic cult of Mithras, sol invicta certainly has similarities to the worship of Jesus. The cult was introduced into the empire in AD 274 by Emperor Aurelian (214-275), who effectively made it a state religion, putting its emblem on Roman coins.

Sol invicta succeeded because of its ability to assimilate aspects of Jupiter and other deities into its figure of the Sun King, reflecting the absolute power of ‘divine’emperors. But despite efforts by later pagan emperors to control Saturnalia and absorb the festival into the official cult, the sol invicta ended up looking very much like the old Saturnalia. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, was brought up in the sol invicta cult, in what was by then already a predominantly monotheist empire: ‘It is therefore possible,’ says Dr Gwynn, ‘that Christmas was intended to replace this festival rather than Saturnalia.’

Gwynn concludes: ‘The majority of modern scholars would be reluctant to accept any close connection between the Saturnalia and the emergence of the Christian Christmas.’

Devout Christians will be reassured to learn that the date of Christmas may derive from concepts in Judaism that link the time of the deaths of prophets being linked to their conception or birth. From this, early ecclesiastical number-crunchers extrapolated that the nine months of Mary’s pregnancy following the Annunciation on March 25th would produce a December 25th date for the birth of Christ."

http://www.historyto...nvent-christmas

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Heretic Canucks All-Star

Heretic

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What's really ironic, is that those who hate Christians and are opposed to "Christmas" should be in fact embracing "Christmas".

Why? As others have said, it's just a way the powers that be at the time got their beliefs to coincide with the Christians ones.

In other words, like everything the great deceiver does, it's a lie.

"Celebrating Jesus' birthday is a subtle trick of Satan to get God's people to focus on Jesus' humanity rather than His deity."

So...if you're anti Christian, you should be pro Christmas - not against it.

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Heretic Canucks All-Star

Heretic

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I see your Matt Salusbury and raise you a Paul S. Taylor:

What are some of the most common misconceptions about Jesus Christ’s birth?

Why do many Christians celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December, if that is not when he was born?

The date was chosen by the Roman Catholic Church. Because Rome dominated most of the “Christian” world for centuries, the date became tradition throughout most of Christendom.

The original significance of December 25 is that it was a well-known festival day celebrating the annual return of the sun. December 21 is the winter solstice (shortest day of the year and thus a key date on the calendar), and December 25 is the first day that ancients could clearly note that the days were definitely getting longer and the sunlight was returning.

So, why was December 25 chosen to remember Jesus Christ’s birth with a mass (or Communion supper)? Since no one knows the day of his birth, the Roman Catholic Church felt free to chose this date. The Church wished to replace the pagan festival with a Christian holy day (holiday). The psychology was that is easier to take away an unholy (but traditional) festival from the population, when you can replace it with a good one. Otherwise, the Church would have left a void where there was a long-standing tradition, and risked producing a discontented population and a rapid return to the old ways.

http://www.christian...tchristmas.html

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Heretic Canucks All-Star

Heretic

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So you agree that a fraud has been practised by the Christian Church. Good to see you are learning.

The marketing of the Christian religion would light the way for the PR industry that would follow centuries later and like the Chrsitian Church would often make things up as they went along. Sell the sizzle not the steak.

The birth of Jesus on December 25 is told in the gospel of … No, it would seem, the date of Jesus’ birth is not marked in the gospels. A splinter group of Christians in Egypt celebrated his birth on January 6. That is until it was established in 375 AD at Antioch that the birth of Christ occurred on December 25. 375 AD? Antioch? It was through the Church of Antioch that Christianity was organised as a religion. The Roman Emperor Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus, or Constantine for short, inaugurated this change by adopting Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The synods established in the wake of Constantine’s conversion discovered, usefully, that the Bible was only a starting point. The message was there, but it needed more structure, something that would make it speak to the people. It also needed more bureaucracy, a thing at which the Empire excelled. The synods were in effect run by advertising executives who would raise Christianity from the status of cult to that of Organised Religion.

The establishment of the Christian religion throughout the Empire was the great marketing challenge of the fourth century. What could be done with a heathen people stepped in the traditions of Mithra, Adonis, Attis, and a whole host of deities who were, it was eventually decided, Satan in disguise? Jesus may be the junior deity, the Church conceded, but that is only because Satan had been hard at work inverting the Truth that Christianity revealed. This argument was not sufficient to quell the heathen superstitions. What could be done?

It was the venerable Bede who noted in The History of the English Church and People that miracles were an absolute necessity when bringing a religion to the masses. Once the message was established, he continued, there would be no need for miracles. In other words, it is not faith but a subtle combination of superstition and fear that are key factors in establishing a major religion. The age of Bede was thus one of hands-on marketing, and persuading the pastoral folk that their ways were not The Way. This involved a certain amount of creative thinking and the hijacking of key dates in the calendar.

The winter solstice celebrated on December 25 was a key date in the pagan calendar. It was understood to be the Nativity of the Sun, the turning point of the year that saw the power of the Sun on the rise again. The new Christians therefore appropriated it for their purposes. “Thus it was,” notes JG Frazer in his magisterial study of magic and religion, The Golden Bough, “that the Christian Church chose to celebrate the birth of its Founder on the twenty-fifth of December in order to transfer the devotion of the heathen from the Sun to him who was called the Sun of Righteousness.”

So just more myth, magic and fables. Coupled with stealing (or co-opting if you prefer that term) pagan holidays.

Follow the light of the word... plug in with BC Hydro.

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TOMapleLaughs Canucks All-Star

TOMapleLaughs

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Jesus Christ is true God and true man. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He died upon the cross, the Just for the unjust, as a substitutionary sacrifice, and all who believe in Him are justified on the ground of His shed blood. He arose from the dead according to the Scriptures. He is now at the right hand of the Majesty on high as our great High Priest. He will come again to establish His kingdom of righteousness and peace.

The second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is imminent and will be personal and visible. As the believer’s blessed hope, this vital truth is an incentive for holy living and sacrificial service toward the completion of Christ's commission.

•We give priority to world evangelization.

•We give priority in our missionary activity to evangelizing those people who have had the least opportunity to hear the gospel, thus expediting the return of Christ.

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