The Great Christmas Debate

Who cares? Keep Christmas Pagan!

Absolutely!

Bring on the wassailing!

The innovation of gift giving would correlate to the Christian tradition of charity, perhaps. Or, in a more religious sense, the gifts the Three Wisemen gave the baby Jesus. Anyway, if anyone tries to take the midwinter feast away from Gentiles, the economy will plummet, and then the Protestants get upset.

I've got some cider on the go especially. Everything about Christmas is brilliant, except for the churchy stuff.

A damn fine midwinter pagan celebration thoroughly knicked and assimilated by those pesky god botherers.

Mulled cider........mmmmmmm

Christianity is very good at taking something and making it a bit shittier.

Just stick 'Christian' in front of something to make it a bit worse.

Christian School
Christian Party
Christian Television
Christian Stories
Christian Games
Christian Drinks

And the one exception to the rule, Christian Rock, that's not a bit worse, it's complete ****.

Origins don't matter much, it's what you make of them. The Brits are of French origin and look at the mess they're in...

French origin?

Explain please....

The British aristocrats are all of French origin, by way of the Plantagenets. Their motos remain in French to this day : Dieu et mon droit; Honni soit qui mal y pense... All the Fitzpatrick and Fitzgerald etc. are etymologically "le fils de Patrick, le fils de Gerard". Half of the English vocabulary is of French origin, too.

Christmas clearly originated as a Pagan celebration, but I don't see why everyone can't continue to enjoy it, even the Christians.

Phew! The Aristos....... I thought for one ghastly moment you were referring to the other 99.5% of us.

The Norman (Norse men.....of Scandinavian origin) aristos were indeed French speakers by the time of our invasion.
The Royal Court spoke French as it set them apart from the plebs, and we do indeed have quite a few French words embedded in our language, as they have ours nowadays..... from Oct 2013....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10397892/Boycott-the-English-language-says-top-French-intellectual.html

.....but the only thing the ordinary people of France and Britain have in common, is a regular desire to chuck cannonballs at each other.

Your history sucks. The Plantagenets were a single, dynastic family. The first Plantagenet king, Henry II, ascended the throne in 1154, almost a century after the Norman invasion. As has been pointed out, people of French descent account for very little of the population of the UK.

There's nothing unique about the fact that virtually all our Christmas traditions have pagan origins. (And that includes gift-giving, foofie; gifting was always a part of the Yule tradition). Every significant Christian holiday has pagan origins, not just Christmas. Candlemass (Feb.2) was originally a weather prognostication event among the ancient Celts who called on their goddess Bride (pronounced Bree-dee) to help out. After the Christians took over, Bride became St. Bridget. St. Valentine's Day was originally the feast of Lupercalia in the Roman Empire (including the province of Britannia). It was a fertility feast. Easter,in English still retains the original etymological derivation of the name from the Germanic feast of Oester, another fertility rite.(That it has everything to do with fertility and nothing with a Christian Resurrection is evidenced by the Easter symbols -- eggs, a sexually prolific rabbit, etc. etc.)

I could go on and on, through Midsummer's (which the Christians insist is the feast day of John the Baptist), through All-Hallows Eve (which we now call Halloween and which used to be Samhain, the Celtic New Year's) right into the Feast Day of St. Lucy (or Santa Lucia) on Dec. 13, which used to correspond to the actual Winter Solstice before Pope Gregory reformed the calendar.

But, what's the point? As someone else has already suggested, the important thing is what a celebration means to the celebrant, not the origin of rites themselves.

Normands were one of the French 'nations'. William also gathered French knights from all over France to prepare his invasion. Kings that are considered quintessentially English, like Richard Lionheart were in fact culturally French. Richard didn't speak a word of English and spent very little time in England. He used to stay in Toulouse or wherever his wars would bring him.

As for the cannonballs, well, that's so passé...

I doubt there's a reliable estimate of "people of French descent" in the UK, but given the geographic proximity with France and the way the two nation's history is intertwined, it's bound to be a significant %.

Normans were Vikings who settled in France from about the 9th Century onwards.The French King accepted their control of Normandy in 911 and gave them the titles Dukes of Normandy.
Gradually, they became integrated with the local French, and practised a particularly ruthless form of feudalism that enabled them to turn out well trained, well equipped, fearless warriors.
They (not France) conquered England and parts of Ireland, Scotland, Sicily and at one time they actually ran the Christian kingdom in the Holy land.

Quite a few Norman (not French) castles still survive today....The Tower of London, Windsor Castle, Warwick, Chester etc etc.

Everyone knows that the plante genet (broom flower) dynasty was French, but they pretty well fizzled out in a blink of England's long history, and their DNA certainly didn't permeate down as far as the aforementioned 99.5% of us.

I would say that we (British) have infiltrated French life FAR more than they have ours. Just look at how many of us now live in the Dordogne, or the Poiteau-Charente, not to mention Brittany.

And as for being passé.....the ineffectual plante genet lot were done and gone over 600 YEARS AGO!
How much more passé can you get? (Insert smiley face here )

We are talking of origins, so yeah, that's usually in the past. Brits don't want to make war with the French nowadays. As you pointed out, they'd rather buy a house there. The English weather probably explains why not very many French want to retire in England...

What you guys call the Normans were culturally and physically French. They were assimilated and part of the realm. And as I explained, the knights who formed Guillaume's army were from all over France. So France invaded England on 1066 and hence today 50% of English is from old French, not from old Norman...

You are very right my friend, in that the modern day celebration of all these events can mean many things to many people. If one has no interest in God, then Christmas would be a great celebration that essentially caps off a good year. Drink and be merry

If however one has a faith in the God of the bible, there are many records of his interactions with the Israelites who took on countless pagan traditions as their own, and he didnt appear to be very fond of them doing so, which opens up the question, Is it possible that God could be unhappy with our current ritual mash-up?

Not really, Christianity's just a passing fad. It'll all work out in the end.