The Great Christmas Debate

Linguistics are important to trace cultural influences. I like your map but not too sure what it says exactly. Seems to me the British isles look very similar to Aquitaine (South West France) and Isle de France (Northern France) against that particular gene or set of genes used for the mapping.

You're right about certain things. After the Norman conquest, French was the language of court and the ruling aristos until Henry V. Even then English wasn't deemed to have the gravitas of other languages like French or Latin. This all changed with Shakespeare, when we realised that English was up there with the best. Our extensive vocabulary makes English more nuanced and specific than other languages. English is the only language to have a thesaurus. That's why it's so successful, and why we're conducting this conversation in English, not French. It's also why, unlike France, we don't have any laws prohibiting the use of Franglais in the public sphere.

There are thesauruses (thesauri?) in French, of course, and I would assume in other languages as well. But I agree that English includes a wider vocabulary than any other language, precisely because it has borrowed pretty much the entire French lexicon, and for some French words, it even imported them TWICE in different acceptations (e.g. petty/petite; ticket/etiquette; troop/troupe; parable/parabole). English even conserved some old French words that have disappeared from modern French!

This gives English an incomparable richness, no doubt about that, and may in part explain its success, although geopolitics and history are more convincing I think.

"C'est la life", as they say around here. :-)

Perhaps, you are viewing it from a European perspective. The U.S. is known for its continued adherence to the faith, in certain demographics. You also are discounting the number of practicing Christians in Africa and Asia and South America. You might have been more correct to say that European world hegemony is "just a passing fad."

Have a bless-ed day brother.

Unless, of course, one takes into consideration the opinion of the God misreprsented by such rites.

Heckofa PacMan game ya got there, farmer

Still just a passing fad.

Which none of us can possibly know, despite what a bunch of pre industrial people wrote down.

By and large Yuletide is about enjoying yourself and letting others enjoy themselves. As such I would rather participate in a tradition that believes people are intrinsically good, than one that says we're all wicked and sinful.

Yeah. Them stupid preindustrials, what the heck could they know?I don't follow that one, izzy. Are you saying a fresh coat of paint changes the decayed underpinnings?

All of my close family happen to be of non christmas persuasion for one reason or another. So every year I book several days at a nearby resort during school vacation. We have a good time with the resort and local activities. When the holiday specials come on TV, we go DVD or Netflix. Ask any of our kids if they miss christmas and they will look at you as if you were nuts.

It's just time off for us. We do it at other times in the year, also.

There's nothing decayed about it at all. The puritans tried to stop Christmas and look what happened to them. You may not it when people have fun, but that's just tough.

I've known a lot of people whose parents were JW's, as one they resented it. They all felt they'd missed out.

Maybe not a passing fad then, eh?
Besides, I'm not against having fun.

For that matter, the Puritans did not refuse to acknowledge the Christmas holiday because they were dead set against "fun," but rather because they knew there was no reliable basis for that claim about the birth of their boy Jeebus, and that it had previously been a pagan holiday. Where they were sadly wrong was in not understanding that the failure recognize the holiday took away a potential source of fun on the part of people who didn't care about the nuances.

"Yeah. Them stupid preindustrials, what the heck could they know?"



witches float?

The Sun goes round the Earth?

I doubt anyone, but a true believer, will dispute the fact that Christian evangelists co-opted pagan rituals in order to make conversion of the pagans more smooth.

Having said this, the West's celebration of Christmas for the longest time has been, indeed, a Christian celebration.

What it, generally, today has to do with Christianity is ambiguous at best, but what it has to do with ancient pagan beliefs is nil.

The Christian aspect of Christmas appeals to me only to the extent that it is traditional. My wife is a Christian, but our Christmas decorations are mostly secula (yes, of pagan origins). We have a couple of representations of the Manger scenario in our house and I'm perfectly fine with them because they evoke fond memories.

Why anyone would get all pissed off and bothered by the inclusion of Christ in the seasonal public square is well beyond me.

If someone has a bitch with the Christ in Christmas they are flogging a dead horse. Christmas in America has so little to do with Christ that those who find it offensive are clearly either, at best, provacateurs or, more likely, just assh*les.

This year is unique to the extent that for the next few weeks, the "Holiday" (to the extent one must associate the season with religion or cultural make believe) are strictly Christian. If you wish someone Happy Holidays you are off the temporal mark.

The so-called War on Christmas is being waged by a very loud and obnoxious few. It can't possibly affect true Christians who should, and probably do, shrug it off, but it is an example of the sort of mind that just has to demonstrate its relevance by f*cking with established traditions.

Of all the problems presented to we humans, the Christian aspect of Christmas has to be at the very bottom of the list.

I intend not to be obnoxious my friend, I appreciate and understand your stance on the matter, I merely like to ask questions that open up the debate.

If one believes in the God of the bible, and that God has any inclination toward judging you or I on some date in the future, we would surely need to perceive his standards in order to meet them. I try to understand Gods position on any matter by studying his past dealings with his people.

If you have no inclination toward the bible or God then nothing I say is of any consequence

Finn said.... "What it, generally, today has to do with Christianity is ambiguous at best, but what it has to do with ancient pagan beliefs is nil."

Not so. Both peasants and pagans were having a big knees up around that time of year already, and had been for a few hundred years at least before any god botherer turned up on the scene.
It was traditional to celebrate the solstice by slaughtering any animals that they couldn't afford to feed with stored food until spring. They were kept going until the solstice, then used in the feast, along with any cider or beer that they had stored.
Pagans and peasants were always prone to getting drunk, bloated and hungover during the third week in December, and consequently handed on this custom when the god squad did all they could to obtain control of the population.
As someone in the article says, they were celebrating the re-birth of the sun, not the son.
Admittedly, the modern day pagans are probably a few sprouts short of a Christmas dinner, but the original peasants were at least celebrating an actual, provable event on the calendar. An event which signalled that their land, which was all they had, was turning the corner on the way to becoming productive again.
Modern day Pagans still celebrate the summer and winter solstice, and the rest of the population would still have their winter celebration going, I'm sure, because we Europeans love an excuse for a knees up.
The only thing the Christians did was to move it by four days, and introduce a collection plate.



Snippet From the BBC article :

"Apparently, the season of good cheer did not start out as exclusively a Christian festival. According to Pagans, the early Christian church hijacked December 25 to celebrate the birth of Jesus because they saw that everyone was already having a good time and decided to take advantage of it.

Historical debate has been raging for a long time over the exact date of the birth of Jesus Christ, with estimates ranging from sometime in September to much later in February.

But the most important date in the festive season for Pagans is the winter solstice which always takes place around December 21. Called Yule, it is one of the traditional Celtic fire festivals and marks the return of the light after the longest night of the year."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/for_christmas/_new_year/pagan_christmas/37276.stm

Wrong Holmes. For that matter, come back in 300 years, and you might even say that the English language was a passing fad.

Repeating your "opinion," without any backup does not make it correct.

You have though taught me what so many Irish-Americans have realized much longer than many other ethnic Americans - the Brits tend to be assholes.

And we all know that Irish-Americans are the fount of all knowledge!

However, I tend to agree with you, Miller, apart from one small aspect.

You included the English.