Shhhhhh!!!! That's our little secret, and how did you know about the shaver?
I had a hint when you complained about beard-burn.
Damn!!! It was suppose to be a surprise. Now I have to go find another gift. Keep my seat warm, ok ;-)
me and missus M, we got a thang going on. (nothing to do with xmas)
Yeah, it's different, but just as exciting :-D
snood asked me this question on another thread and I was cagey, so I thought it was best if I came correct.
I'm really a good bit more of an agnostic than I am an atheist (though there are atheists in my family, as well as Deists and Christian fundamentalist Bush-voting morons, for that matter). But the hijacking of all things Christianity-related by the Republican Party during the last election cycle motivated me to hook up with (in middle-aged white man parlance this means subscribing and donating money) the Sojourners folks. They have a marvelous article in the most recent e-newsletter that I'm going to excerpt more than is probably copyright-allowable. It's entitled
"Putting the Herod back into Christmas":
Quote:Our culture loves a sentimental Christmas, and the Christmas carols that we sing are a big part of that. The words often paint an idyllic picture of sanitary bliss that has very little to do with the reality of what Jesus came into this world to do. ...
But this sanitization of the Christmas story is a relatively recent development. It's interesting that before the Victorian era, Christmas songs were much more likely to reflect the reality of Jesus' entry into our world. Carols would not hesitate to refer to the blood and sacrifice of Jesus or the story about Herod slaughtering the innocent children. As an example of the contrast, read through the words of "Away in a Manger." Jesus is the perfect baby, and "No crying he makes...." My guess is that Jesus cried a lot. We know from the gospels that the more Jesus saw of the world in which he lived, the more he mourned and wept regularly. A Jesus who doesn't weep with those who weep, a Jesus who's just a sentimental myth, may be the one that our culture prefers, but that Jesus can do nothing for us.
*snip*
Another danger of sentimentality is that we tend to lose interest in the parts of the story that are not so comfortable. We smile at the warm cozy nativity scene, but have you ever spent a night in a barn? Or given birth in a barn? The reality is very different. Most scholars suggest that in Luke's account it's not just that the inns were full but that Mary and Joseph were forced to take the barn because their family had rejected them. Joseph has relatives or friends of relatives in Bethlehem. So rather than being received hospitably by family or friends, Joseph and Mary have been shunned. Family and neighbors are declaring their moral outrage at the fact that Joseph would show up on their doorsteps with his pregnant girlfriend.
No sooner have the wise men left the stable then King Herod plots to kill Jesus. He is so determined that he is willing to sacrifice many innocent lives in order to get to this one baby. Herod recognizes something about Jesus that in our sentiment we fail to see: that the birth of this child is a threat to his kingdom, a threat to that kind of domination and rule. Jesus challenges the very power structures of this evil age. Herod has all the male infants in Bethlehem murdered. Not so cozy. This is the Jesus who entered the bloody history of Israel, and the human race.
But we don't want to think about Herod. Van Horn calls him the "Ebenezer Scrooge without the conversion, the Grinch without a change of heart." We Christians like to talk about putting Christ back into Christmas, but let's not forget to put Herod back into Christmas.
Herod represents the dark side of the gospel. He reminds us that Jesus didn't enter a world of sparkly Christmas cards or a world of warm spiritual sentiment. Jesus enters a world of real pain, of serious dysfunction, a world of brokenness and political oppression. Jesus was born an outcast, a homeless person, a refugee, and finally he becomes a victim to the powers that be. Jesus is the perfect savior for outcasts, refugees, and nobodies. That's how the church is described in scripture time and time again - not as the best and the brightest - but those who in their weakness become a sign for the world of the wisdom and power of God.
Do you remember (watching the animated movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) the island of misfit toys where all the strange and unusual toys lived? The island is an interesting picture of our church communities. The church is not a gathering of people who have it all together, who look and act alike, who have no problems to speak of. The church is a community of people who are broken and needy, who in their weakness trust in the grace of God. This is the kind of church that Jesus the outcast, the misfit has created. The gospel that acknowledges brokenness, pain, and the tragedy of life is good news for us all. There is hope for all who find this season tinged with despair or pain. Perhaps we mourn the loss of a loved one and their absence on Christmas day is more painful each year. Perhaps our lives are full of struggle. Perhaps we despair over the state of our world.
The news of ever-increasing poverty in this country and the news of the war in Iraq - whose mission was supposed to be accomplished by now but is clearly not - is a mess and getting worse by the day with more and more casualties. A war, like most wars, that has not lived up to its promises seems so much out of sync with the message that we sing in our Christmas carols. The Jesus of the Bible came to give life to those who are living with real grief and pain. This is not often the stuff of our Christmas carols.
The greatest Christmas song is that of Mary's, found in the second chapter of Luke:
He has shown strength with his arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
And lifted up the lowly;
He has filled the hungry with good things,
And sent the rich away empty.
Mary's "Magnificat" tells us that this new king is likely to turn the world upside-down. Mary's declaration about the high and mighty being brought low and the lowly exalted is at the heart of the Christmas story. The son of God is born in an animal stall. Mary herself is a poor young woman, part of an oppressed race, and living in an occupied country. Her prayer is the hope of the downtrodden everywhere, a prophecy that those who rule by wealth and domination, rather than serving the common good, will be overturned because of what has just happened in the little town of Bethlehem. Her proclamation can be appropriately applied to any rulers or regimes that prevail through sheer power, instead of by doing justice.
This story that begins in a smelly barn finally ends on a cross. By human standards it is a message of weakness. Christmas reminds us that our God has come into our broken world, and that human judgments are not the last judgment, human justice is not the last justice. The power that humans exercise over us is not the last power. As we enjoy our caroling, let's remember to put Herod back into Christmas.
Amen.
Merry Christmas.
And Happy Holidays.
That's quite an article, PDiddie. I'm not a Christian, but when I first read the New Testament, as part of a college class, I was fascinated by Jesus--and perplexed at how the religion evolved from what I was reading. Your article helps explain what it really was about back then.
And a Merry Christmas to you!
And to you and yours, Musketeer (including, with only a small bit of begrudgment, the Atlanta Braves).
I forgot to link to the entire article, I see. Here 'tis:
Putting the Herod back into Christmas
Here's something that I found that I basically knew but wanted to verify:
Why is there an X in Christmas? (X-mas)
A seasonal and interesting etymology question: was the X a "commercializing" thing to make Christmas more edible for non-Christians? Is the X really a cross?
Neither, in fact; it appears that the X is really the first letter of the word Xtos (ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ), which in Greek is the word for Christ.
Xmas
SYLLABICATION: X·mas
PRONUNCIATION: krsms, ksms
NOUN: Christmas.
ETYMOLOGY: From X, the Greek letter chi, first letter of Greek Khrstos, Christ. See Christ.
USAGE NOTE: Xmas has been used for hundreds of years in religious writing, where the X represents a Greek chi, the first letter of , "Christ." In this use it is parallel to other forms like Xtian, "Christian." But people unaware of the Greek origin of this X often mistakenly interpret Xmas as an informal shortening pronounced (ksms). Many therefore frown upon the term Xmas because it seems to them a commercial convenience that omits Christ from Christmas.
Sources:
Pulseplanet: Etymology of Christmas
Happy Holidays everybody, whatever your religion or lack thereof.
Antoher theory is that the X is a symbol of the "Chi Rho" from the legend of the vision seen by Constantine that turned him to Christianity.
I always thought it was just an abbreviation (until the caterwauling of Christians about it, which I first heard over twenty years ago).
I found something else I thought was interesting enough to share:
Quote:Roman Mithras was perhaps the greatest rival to early Christianity for many reasons. As well as being a popular pagan religion practised by the Roman Army, Mithraism had many similarities to Christianity. Mithras was born of a virgin, remained celibate, his worship involving baptism, the partaking of bread marked with a cross and wine as sacrificial blood, held Sundays sacred and he was born on the 25th of December. Mithraists called themselves 'brother' and were led by a priest called 'father' (Pater). The symbol of the father were a staff, a hooked sword, a ring and hat.
These similarities frightened the early Christian leaders - that almost 500 years before arrival of Christ all of the Christian mysteries were already known. To combat this, Christian writers said that the Devil knew of the coming of Christ in advance and had imitated them before they existed in order to denigrate them. As Christianity gained strength and became the formal religion of the Roman Empire, the 'Cult of Mithras' was one of the first pagan cults to come under attack in the fifth century; Temples of Mithras, like most other pagan Temples, were destroyed and Churches build on them.
Mithras and Mithraism
Great info PD and Foxy. When I taught Humanities, we had guest speakers from various religious groups. We taught the Bible as literature, and the kids were fascinated with the entire project.
That's the way it should be, you know.
Who knew that they (indeed some among us on this very board) were teaching such blasphemy at our institutes of higher learning? :wink:
The Bible as a work of literature truly has some of the best stories, the best poetry, the best prose you will find in any book, from any author (or collection of authors). It even entertains as excellent science fiction (rivers turning to blood, flaming hail falling from the sky, a man swallowed by a whale spends extended time in beast's belly before being spat out upon the beach, alive, etc.)
Of course it starts to be devalued once it is proselytized as gospel. A great irony is that many of the Bible's most fervent fans don't see or understand this.
Letty, I agree that Bible can be taught as literature, and it can also be taught as pure history so long as the theological perspective and point of view contained in the Bible is not perceived as more than theological perspective and point of view. I teach it as both literature and history and as illustration for the theology of a very interesting group of people of ancient times. One cannot understand the content of the Bible, I believe, if one does not consider all three aspects.
Absolutely, Foxy. Present it, and let the students make their own choices. The point being that no one has the right to impose theology on anyone.
Goodnight all,
From Letty with love
The Bible as "pure history"... ?
Pity. how the biblical foremother of us all (Noah's wife) was considered so historically unimportant that her name went unrecorded.
It was either an intentional slight to all women... or is it just an example of sloppy "history".( ? )
I find THAT omission (Noah's wife's name) to be significant of just how flawed the OT is as a "Historical document".
What I teach is how to get inside the head of the people who wrote the text Magus. The geneologies proceeded from the men and therefore it is the men who were recorded unless there was sufficient significance to bring the wife into it and that was generally to record a miracle or calamity of some sort to move the story along. The one exception were Jacob's two wives and their maidservants who became the 'four mothers of Israel' when they bore him the twelve sons who would become the twelve tribes of Israel. Were these stories, including that of Noah, history or allegory? There is a wide difference of opinion on that, but their inclusion in the text was for the specific purpose of showing God with the chosen people and to move the story line along to its conclusion.
And then, back then, political correctness was not a huge concern. It is tough attempting to judge a any time in history--even 50 years ago-- by modern standards, culture, morality, etc. It is even more futile to attempt to do so for a people who lived many millenia ago.
That is particularly true of the New Testament text referred to as "The Christmas story" in Matthew and Luke of the New Testament, but completely omitted from all other New Testament writings. And Matthew and Luke sharply contradict each other on the sequence of events--the text itself is not reliable history. But both caught the spirit of wonder and majesty associated with the birth of Christ. And Christians in one way or another have been celebrating that ever since.
