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Atheists take aim at Christmas

JMak said:
Wait a second...you read that comment from me and interpreted it to mean that I was really saying just screw everyone else who is not Christian?

That is absurd.
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Not absurd at all. In my 3 years here, I've read thousands and thousands of posts and am pretty adept at understanding their meaning. You may want to relook at how you post, since you are saying your intention was not to communicate what you asserted.

To arrive at such an interpretation you must be imputing some motivations to me. Hence, it ain't my words, but your attribution to me of certain prejudices or biases.
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No, perhaps it is your communication style.

And I find that drawing an equivalency between door-to-door sales and missionary work to be gross. And the only reason such an equivalency is presented is to explicitly caricature Christians and others who do neighborhood work to spread their faith and gin up interest in their house of worship.
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This is a straw man. I find you suggesting that missionary work is not selling in the least as naive, or intentionally misleading. Not everyone who does good works in the neighborhood are trying to convert. But some are, and the mere definition of "missionary work" is defined as proselytizing and attempting to convert.



I know what it is intended to mean. I simply see the shift from Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays and banning Christmas decorations by local governments, public universities, and private firms because "Merry Christmas" (as the California State University at Sacramento and UNC-Charlotte administrators believed) was "ethnically insensitive" as just another in a long string of events removing Christianity from the public square.

Please don't act as though I merely have a problem with the words. My posts have clearly indicated what I perceive to be a much larger/broader issue here.
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Sure. But you have packaged your broader issue to include all those who use the term. Try not to post in absolutes and you may be able to communicate more clear. Not all who use the term "happy holidays" are attacking Christmas/Christians. In fact though some are, most are not. Try to remember this.
 
JMak said:
Again, I don't think it's an issue of anyone being forced to say Happy Holidays. It's just another example of Christian symbols bieng eliminated from public view. Whether by CSU-Sacramento or UNC-Charlotte banning Christmas decorations or NY state's Dept of Education prohibiting Christian Nativity scenes and creches from public school Christmas displays but permitting Menorahs and Muslim Moom and Stars. This was followed by Palm Beach, Fla banning Christian symbols in a public square while permitting a Menorah to be placed there. BTW - The NY State Dept of Ed won subsequent litigation when the SCOTUS denied certioari after a district court and circuit court approved of the dept's decision to prohibit displaying a nativity scene or creche.

Again the issue ain't simply about Merry Christmas being replaced by Happy Holidays. The issue is that this shift is just another in a long line of examples of a war against Christmas and the elimination of Christian symbols from the public square.

Show of hands...any communities in their state yet resorted to denying that a Christmas tree ain't really a symbol of Christmas like the NJ town cited in the WSJ article above? Or left to argue that a pine tree places next to Menorah constitutes equal treatment of religious symbols?

I mean, these are lengths people are going to segregate Chritianity from Christmas.
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The NJ town you are referring. I live within a few miles of that town. You have no idea of the demographics or the "feelings" of the area. The real reason the town defined the tree as a "tree of lights" to commemorate Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with segregating Christianity from Christmas in order to display the tree. It has more to do with some of the anti-semetism in the area.
 
jallman said:
No, not at all. Your analysis is severely flawed.

Christ's Mass is a separate celebration from Yule, entirely. The dates simply coincide as an attempt to keep pagans and Christians from killing each other on their holy days (holidays). And, yes, it was also an attempt at converting pagans but, in effect, the two holidays (holy days) are completely separate occurrences that now share a date or a season.

Christmas is Christ's Mass. Yule is the celebration of the winter solstice. A mixing of the traditions does nothing to diminish the origins of either.
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But it's just a holiday invented by one side to take the place of an already existing holiday.

In all honesty, it's not that I buy this argument personally; just as I don't buy the whole holiday argument because things do change. But Easter and Christmas are both based on pagan holidays and traditions (where you think the Easter Bunny came from?). In fact all the major holidays were born either for usurping already existing holidays or to enforce some necessary action (fasting during lent for instance).
 
Ikari said:
But the origins of the holiday are completely pagan. It was merely renamed by the Christians. Shouldn't the original be what we take as the true meaning?
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The actual Mass is Christian, you are equating the celebratory tradition to the rites, which is not correct.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
Not absurd at all. In my 3 years here, I've read thousands and thousands of posts and am pretty adept at understanding their meaning. You may want to relook at how you post, since you are saying your intention was not to communicate what you asserted.

No, perhaps it is your communication style.
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Fair points. I try to be careful which is why my comments tend to be quite long.

This is a straw man. I find you suggesting that missionary work is not selling in the least as naive, or intentionally misleading. Not everyone who does good works in the neighborhood are trying to convert. But some are, and the mere definition of "missionary work" is defined as proselytizing and attempting to convert.
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You're entitled to your opinion whether I am naive or misleading. But I just don't see a similarity between a door-to-door salesman and a church group walking the beat drumming up interest in their faith. Maybe that's because I am imposing my own personal perception of door-to-door salesman as annoyances and cutting church people some slack.

Sure. But you have packaged your broader issue to include all those who use the term. Try not to post in absolutes and you may be able to communicate more clear. Not all who use the term "happy holidays" are attacking Christmas/Christians. In fact though some are, most are not. Try to remember this.
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I haven't been talking absolutes. I have been citing examples of what I see as attacks against Christianity. I view this shift from Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays as just another example of that. That doesn't mean I think people saying Happy Holidays are individually attacking Christianity. I do think that this shift is to specifically remove Christianity from the public view.

I think this because on the polling data I posted earlier, the majority of Americans don't feel that the replacement of Merry Christmas with Happy Holidays is a good thing. I infer from that that reason it's not a good thing is because it is diminishing the true character of Christmas and the Christmas season. If Happy Holidays was really just a proxy for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's then we would not see Merry Christmas being replaced by Happy Holidays. Instead, they'd co-exist side-by-side.
 
jallman said:
The word's origin is what it is. I'm not sure what kind of "transgression" a word can make but I am sure God forgives those transgressions, too. LOL
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A word's origin is where the word came from... hence originate. A term is not confined to the same meaning as the term from which it originated.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
The NJ town you are referring. I live within a few miles of that town. You have no idea of the demographics or the "feelings" of the area. The real reason the town defined the tree as a "tree of lights" to commemorate Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with segregating Christianity from Christmas in order to display the tree. It has more to do with some of the anti-semetism in the area.
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I don't need to know the feelings of the townspeople there to recognize the hilarity of that situation.

What they were trying to do was avoid putting up a Menorah by calling the Christmas tree something other than what it was. It's just like avoiding calling Christmas Christmas to avoid offending someone.

It's removing the central point of the thing in question. The tree wuld not exist but for Christmas. To call it something else is simply dumb.
 
EgoffTib said:
A word's origin is where the word came from... hence originate. A term is not confined to the same meaning as the term from which it originated.
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Well for give the word for transgressing then. :lol:
 
Orius said:
The date of Christmas was deliberately chosen by the Church to coincide with Saturnalia in Rome, so that it could directly compete with the Pagan holidays that it was trying to oust. I don't think it had much to do with living in peace so much as it was about displacement.
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No, it was not. It was selected by the church to come exactly nine months after the celebration of the Annunciation to Mary of Christ's birth.
 
LaMidRighter said:
The actual Mass is Christian, you are equating the celebratory tradition to the rites, which is not correct.
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The RELIGIOUS rites of CHristmas are Judeo-Christian in origin. Some of the traditions in various parts of the world are cultural in nature, but the religious celebration is Judeo-Christian at its root.
 
ludahai said:
This is untrue, as I have already shown.
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No you haven't. Christmas was created to usurp the pagan holiday. It has pagan roots because it took on much of the holiday into itself and called itself something different and made a new celebration. But it's roots are pagan. Just because now you celebrate it as something else doesn't change what the holiday was originally. And since many are arguing stagnation and that the original meaning should be held, then the original meaning of the winter solstice celebration should hold too.
 
ludahai said:
The RELIGIOUS rites of CHristmas are Judeo-Christian in origin. Some of the traditions in various parts of the world are cultural in nature, but the religious celebration is Judeo-Christian at its root.
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True, but I was adressing the Pagan aspects that were accused of being stolen. While they are cultural in nature, the mass is the most important key of the season, I think many who try to use the Pagan holiday argument fail to see that the mass and celebration are not interchangeable.
 
Ikari said:
No you haven't. Christmas was created to usurp the pagan holiday. It has pagan roots because it took on much of the holiday into itself and called itself something different and made a new celebration. But it's roots are pagan. Just because now you celebrate it as something else doesn't change what the holiday was originally. And since many are arguing stagnation and that the original meaning should be held, then the original meaning of the winter solstice celebration should hold too.
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Have you seen my prior posts on this issue? All you have done is CLAIMED that the roots are pagan with no logic or evidence to back you up.

I have used SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE to give backing to the December date as well as a logical linkage between the celebrtion of the Annunciation and the fact that Christmas was celebrated exactly nine months later.
 
LaMidRighter said:
True, but I was adressing the Pagan aspects that were accused of being stolen. While they are cultural in nature, the mass is the most important key of the season, I think many who try to use the Pagan holiday argument fail to see that the mass and celebration are not interchangeable.
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All true. Furthermore, most of the so-called "pagan" influences in Christmas that have been cited here thus far came into the Christmas celebration CENTURIES after the December 25th date was set.
 
ludahai said:
Have you seen my prior posts on this issue? All you have done is CLAIMED that the roots are pagan with no logic or evidence to back you up.

I have used SCRIPTURAL EVIDENCE to give backing to the December date as well as a logical linkage between the celebrtion of the Annunciation and the fact that Christmas was celebrated exactly nine months later.
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Christmas was purposefully placed on that date to usurp the pagan holiday. Next you're going to tell me there's scriptural evidence for the Easter Bunny and that it's not really a pagan symbol of fertility. The base argument is stagnation and original intent. The original intent of the winter solstice celebration is the pagan holiday. If original intent holds over actual use then any winter solstice celebration is pagan.
 
jallman said:
It would be so nice if some hyperpartisan hacks would develop at least something resembling a sense of humor.
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I find humor in things that are funny. I find humor in the fact that you, of all people, are a fan of calling others hyperpartisan hacks. :2wave:
 
Gibberish said:
Atheists take aim at Christmas - CNN.com

You can see a picture of the sign at the link.

I agree with the Atheists right to display their own religious message next to the nativity scene but I don't agree with the way they are doing it. There is no reason for them to blatantly attack religion in their message. If they would have written the sign describing their believes and the purpose of Winter Solstice without the attacks then there would no issue here.

Do you think the atheists went to far with the sign? Should they not be able to place a sign at all?

I would love to agree with the Atheists here but they are making it hard.
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If Christians had posted a sign saying "there is no Alah and the Muslim faith hardens hearts" atheists would not hesistate to pull out pastaferians and go to war.
 
Jerry said:
If Christians had posted a sign saying "there is no Alah and the Muslim faith hardens hearts" atheists would not hesistate to pull out pastaferians and go to war.
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That's a bit of an assumption. Not all atheists are fans of the FSM.
 
EgoffTib said:
I find humor in things that are funny. I find humor in the fact that you, of all people, are a fan of calling others hyperpartisan hacks. :2wave:
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Well there's no accounting for the humor of others else Tom Green wouldn't be around at all.
 
EgoffTib said:
That's a bit of an assumption. Not all atheists are fans of the FSM.
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What's that picture in your sig? Isn't that the same thing other atheists on DP have had as their avatar? Hmm why yes it is. And even more atheists have passionatly supported a student's "right" to wear a pirate costume in class.

Cite all the exeptions to the rule you want, as exeptions prove the rule.
 
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