A Secular Christmas

[Meta Blog]

Originally from The Charlotte Capitalist ™,

The attempts around the country to eliminate the term "Christmas" are being perpetrated largely in the name of "political correctness"--to avoid offending anyone, particularly Muslims, whose beliefs would exclude them from any Christmas celebrations. In line with this, I remember standing in line at the post office last year and noticed a holiday stamp poster. Listed were: Eid (last week of Ramadan), Hannukah, and ... Happy Holidays. The word "Christmas" was not mentioned! That was extremely offensive to this atheist.

More here. Similar here on why secularism is not the same as political correctness.

Edited December 9, 2005 by softwareNerd

[softwareNerd]

More from The Charlotte Capitalist ™,

But long about 354 A.D., the Romans, who had been converted to Christianity, began looking for ways to get people to stop celebrating these pagan rites during the time of Saturnalia, which involved exchanging gifts, freeing slaves, having a good time and even halting wars for the duration of the holiday. So they decided to appropriate the holiday for their own religious beliefs and made it a celebration of Christ instead.

Imagine that, Jerry [Fallwell]. Someone taking a religious holiday and turning it into something else.

So call it what you like, but it's really a celebration of nature, of the return of the sun, practiced long before Christ or the Christians came along and honoring pagan gods. So it could be - and has been - argued that celebrating the holiday is actually a violation of the first and fourth commandments.

From Marty Russell at the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal. Lot's more here.

Edited December 10, 2005 by softwareNerd

[softwareNerd]

The Telegraph, in UK, reports that the Archbishop of Canterbury has acknowledged that the concrete details of Christmas as visualized in the west, are legend rather than factl. He says:

• The date of XMas was probably based on the Winter festival, not because Christ was born in December
  
• The wise men are probably fiction, even though they're mentioned in one gospel
  

More interesting is that he condemns the "Jesus camp" style early indoctrination of kids, calling it "brainwashing"

It's good to see a very high-placed Christian leader refusing to back-track on the value of reason. The equivalent in Islam would be if someone like Sistani acknowledged that parts of the Koran may be taken allegorically. I applaud the arch-bishop for this.