My "Reason for the Season" Blog (religious)

[ogre]

if you don't like what's here, press Alt+F4, and i'll be notified immediately.
posted this in my blog a bit ago, wondered what the other christians thought of the contents.


This is for all of you "non christians" out there. Specifically, the ones who want to remove all references of God from our Government. Things like "In God We Trust", and "One nation under God", any religious symbols on federal land, the list goes on.

Do you know WHY you are celebrating CHRISTmas? It's the day we CHRISTIANS celebrate the birth of Jesus. Jesus, for those of you who don't know, is the only son of God, God in human skin, who died for my sins, and yours. CHRISTmas is not an economic stimulus, a reason to shop, or a reason to be lazy and stay home from work, it's a birthday. Not yours, but His. If you don't believe in God or Jesus, then you have no reason to celebrate, do you? So, this being said, I'll expect to see you at work both CHRISTmas eve and CHRISTmas day.

What? I don't celebrate Kwanzaa, so I don't take time off from work. Same thing with Hanukkah, I don't take 8 days off for that either. Why should a "non christian" like yourself celebrate a Christian holiday? How about another example of your hypocrisy?

Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, following His torture and subsequent death by crucifixion. He was whipped, beaten, tortured, and finally hung on a wooden cross by His wrists and ankles until he died. The only man who never committed a sin was mocked, spat on, and treated like a criminal, so that we may be viewed as righteous. He took your sin, and my sin, upon himself, and died a sinners death, so that we may be allowed into the kingdom of the father. But you don't believe any of this, so for Easter break, your kids should keep going to school. You shouldn't take any time off either, so you can show how "non christian" you are.

In closing, You're all invited to feast at the Father's table. You are His children, whether or not you want to admit it. Your salvation is waiting for you, already paid for, like tickets at will call. All you have to do to claim it is to turn your back on sin, and believe in Christ.

Merry Christmas

 

[chrisjp]

hmmmm intresting carefull we live in a free country.. nice thing about god is just like our country...free will. argue position but dont downplay. spirit will work if you let him

 

[notright]

Great point, also don't forget thanksgiving after all who are nonchristians giving thanks to?

 

[afterhours]

???

i spent 8 years of my life in a Catholic School.....until i escaped.

your relationship with god is supposed to be personal, why do christians feel the need to throw it in everybodies face.

 

[pbghost]

Great point, also don't forget thanksgiving after all who are nonchristians giving thanks to?

food, drink, and another day off work to watch football

 

[chrisjp]

???

i spent 8 years of my life in a Catholic School.....until i escaped.

your relationship with god is supposed to be personal, why do christians feel the need to throw it in everybodies face.

same reason some islamic do... they feel thier god "tells" them to. and they "pervert" it from there

 

[Projekt]

Ogre... You're asking for a fight. The fact is that the event known as christmas is an integration of Pagan rituals celebrating the Winter Solstice and its celestial events. It was a festive day well before the jesus birth mythology supplanted its true origin for the purpose of assimilating non-christians into forced servitude. Enjoy your Holiday..

 

[Projekt]

Great point, also don't forget thanksgiving after all who are nonchristians giving thanks to?

The origins of thanksgiving day are in harvest festivals that consistently take place throughout the northern hemisphere. A group of religious fanatics (puritans) escaped religious oppression in Europe only to develop their own brand of it in the early Americas. They labeled the harvest festival Thanksgiving and attached a god to it. The probable meat they feasted on was venison. Enjoy your Turkey.

 

[Dino]

The origins of thanksgiving day are in harvest festivals that consistently take place throughout the northern hemisphere. A group of religious fanatics (puritans) escaped religious oppression in Europe only to develop their own brand of it in the early Americas. They labeled the harvest festival Thanksgiving and attached a god to it. The probable meat they feasted on was venison. Enjoy your Turkey.

Venison cooked right, tastes awesome.

 

[Phil96]

Guess I'll stick with my bag of pork rinds

 

[Strife]

How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December 25?

A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people†to represent the “Lord of Misrule.†Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.†The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

F. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.â€[3] Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4] However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

G. Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.â€[5]

H. As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.â€[6] On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

What's not to love about Christian origin and Christmas?

 

[Strife]

When was Jesus born?

A. Popular myth puts his birth on December 25th in the year 1 C.E.

B. The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’ birth. The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the baptism of an adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked interest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.

C. The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery. His calculation went as follows:

a. In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City†[Rome]). Thus 1 AUC signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th year of Rome’s reign, etc.

b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.

c. Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years old, it was the 15th year of Tiberius reign.

d. If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius’ reign, then he lived 15 years under Augustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28th year of reign).

e. Augustus took power in 727 AUC. Therefore, Dionysius put Jesus birth in 754 AUC.

f. However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus’ birth in the days of Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC – four years before the year in which Dionysius places Jesus birth.

D. Joseph A. Fitzmyer – Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and former president of the Catholic Biblical Association – writing in the Catholic Church’s official commentary on the New Testament[1], writes about the date of Jesus’ birth, “Though the year [of Jesus birth is not reckoned with certainty, the birth did not occur in AD 1. The Christian era, supposed to have its starting point in the year of Jesus birth, is based on a miscalculation introduced ca. 533 by Dionysius Exiguus.â€

E. The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document believed to have been written in North Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus birth on March 28. Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE), thought Jesus was born on November 18. Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses that Jesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE.

 

[Strife]

The Origins of Christmas Customs

A. The Origin of Christmas Tree
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Treesâ€.[7] Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Church.

B. The Origin of Mistletoe
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim.[8] The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe†is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.[9]

C. The Origin of Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below).[10]

D. The Origin of Santa Claus

a. Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.

b. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devilâ€[11] who sentenced Jesus to death.

c. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.

d. The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.

e. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.

f. In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

g. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…†Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.

h. The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.

i. In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.

 

[Strife]

The Christmas Challenge

· Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly. For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept away in the season’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the celebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.

· Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the “curse of the Torah.†It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.

· Christmas is a lie. There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25th.

· December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.

· Many of the most popular Christmas customs – including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.



Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s real significance. If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history and meaning. “We are just having fun.â€

Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday. Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,†and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices. Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.

Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday. April 20th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches. They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day’s real history and their ancestors’ agony. Imagine that they initially objected, “We aren’t celebrating the Holocaust; we’re just having a little Hitlerday party.†If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?

On December 25, 1941, Julius Streicher, one of the most vicious of Hitler’s assistants, celebrated Christmas by penning the following editorial in his rabidly Antisemitic newspaper, Der Stuermer:

If one really wants to put an end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish blood, there is only one way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satan’s son, root and branch.

It was an appropriate thought for the day. This Christmas, how will we celebrate?

 

[Strife]

Now where did I leave my blinders?

 

[Phil96]

Interesting and encouraging that this site has such knowledable mofo's.

 

[Strife]

In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North American coast(at Plymouth Rock) delivering 102 Puritan exiles. The original Native people "Indians") of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off in great numbers. In 1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they left they took 24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox, syphilis and gonorrhea behind. That plague swept the so called "tribes of New England",destroyed some villages totally.

The Puritans landed and built their colony called "the Plymouth Plantation" near the desired ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet. They ate from abandoned cornfields grown wild. Historical accounts tell us that
only one Pawtuxet named Squanto had survived. He had spent the last years as a slave to the English and Spanish in Europe. The Pilgrim crop failed miserably, but the agricultural expertise of Squanto produced 20 acres of corn, without which the Pilgrims would have surely perished. Squanto spoke the colonists' language and taught them how to plant corn and how to catch
fish. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit.

These were very lucky breaks for the colonists. Thanks to the good will of the Wampanoag, the Puritans not only survived their first year but had an alliance with the
Wampanoags that would give them almost two decades of peace. In celebration of their good fortune, the colony's governor, William Bradford, declared a three-day feast after the first harvest of 1621. It later became known as "Thanksgiving", but the Pilgrims never called it that.

The "Indians" who attended were not even invited. The pilgrims only invited Chief Massasoit and it was Massasoit who then invited ninety or more of his "Indian"
brothers and sisters to the affair to the chagrin of the indignant Europeans. No turkey, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie was served, no prayers were offered and the "Indians" were not invited back for any other such meals. The Pilgrims did however consume a good deal of brew on that day. In
fact, each Pilgrim drank at least a half gallon of ale a day which they preferred even to water.

The peace that produced the Thanksgiving Feast of 1621 meant that the Puritans would have fifteen years to established a firm foothold on the coast. Until 1629 there were no more than 300 Puritans in New England,
scattered in small and isolated settlements. But their survival inspired a wave of Puritan invasion that soon established growing Massachusetts towns north of Plymouth; Boston and Salem. For ten years, boat loads of new settlers came.

As the Europeans' numbers increased, they proved not nearly as generous as the Wampanoags. On arrival, the Puritans discussed "who legally owns all this land? "Massachusetts Governor Wintrop declared the "Indians" had not "subdued" the land, and therefore all uncultivated lands
should, according to English Common Law, be considered "public domain." This meant they belonged to the king. In short, colonists decided they did not need to consult the "Indians". When they seized the new lands, they only had to consult the representative of the crown (meaning the local governor).

The Puritans embraced a line from Psalms 2:8, "Ask of me, and I shall give thee,
the heather for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of he earth for thy possession."

Contrary to popular mythology the Pilgrims were no friends to the local Indigenous People ("Indians"). A company of Pilgrims led by Miles Standish actively sought the head of a local chief. Standish eventually got his bloody prize. He beheaded an Indian named Wituwamat and brought the head to Plymouth where it was displayed on a wooden spike for many years.

In about 1636, a force of colonists trapped some seven hundred Pequot Indians near the mouth of the Mystic River. English Captain John Mason attacked the Indian camp with "fire, sword, blunderbuss, and tomahawk." Only a handful escaped and few prisoners were taken.

"To see them frying in the fire, and the streams of their blood quenching the same, and the stench was horrible, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice to the great delight of the Pilgrims, and they gave praise thereof to God."

The Puritan fathers believed they were the Chosen People of an Infinite God and that this justified anything they did. They were Calvinists who believed that the vast majority of humanity was predestined to damnation.

During this period a day of thanksgiving was also proclaimed in the churches of Manhattan. The European colonists declared thanksgiving days to celebrate mass murder more often than they did for reverence, harvest or friendship.

In 1641 the Dutch governor Kieft of Manhattan offered the first "scalp bounty". His government paid money for the scalp of each "Indian" brought to him. A couple of years later, Kieft ordered the massacre of the Wappingers, a "friendly tribe". Eighty were killed and their severed heads were kicked like soccer balls down the streets of Manhattan. One captive was castrated,
skinned alive and forced at points to eat his own flesh while the Dutch governor watched and laughed. Then Kieft hired the notorious Underhill who had commanded in the Pequot War to carry out a similar massacre near Stamford, Connecticut. The village was set on fire, and 500 "Indian" residents were put to the sword.

In their victory, the settlers launched an all out genocide plot against the remaining Native people. The Massachusetts government, following what appeared to be the order of the day, offered twenty shillings bounty for
every "Indian" scalp, and forty shillings for every prisoner who could be sold into slavery. Soldiers were allowed to enslave and rape any "Indian" woman or enslave any "Indian" child under 14 they could kidnap. The "Praying Indians" who had converted to Christianity and fought on the side of the European troops were accused of shooting into the treetops during battles
with "hostiles." They were enslaved or killed. Other "peaceful Indians" of
Dartmouth and Dover were invited to negotiate or seek refuge at trading
posts and were sold onto slave ships. Colonial law further gave permission
to "kill savages ("Indians") on sight at will."

Any goodwill that may have existed was certainly now gone and by 1675 Massachusetts and the surrounding colonies were in a full scale war with the great chief of the Wampanoags, Metacomet. Renamed "King Phillip" by the White man, Metacomet watched the steady erosion of the lifestyles and
culture of his people as European laws and values engulfed them. The syphilis, gonorrhea, smallpox and all types of "white man" diseases took their toll. Forced ultimately into humiliating submission by the power of a distant king, Metacomet struck out with raids on several isolated frontier towns. The expedient use of the so-called "Praying Indians" (natives converted to their version of Christianity), ultimately defeated the great "Indian" nation, just half a century after the arrival of the European.

When Captain Benjamin Church tracked down and assassinated Metacomet, his body was quartered and parts were "left for the wolves." The great "Indian" chief's hands were cut off and sent to Boston and his head went to Plymouth where it was set upon a poke on Thanksgiving Day, 1767. Metacomet's nine-year-old son was destined for execution, the Puritan reasoning being that the offspring of the "Devil" must pay for the sins of their father. He was instead shipped to the Caribbean to serve his life in slavery.

In the midst of the Holocaust/Genocide of the Red Man and woman, Governor Dudley declared in 1704 a "General Thanksgiving" not to celebrate the brotherhood of man, but for:

[God's] infinite Goodness to extend His Favors... In defeating and disappointing.... the expeditions of the Enemy [Indians] against us, And the good Success given us against them, by delivering so many of them into our hands...


Whose Thanksgiving Have You Been Celebrating???

 

[Phil96]

Hey Strife, your interesting. BTW can you name the old fart here?

 

[Mr Brown]

Regardless of the origins, I for one am completely sick of the commercialization of every holiday, Christmas particularly. Advertising tells you not to be satisfied with anything less than the most expensive, best performing, latest edition of whatever. People go into debt racking up bills for gifts they don't need to buy, for fear that somebody will out-do them, or not like them if they don't. It's utterly ridiculous. Gift giving is about the thought that somebody cares about you enough to include you in their plans. Some of the best gifts I have recieved cost little or nothing, but were thoughtful and all the more pleasing because of that. Christ lived a quiet, modest life. If, as so many people want to belive, christmas is a celebration of His birth, shouldn't the way we act more closely reflect his humility, frugality and kindness?
It's not about who spent the most. If you have plenty, by all means give more, but please don't equate cost of a present with the amount of love a person has for you. They are not the same .....

 

[kml]

Do you know WHY you are celebrating CHRISTmas?

I get gifts?

By the way, where the he!! is my mini bike santa? I asked for one from 1968 till 1977.

It better be under the tree this year ya big red fat bastid.

cheers
ken