Do you celebrate Christmas? You may aswell celebrate Hitler day...

So, the moral of the story is this: do not ever celebrate anything on a day of the year upon which people were brutally tortured or murdered. And since that is every day of the year, do not ever celebrate anything,

Most people know that it is a pagan holiday. So....yeah, what's the point of this thread again?

what tripe

the tradition is celebrated by each family as they see fit regardless of whatever you found on the intrnet from 1846

who are you to tell me what my family celebrates ?

reply to post by DarknStormy


I think you're overreacting a bit to the whole "Christmas is shrouded in darkness" thing. Celebrations around the Winter Solstice have been common throughout human history, same for the Spring Equinox. It's true that some of these celebrations were decadent, even depraved, but that hardly gives us a reason NOT to celebrate today. The meaning and mythology surrounding a holiday can change over time.

Now I'm all for informing Christians that their saviors birthday party is actually based on a pagan holiday -it's the same as explaining that Easter Eggs and the Easter Bunny come down to us as pagan fertility symbols- but I fail to see why we should take such a thing SO seriously. It's not as if Christians haven't done HORRIBLE things centuries ago. I mean we had Inquisitions, people converted and enslaved, empires and kingdoms that bludgeoned whole regions into submission and then force-fed them Christianity.

The Bible is filled with strange and barbaric laws and ideas, ones that aren't all that different from paganism. For instance you mention that they killed a man during Saturnalia who was forced to embody evil - sounds like a SCAPEGOAT to me, an idea that can be found in the Bible. Imbuing an animal with your sins, ritualistically slaughtering it, sprinkling the blood on an altar, that's all in the Bible, as is the idea of executing citizens for even minor crimes in order to "purge the evil from among you".

If anything all of this is merely a history lesson, it doesn't mean we need to change the date that we celebrate on the calendar. Winter Solstice celebrations don't belong to one creed, one religion or one group of people, they can be enjoyed by everyone without any retroactive guilt trip about how weird our ancestors used to act.

Would you look at the date the same as you would Christmas or would your refuse to celebrate that day?

Contrary to popular belief society has actually been IMPROVING as far as morality is concerned so it would be surprising to see that kind of regression.

I'm not a religious person by any stretch. I do however celebrate Christmas,especially now that I have kids. It is somewhat common knowledge that it has pagan roots. It is also a constantly evolving holiday. Regardless of what it may have symbolized in the past, today (to me) it symbolizes good will towards your fellow man, time with your family,good spirits and plenty of other well intentioned things. It is kind of hard to ask people why they still celebrate Christmas given its "colorful" roots. Most of us are raised on it. It is deeply rooted in our culture at this point,and very hard to get away from (Many have tried!).Christian or not it is everywhere.If you choose to let it, X-mas spirit can bring you a lot of joy too,just like it does for your kids. It doesn't make you a bigot or Jew murderer advocate,unless you want it to I guess.Christmas has a lot of foggy roots many people don't know about. So thanks for posting this one.