Atheists Celebrating Christmas? |
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The Dark Elf
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: February 01 2011 Location: Michigan Status: Offline Points: 12701 |
Topic: Atheists Celebrating Christmas? Posted: December 12 2015 at 13:51 |
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You'll have to ask Pete Seeger.
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...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology... |
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lazland
Prog Reviewer Joined: October 28 2008 Location: Wales Status: Offline Points: 13249 |
Posted: December 12 2015 at 13:47 | |||
Is that in 3/4 time? |
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Enhance your life. Get down to www.lazland.org
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The Dark Elf
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: February 01 2011 Location: Michigan Status: Offline Points: 12701 |
Posted: December 12 2015 at 13:42 | |||
Give me that old time religion Give me that old time religion Give me that old time religion It's good enough for me. Let us worship like the Druids Running naked through the woo-ids Drinking strange fermented fluids And that's good enough for me. Let us worship Aphrodite
In her silky see-through nightie Though she's mean and somewhat flighty She's good enough for me. |
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...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology... |
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lazland
Prog Reviewer Joined: October 28 2008 Location: Wales Status: Offline Points: 13249 |
Posted: December 12 2015 at 11:04 | |||
Sigh. Christmas is actually a Christian festival. The clue, strangely enough, is in the name. The date we celebrate Christmas is actually the final day of the old Roman Saturnalia festival, a right old boozy and fun time, which ran for a week to 25 December. In the early days of the Christian Era, it was decided to appropriate the Saturnalia festival, because all pagan festivals were banned by the authorities, and to celebrate Christ's birth (the exact date of which is unknown) at the same time. So, to correct your post, Christmas is a Christian festival whose date falls upon an old pagan Roman festival, and was used to convert pagans at the time to the new state religion, successfully as it happens. |
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Enhance your life. Get down to www.lazland.org
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Formentera Lady
Forum Senior Member Joined: August 20 2010 Location: Germany Status: Offline Points: 1768 |
Posted: December 12 2015 at 10:55 | |||
I am currently living in Japan and what I notice is: They all have Christmas trees, Christmas decoration, Christmas cards etc. and seem to celebrate it. Yet, Japan is not a christian country at all. They have a cultural background of buddhism/shintoism and many people claim themselves to be atheists. The Christmas period is normal working time, no free days. Funny, isn't it?
Edited by Formentera Lady - December 12 2015 at 11:29 |
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TheLionOfPrague
Forum Senior Member Joined: March 08 2011 Location: Argentina Status: Offline Points: 1048 |
Posted: December 06 2015 at 15:37 | |||
Christmas is actually a pagan holiday. Almost nobody would celebrate it if only those who follow its religion should do so.
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I shook my head and smiled a whisper knowing all about the place
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JJLehto
Prog Reviewer Joined: April 05 2006 Location: Tallahassee, FL Status: Offline Points: 34550 |
Posted: December 06 2015 at 13:32 | |||
True point!
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The Bearded Bard
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: January 24 2012 Location: Behind the Sun Status: Offline Points: 12859 |
Posted: December 06 2015 at 13:09 | |||
Christmas? No. Yule? It's a pre-Christianization tradition in my country, and a family tradition to boot (a family that haven't been too Christian the last two generations anyway), so, naturally, yes!
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JJLehto
Prog Reviewer Joined: April 05 2006 Location: Tallahassee, FL Status: Offline Points: 34550 |
Posted: December 06 2015 at 12:46 | |||
Nearly all I know do, and I do myself.
I think no one, especially a lot of Christians, will disagree with this: It's become more or less a secular holiday anyway. As anyone who has ever worked retail in the US knows, the Christmas season has actually been slowly eroding family time since we know come in to work earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving night. People are there too shopping, and many were camped out the day before..... I don't see it being very long (maybe next year) that some places start doing away with Thanksgiving as a holiday and it's just another shopping day.
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Icarium
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: March 21 2008 Location: Tigerstaden Status: Offline Points: 34050 |
Posted: December 03 2015 at 16:03 | |||
Atheist have Feynman diagrms decorating the christmas tree.
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Man With Hat
Collaborator Jazz-Rock/Fusion/Canterbury Team Joined: March 12 2005 Location: Neurotica Status: Offline Points: 166178 |
Posted: December 03 2015 at 15:37 | |||
Everytime an atheist celebrates Christmas, a new branch of mathematics is formed.
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Dig me...But don't...Bury me
I'm running still, I shall until, one day, I hope that I'll arrive Warning: Listening to jazz excessively can cause a laxative effect. |
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HackettFan
Forum Senior Member Joined: June 20 2012 Location: Oklahoma Status: Offline Points: 7946 |
Posted: December 02 2015 at 13:24 | |||
I've always appreciated your holiday avatar, Dean.
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: November 26 2015 at 14:07 | |||
All those things are pretty rare in the Middle East too
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What?
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Icarium
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: March 21 2008 Location: Tigerstaden Status: Offline Points: 34050 |
Posted: November 26 2015 at 13:39 | |||
i also feel northern hemisphere christmas tradisions must be wierd for southern hemisphere people who has zero reindeers, nisser/santas, snow, winter, pine trees, do australians use eucalyptus for christmas tree?
Edited by Icarium - November 26 2015 at 13:40 |
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: November 26 2015 at 13:18 | |||
It's a dumb yet smart question because no one would ever ask if atheists celebrate the sabbath yet most of us avoid working at the weekend wherever possible regardless of whether we are religious or not. Like not-working on Sunday, having a slap-up feast and swapping gifts in the middle of winter is something that we do because everyone else does. We also like eating chocolate eggs in spring time. In modern times we tend to think of working life in the pre-industrial age as being pretty hard and gruelling, and indeed it was, yet while our pre-christian forebears worked a 7-day week, they worked fewer hours in each day than we do. What they didn't have was a two-week annual vacation to some exotic lands like some of us do, however, they had 8 mini-breaks each year and while they knew how to work hard, they also knew how to party hard (and basically any excuse for a party was fine by them). The early christians adopted some these feasts into their own religious calendar to ease the conversion of pagans to christianity. There is no historical or biblical justification for celebrating the birth of Jesus coincident with the winter solstice or his death coincident with the vernal equinox other than they were two major pagan festivals that the ancient Europeans were not going to give up without a fight. It is oft said that Easter is a moveable feast and so it is because the date is set as the first Sunday after the vernal equinox full moon. Which means that Good Friday/Easter Sunday are not the anniversary of the actual days Jesus died and was resurrected, but the days that christians adopted from the pre-christian calendar to commemorate his death and subsequent resurrection (probably because the Ēastre festival was a pagan feast that celebrated re-birth). Similarly, Christmas Day is not the anniversary day of the actual birth of Jesus (some 'scholars' with nothing better to do have attempted to calculate his probable birth-date based upon 'clues' in the bible but frankly you'd do just as well pulling random dates from a hat), but a commemoration day. The thing is... if an atheist calls it Christmas (or x-mas, where 'x' is pronounced "criss" as in criss-cross and not "ex"), Yule or Saturnalia they would still be using a religious name, just as calling it a 'holiday' is also non-secular since holiday (literally) means holy day. The only valid, secular, non-religious name for it is 'winter solstice' since that is an astronomical term.
Will I be celebrating the winter solstice? You betcha. Edited by Dean - November 26 2015 at 13:19 |
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What?
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emigre80
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 25 2015 Location: kentucky Status: Offline Points: 2223 |
Posted: November 26 2015 at 12:13 | |||
No one got the wrong idea, don't worry. At my (Catholic) mother-in-law's funeral, the service was weirdly amusing because none of her children were raised Catholic, and therefore none of the chief mourners had a clue as to what was going on - the priest kept throwing us surreptitious hand signals so we would know when to get up and down, and we all kept looking over our shoulders to figure out when to join in with responses or not. I nearly disgraced myself when communion was offered, with the extortion to drink the wine, which of course made me think of Eddie Izzard's take on communion ("Drink this wine, it's a nice Merlot") and I had to bite back laughter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hP9XWMDcDs |
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Guldbamsen
Special Collaborator Retired Admin Joined: January 22 2009 Location: Magic Theatre Status: Offline Points: 23098 |
Posted: November 26 2015 at 12:00 | |||
Just an fyi in regards to my previous post to Jonas: I was of course semi-joking. While it was a very funny experience, it is still horribly uncomfortable trying to keep from laughing in church...and neither my dad or I enjoy ridiculing other people's beliefs.
Just wanted to make that clear before anyone got the wrong idea
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The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
- Douglas Adams |
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dr wu23
Forum Senior Member Joined: August 22 2010 Location: Indiana Status: Offline Points: 20468 |
Posted: November 26 2015 at 11:34 | |||
We always celebrate Christmas....I'm the only non theist in the family though no one really attends church or talks much about it , but they all profess belief in some form of 'God'.
After dinner the men go out in the garage to smoke pricey cigars and drink B&B. I think I'll bring up the God thing this year and see what the guys have to say. |
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One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin |
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Guldbamsen
Special Collaborator Retired Admin Joined: January 22 2009 Location: Magic Theatre Status: Offline Points: 23098 |
Posted: November 26 2015 at 10:40 | |||
You should try it Jonas At least the church my grandparents attend every year in Brovst (Jylland baby!). They've got an old woman playing the organ, and every year she seems to have upped her dosage of LSD The prelude she did the last time I was there sounded like a particularly inebriated Ray Manzarek coxing completely out. Folks there seemed to enjoy every minute of it which surprised the hell out of me... Then when we hit 'Et barn er født i Betlehem' she'd sneaked in a girl choir that proceeded to sing hallelujah in all the wrong places. The additional trumpet player with hiccups was the icing on the cake. Safe to say that my dad and I had an extremely hard time holding our laughter back for something like an hour. Good times. |
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The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
- Douglas Adams |
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tamijo
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 06 2009 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 4287 |
Posted: November 26 2015 at 05:24 | |||
Off course atheists celebrate it, as a party and family thing, and why not.
The question seems to implicate that is should be strange or wrong, and that seems i bit strange.
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Prog is whatevey you want it to be. So dont diss other peoples prog, and they wont diss yours
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