The Roman Catholic writer Mario Righetti candidly admits that, "to facilitate the acceptance of the faith by the pagan masses, the Church of Rome found it convenient to institute the 25th of December as the feast of the birth of Christ to divert them from the pagan feast, celebrated on the same day in honor of the 'Invincible Sun' Mithras, the conqueror of darkness"
you can pretend its about jesus. it's really about family and love and humanity. and pagan sun gods.
yeah
1947-december11-2002
comments
re: huh?
from: niv (2002-12-12 10:42:18)
i didn't call christmas a pagan holiday. unless you are colin, in which case i did. but he doesn't believe in anything anyways.
i'm just tired of people saying i ruined christmas, because i celebrate it even though me and my family have no interest in jesus. all of a sudden... christmas has become a huge holiday for jesus. and i used to live in the south, and nobody gave me shit then. it's lame and weak and misses the entire point.
and the bottom line is - yes, everyone fucking knows the catholic church used christ's birthday as propaganda for bringing in the pagan masses. a quick search on google shows that the bible does not support a december birthdate, but instead a late september/early october one.
i find calling christmas a religious holiday, and thus claiming i have no business celebrating it, quite lame. if anything, i shouldn't celebrate easter.
also, who are you?
re: also
from: niv (2002-12-12 11:00:11)
points b and e from above annoy me to no end, as they
1) claim that history is nonsense, because no one can ever both relate a story and be fair about it
2) they remind me of things andrew rosskamm would say when he had nothing useful to say.
re: the post-modernist/ structuralist, and deconstruct
from: the guy on the couch (2002-12-12 14:06:38)
in your original post, which has sparked this hootinannyholalabalark, you DID refer to christmas as a pagan holiday-- and i quote "arjune doesn't celebrate this PAGAN HOLIDAY because he is a pagan."
- i don't recall anyone ever saying to you, at least when i've been around, that you have ruined christmas because you celebrate it and aren't christian (but you have...jk jk, just joshin with ya.) i think your boston friends aren't very nice if that's what they are saying.
-society has made christmas into something much more than just a religious holiday and so i agree with you on your general statement that christmas is about celebrating humanity and reconnecting w/ the ones you love and all that mushy stuff. you're a history major, of course one cannot help but be biased in their research, perspective, etc...i'm surprised you didn't call me out on the deconstructionist/structuralist/post-structuralist rhetoric.
re:
from: niv (2002-12-12 14:17:38)
1a) dammit caroline
2b) i was joking about it being pagan, but it became a thing here, so i sorta went balls out on it
3c) dammit caroline, you aren't a guy on the couch
re: niv is stupid
from: sheridan (2002-12-12 15:22:31)
moron,
so...i decide to have a little fun by joking around with you about pagans...figuring you'll use intelligence to see that it was me...while i was sitting back messing with you...i had a lot of fun utilizing my developing historical skill to pretend to be serious. man, you really missed the boat on this one, chach. -SHERIDAN
re:
a. who is this historian Righetti...i've never heard of him and so what he says must all fall under the category of poppycock.
b. pulling the old Saturnalia celebration out of the bag, ehh. Man those crazy pagans had a party for everything.
c. the "true" past, as you and Mario have so eloquently conjured up, cannot be reconstructed because it is contingent on the vantage point of those seeking it.
d. your original statement called Christmas a pagan holiday. it is a Christian holiday, which was supposedly calculated by Pope Julius 1 to occur on a feast day for pagan peoples. are you saying that just because of this initial, somewhat unscrupulous manner of recruiting Christians, people today still only celebrate Christmas in conjunction with Mithras (which sounds like mithriel- 7 days friend) and so they are still pagans? or are you saying that Jesus is the sun god?
d. Did you know that all across Europe, the winter solstice was traditionally a celebratory time. The Norse celebrated Yule from Dec. 21 through January. In fact, most "pagan" religions had celebrations for everything under the SUN. Finding a day that does not fall under a pagan celebration or feast period is a hearty task. (see b)
e. every word just written means nothing. each word derives its meaning from other words and so we cannot truly understand what any word means. every word means something else depending on the interpreter. in a sense we are all pagans of language, knowing nothing, saying everything and believing only what we choose; what we see as the most rational and convenient in our lives; which is ultimately determined by our upbringing, which is determined by our parents upbring and so on and so on...