Sleepyjack

Isn't christmas about the birth of Jesus Christ?
How did the idea of a fat jolly old guy bringing present to everyone in the world, come about?

The same with Easter? it's meant to be about the death and resurection ( i think ) of jesus, So what does a giant bunny, bringing and hiding chocolate eggs in the night, have to do with it?

Maybe, soon, they'll have a new holiday on the 11 of September. Where some new mascot will bring some kind of product in a miraculous way to people around the world?

Seriously though, i would like to know?

Kush

I blame Coca Cola for Santa.

I think it was really just a way to gently bring children into the holiday, but corporations go so far with Santa that the actual reason for celebration is forgotten, and the same goes for the Easter Bunny.

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sixate

The same way the idea of jesus came about. Crazy people made some crazy shit up....

paddyjoe

People just need to believe in something. Might as well make them happy thoughts.

Cardinal Syn

Wasnt he Saint Nicholas who turned into santa giving stuff to poor children. We celebrate Christmas because it is the winter Soltice. Jesus wasnt born in December.

But Santa is saddly a part of Media hype which they created to make you buy gifts!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Sleepyjack

So if jesus wasn't aparently born, on the 25th of December, when was jesus (apparently) born then?

Do we celebrate the spring or autumn equinox?
(i believe that'd be the equilivant of the winter soltice) What about the summer solstice (which is what it is for all us in the southern hemisphere )

sorry i don't really know much about religious stuff

I am aware, of St nicholas, a little, but how could they conceive that he has flying reindeers and the red suit and elves making toys... and so forth? Is it basically a childrens fairy tale?

Midnight_Son

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m0ntyblack

If I remember right (and there is nothing to say that I have much memory cells left at all), modern theologians believe, through historical records, that Jesus was born in early September. As for celebrating other solstices/equinii, Easter is a celebration of the spring equinox.

Basically what happened is that they used to have these pagan holidays, but the Christians felt the need to control everything, so they added "Christian Relevance" to pagan festivals to attempt to convert the heathens.



MB

World's King

I thought it was his birthday.

Wasn't he one of the three wise men that gave Jesus gifts?

All I know is that if that fucker breaks into my house again I'm gonna put two in his chest and one between the eyes.

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streak_56

My first question is why you would question something that brings joy to everyone in the world. With all the hate that goes around you have to question the one holiday that people seem to like the most. I know alot of people whose religon is different than most but they celebrate Christmas like the rest of us. I would answer you're question like this:
Some people do not celebrate the birth of Christ b/c they aren't all Catholic people that Celebrate it. But you should also know that most Churches hold mass especially for Christmas, so that would also point to Santa being a Marketing gimick. Coca-Cola maybe a contributor but from I learned Santa has been a tradition for a very long time.

Phaenx

I haven't been to Church in something like, 5 or 6 years, but I'm fairly sure he was born during the Spring (unkown exact date).

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~springrain

The Pagan Origins of Christmas
By Royce Carlson

This article was first printed at Zenzibar on December 17, 2000.

Many of our modern Christmas traditions began hundreds of years before Christ was born. Some of these traditions date back more than 4000 years. The addition of Christ to the celebration of the winter solstice did not occur until 300 years after Christ died and as late as 1800, some devout Christian sects, like the Puritans, forbade their members from celebrating Christmas because it was considered a pagan holiday. So what is the history behind these traditions?

The Christmas tree is derived from several solstice traditions. The Romans decked their halls with garlands of laurel and placed candles in live trees to decorate for the celebration of Saturnalia. In Scandinavia, they hung apples from evergreen trees at the winder solstice to remind themselves that spring and summer will come again. The evergreen tree was the special plant of their sun god, Baldor.

The practice of exchanging gifts at a winter celebration is also pre-Christian and is from the Roman Saturnalia. They would exchange good-luck gifts called Stenae (lucky fruits). They also would have a big feast just like we do today.

Mistletoe is from an ancient Druid custom at the winter solstice. Mistletoe was considered a divine plant and it symbolized love and peace. The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe is Druid in origin.

The Scandinavian solstice traditions had a lot of influences on our celebration besides the hanging of ornaments on evergreen trees. Their ancient festival was called Yuletide and celebrated the return of the sun. One of their traditions was the Yule log. The log was the center of the trunk of a tree that was dragged to a large fireplace where it was supposed to burn for twelve days. From this comes the twelve days of Christmas.

Even the date of Christmas, December 25, was borrowed from another religion. At the time Christmas was created in AD 320, Mithraism was very popular. The early Christian church had gotten tired of their futile efforts to stop people celebrating the solstice and the birthday of Mithras, the Persian sun god. Mithras’ birthday was December 25. So the pope at the time decided to make Jesus’ official birthday coincide with Mithras’ birthday. No one knows what time of year Jesus was actually born but there is evidence to suggest that it was in midsummer.

So, if you are celebrating any of the western traditions of Christmas this year, remember that you are actually enjoying the rituals and activities of several ancient religions whose traditions have been borrowed by the Christians over the years for the celebration of the birth of Christ.

Happy Holidays!

add to that...

St. Nicholas


Countless legends (no documents exist) are told about this Patron Saint of Giving known as St. Nicholas. Within both Western and Eastern Christian Churches similar mythology, or tradition, exists.

According to these legends, St. Nicholas was born in the city of Patara, and traveled to Palestine and Egypt when he was young.

He was later imprisoned during persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian, but was fortunately released by the more humanitarian Emperor Constantine. He attended the first council of Nicaea in 325.

~springrain

Here's another one I found...



- NERONE NEWSLETTER 2003 -



Saint Nicholaus... Santa Claus!

by Sergio Caggia - © Nerone The Insider's Guide to Rome




The 6th December is the feast day of St. Nicholas. Regarded by historians as a purely legenday character, Nicholas is supposed to have lived in the fourth century AD. Born in Patara (Turky) from a welthy family Nicholas was made priest by his uncle the Archbishop of Myra. At the death of his parents Nicholas gaved all his havings to the poor and went to Palestine. Returning to Myra was made Bishop. According to legend the Archbishop of that seaport had just died and the local clergy had decided that the firs priest entering the chuech on the following morning would be made bishop. That was Nicholas who then became the Bishop of Myra.





Many are the stories around the figure of St. Nicholas, indeed made saint because of his generousity, modesty and miracles...

A famous story tells that visiting a certain inn Nicholas descovered that the innkeeper had the habit of stealing small children, kill them and serve them to his guests. Finally Nicholas found a case containing the bodies of three kids and on the sign of the cross rescued them back to life. In honour of this story Nicholas became the patron saint of small children.

The reason why Nicholas became patron saint of sailors and travellers is that on a voyage to the Holy Land the boat on which Nicholas was sailing was about to be wreck by the violent waves of a sea storm. Nicholas made the storm calm down, saving the boat.

But the most famous story is the one that generate the legend of Santa Claus! Having heard about a nobleman who had lost all his havings, Nicholas decided to provide a dowry for his three daughters. He secretly threw, through a window of the man house, a bag full of gold for each girl . Nicholas was descovered while throwing the third bag, but begged the nobleman not to reveal the thrut. For this story Nicholas became also the patron saint of girls without dowry.

Being St. Nicholas day on th 6th of December, close to Christmas day, his story was compared to the one of the Magi. Gradually Nicholas merged with the Christmas story and became familiar with the name of Santa Claus. Indeed is on his feast day that, in many countries, little presents and candies are given to children. In the Republic of Slovacchia for example on the night of the 5th Dec children polish their shoes to find filled of presents and candies on the following morning. Very symilar is the Italian tradition of the Epiphany, on 6th January... a kind old woman who flyes her brume and from chimney to chimney brings presents and candies to the children. Instead of the shoes in Italy we traditionally use sox.

On the 9 May In 1087, some Italian merchant steal the body of St. Nicholas in Myra and brought it to Bari, in Puglia (southern Italy) when on the 22 June 1197 a great Basilica was consecrated to the saint.

In Rome, in past times, there were 34 churches dedicated to St. Nicholas (the total number of churches is of nearly 400) of which only three survive today. The most ancient is the one of St. Nicola in Carcere (on Via del Mare), another is on Via dei Prefetti and a third on Largo Febo, near Piazza Navona with fine frescoes by Corrado Giaquinto (beginning of 18th century). Various is his iconography... always represented holding three bags or balls (recalling the story of the three girls) often is portrayed with children, a anchor or with a seaport on the background (again to recall his patronages). Saint Nicholas is also patron saint of loyers, traders, spice-dealers, perfumery-dealers and victims of judicial mistakes.

raeanna74

Thanks springrain for sharing all this info. I had heard a lot of it at sometime and remembered the basics. There were quite a few tidbits that I had not learned before.

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moonstrucksoul

i guess maybe this
http://www.lnstar.com/mall/main-areas/santafaq.htm

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Destrox

So far I like this reason best.

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Cardinal Syn

Good articles spring rain.

Its a 50/50 chance on which month he was born. May or March. I forget but its a M word :>

As For christmas ,Spread the joy! Make someone happy. Make yourself happy. Its about that. Dont worry about santa. If you believe then thats fine. I believe santa is my mother. And i Believe that i am santa! We are all Santa Claus! Ho Ho HO!!!

Merry Christmas Folks and Happy Holidays.

JohnS72

Since the calendar is based upon the life of Jesus, (BC and AD), shouldn't christmas be on January 1st? Or am I mistaken.

wry1

If memory serves me right, then the best that historical scholars could come up with for a tentative time of the year when Jesus would have been born was (late) May, June, or (early) July. This was traditionally when the Roman Census was carried out, and is the only referent which could be applicable toward fixing the time of year for this.

One thing is certain, Springrain has got things pretty darned accurate!

orphen

thanks guys. i always wandered.

GakFace

That was great to read!



Actually Sixate, Jesus actually did exist, whether or not he was the son of a God is what you mean to dispute.

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quadro2000

Funny to read this thread - last night, I watched an A&E Biography episode on Santa Claus. It was fascinating - I had no idea of many of the origins of Santa Claus. And the nice thing is that the special talks about Santa without destroying any of the magic.

Here's the schedule of when it will be on next - specifically on Christmas Eve at 8 PM EST. Well worth watching!

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omega2K4

Yup.

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Not_You

Its the government man, they needed a way to control us.

And I think the post office had something to do with it. Increaseing sales of postage stamps kids put on their letters to Santa don;t have to be delivered.

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SecretMethod70

As far as I understand it, most theologians I have heard of attribute Jesus' birth to late March/early April between the years 7-4 BC. This is from astronomical data having to do with the alignment of the planets or some such creating the really bright "star" that was told of.

This isn't to say that can't fit in with someone who believes he is the Son of God - who's to say God did not plan the planets to create a really bright "star" for people to follow, etc, and since man created the calander, there's no reason to believe it's exactly accurate.

On top of Christmas being conveniently placed to avoid conflict with converting pagans, the placement also avoids it coinciding with a much more important Christian holiday - Easter - which is placed at the correct location in the year (using a lunar calander).

Regarding Santa, it's just another bastardization of something that originally had a emotional/spiritual meaning, just like has been done to Christmas as a whole.

Even Christians rarely know these days that the ACTUAL colors of Christmas are purple and pink.

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SVT01Cobra

Ugh, never mind the rest of these reasons, here are the real ones.

Santa and the Easter Bunny were created for children, because in all honesty, who the hell wants to celebrate the death of Jesus?

It's just a less morbid way to look at it.

Reese

Saddam Claus

He doesn't give Coal to bad children anymore, He gives them Gas.

SecretMethod70

Nice idea, but nope. Doesn't really work considering Christmas is celebrating Jesus' BIRTH - and that's not morbid at all - and Easter is celebrating his resurrection (basically, re-birth), which is also not morbid at all. That's why Easter is the happiest, most chearful, and most important of all Christian holiday's.

Santa was originally something for children, yes, but in emulation of Saint Nick - only to be warped by a material society into something totally different than intended. And, honestly, I'm not sure of the origins of the Easter Bunny, but I can guarantee you whatever good intentions the idea was started with have been lost by now.

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Jonsgirl

Here is a great site for this. There are pages for most of the traditonal western holidays and. Here is the one for the common symbols of christmas:
http://www.information-entertainment...massymbol.html

And for easter:
http://www.information-entertainment...ys/easter.html

And here's something that's always bothered me. The 3 wise men. From the east. Very far in the east. They saw the star the night christ was born. And the made it there the same night? Ummm....doubt it. If I remember right, the would've actually had to travel on into Eygpt and would've arrived when Jesus was aproximately 3 years old. But why do people persist in saying that they were there that night? I don't know, but that's always been my peeve with christmas.

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i8one2

I won't get into the debate but will add just a morsel of thought.

ONE: Easter-the egg and bunny have along and rich history, one just has to do a quick google search using the key words, Egypt and easter...and all question about its relevance for it will be answered.

As for Santa...It about the spirit of giving to those less fortunate during a time of holy significance for a certain religion.
I don't have to be a Jew to believe in all the wonderful traditions they pocess...Like right now, I can eat a jelly filled donut!
because its Hanukkah,
look up into the skies and see my higher power(it could be Santa if I want it to be) and look for that slay and listen to the bells of joy...because I believe. And that in itself, lets me believe in SANTA if I want, my spirit, my will and my truth, because I chose it to be so.

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glasscutter43

Just leave the Tooth Fairy out of this.

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H12

I really doubt that's the way Santa came to exist, but I do bet that the post office loves to get those letters. I'll be sure to ask my dad (who's a postal worker, mind you) about that lil' idea.

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Iliftrocks

Christmas or Xmas?

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