Inside Florida’s capital
building in Tallahassee, a festivus pole (a six foot tall stack of empty beer
cans) made Fox TV national news. Commentator Bill O'Reilly lamented Florida's tolerance for such persecution of Christianity, while Gretchen Carlson and Catholic League guest
Bill Donohue expressed disgust that someone would slight their beliefs by celebrating their own holiday at the same time
near
a Christian nativity display in a government building. Apparently the U.S.
government is supposed to allow crèches and crèches ONLY between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day at any public facility. Gretchen even
added to the false sense of outrage by suggesting she took her children out to view the nativity scene, but her kids couldn’t see it because a three inch wide pole stood in front of
it. You drove your kids all the way from Greenwich, Connecticut looking for a crèche,
didn’t see any in front of churches or private homes for 1500 miles, and
when you finally found one down in Tallahassee, you couldn’t walk three feet to the left or right of
the beer can pole so your kids could see it, Gretchen? Is it any wonder why few people
take you seriously?
Bill Donohue writes about the bloody engagements he's seen in this never-ending 'war': “There is little doubt that the anti-Christmas side is weakening. But the war is hardly over. The big battle won by the Thomas More Law Center in securing the right of a nativity scene to be erected on a public median in Warren, Michigan is evidence that we need to fight for our rights. Thanks to the Catholic League, senior citizens in Newhall, California got their Christmas tree back after management tried to ban it. Children who attend Terry Elementary School in Little Rock, Arkansas know about the War on Christmas: their planned trip to a local church to see “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was cancelled. An anti-Christmas billboard in Times Square that shows a depiction of Jesus crucified (Wait…wasn’t he?) is testimony to the vile nature of the War on Christmas. There is no shortage of such examples.”
So someone putting up a festivus pole or asking to use government property to promote another holiday is considered vile, but telling people they are going to hell for not believing like, say, Donohue, O'Reilly, or Carlson do, is not.
Bill Donohue writes about the bloody engagements he's seen in this never-ending 'war': “There is little doubt that the anti-Christmas side is weakening. But the war is hardly over. The big battle won by the Thomas More Law Center in securing the right of a nativity scene to be erected on a public median in Warren, Michigan is evidence that we need to fight for our rights. Thanks to the Catholic League, senior citizens in Newhall, California got their Christmas tree back after management tried to ban it. Children who attend Terry Elementary School in Little Rock, Arkansas know about the War on Christmas: their planned trip to a local church to see “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was cancelled. An anti-Christmas billboard in Times Square that shows a depiction of Jesus crucified (Wait…wasn’t he?) is testimony to the vile nature of the War on Christmas. There is no shortage of such examples.”
So someone putting up a festivus pole or asking to use government property to promote another holiday is considered vile, but telling people they are going to hell for not believing like, say, Donohue, O'Reilly, or Carlson do, is not.
In the state capital of Oklahoma, Satanists want to put up a display near the nativity in that
federal building, and in Mississippi’s capital, secularists asked to exhibit a
Winter Solstice sign, which would be located in the same lobby as a nearby nativity. Reacting to this news, one of Fox’s
other bubble-headed bleach blondes, Megyn Kelly, announced that the war on Christmas
is comparable to the Holocaust. Megyn is counting on gullible viewers to believe that Christians
across the country are being rounded up, put into concentration camps, and then
killed in record numbers for celebrating Christmas...because having to look past a Satanist display or a Solstice
sign to see a crèche is identical to being murdered by Nazis. Who’d have guessed?
But the whole contrived mess is based on a fundamental flaw; the bible stories themselves.Those accounts are filled with problems that start with 1) the genealogies, which don't match...2) when the birth supposedly happened (was it during the reign of Herod, or Quirinius? There is a ten year span between them.)...3) an empire-wide census that required people to return to an ancestral city (There are no records to indicate the Romans, or any other civilization, ever required that.)...4) the murder of thousands of children by Herod's soldiers...and 5) the time of year it happened. For example, in the Matthew and Luke accounts the sheep are in the fields. This means the event happened in the late spring or early summer, not in winter. If it was in winter, the mangers would be filled with sheep trying to keep warm, not free for people to use as impromptu delivery rooms. Mangers were small caves hewn into a hillside for keeping a shepherd's flock safe and contained, and they were terribly unsanitary, with years of sheep and animal droppings everywhere. They were never cleaned out, so they would constantly reek of manure. If any baby were born in a manger, it would have died, or at best, suffered from some disease contracted from the waste in the wattle, or kicked up by the hem of the mother’s clothing. But why let facts get in the way if you are promoting a unsupportable ideology and fighting a phony war?
In reality, the bible's 'Christmas' stories are nothing but fairy tales made up to promote the Jewish god and his ‘savior’ son to compete with the other popular deities of the time. The reason we celebrate the holiday in December is because there were celebrations to the god Saturn, who was the god of the harvest, and Mithra, who was the god of light. The emperor of Rome in 336 CE was a Christian named Constantine, and he concluded that all the pagan rituals were detrimental to the Christian cause. But what to do since those rituals were immensely popular with the people of the Roman Empire. Solution? Proclaim December 25th as Jesus Christ's birthday, because it was right in the heart of all the pagan celebrations. That would trump all those pagan gods.
During these pagan celebrations it was customary to give gifts, sing songs, have a feast, and decorate homes with pine boughs and greenery. Kings and clergy co-opted these traditions and rituals and claimed them as Christian in order to get the heathens to worship the god they supported, and to attend Christian services where royalty and priests would benefit from the money they could fleece and demand from the pagans. Every one of the current Christmas rituals is just an improvised version of the pagan rituals. The Christmas tree would come later when it was adapted from a Norse tradition of bringing a tree into the house and decorating it as a celebration of life in the midst of winter, not because of a baby’s birth.
This is how Constantine's Christianity became a world religion: at the point of a spear.
In reality, the bible's 'Christmas' stories are nothing but fairy tales made up to promote the Jewish god and his ‘savior’ son to compete with the other popular deities of the time. The reason we celebrate the holiday in December is because there were celebrations to the god Saturn, who was the god of the harvest, and Mithra, who was the god of light. The emperor of Rome in 336 CE was a Christian named Constantine, and he concluded that all the pagan rituals were detrimental to the Christian cause. But what to do since those rituals were immensely popular with the people of the Roman Empire. Solution? Proclaim December 25th as Jesus Christ's birthday, because it was right in the heart of all the pagan celebrations. That would trump all those pagan gods.
During these pagan celebrations it was customary to give gifts, sing songs, have a feast, and decorate homes with pine boughs and greenery. Kings and clergy co-opted these traditions and rituals and claimed them as Christian in order to get the heathens to worship the god they supported, and to attend Christian services where royalty and priests would benefit from the money they could fleece and demand from the pagans. Every one of the current Christmas rituals is just an improvised version of the pagan rituals. The Christmas tree would come later when it was adapted from a Norse tradition of bringing a tree into the house and decorating it as a celebration of life in the midst of winter, not because of a baby’s birth.
Another Christian victory in the 'War on Christmas'.
Over the intervening centuries, the Christmas stories were promoted by the priesthood (who had a vested interest in promoting them) as historically accurate because they were in the bible, and by the 1100s, if you did NOT believe it was the truth, you could be burned at the stake as a heretic. Nothing says something is the truth like the threat of death if you don't believe.
Just for the record, Christmas hasn't always been embraced by Christians as it is today. In the 1600s, England and the American colonies outlawed Christmas because of it's pagan roots.
Just for the record, Christmas hasn't always been embraced by Christians as it is today. In the 1600s, England and the American colonies outlawed Christmas because of it's pagan roots.
George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River on the night of December 25, 1776 took place at that time in hopes of catching the Hessian garrison in Trenton off guard because they'd be nursing severe Christmas morning hangovers. The Continental forces didn't celebrate Yuletide, and in 1776, they were busy putting boats in the river. After the Revolutionary War ended, celebrating Christmas fell out of style as most people in the new nation considered it too "British".
Christmas eventually came back into fashion in the 1800s, only this time around, it was given a more religious twist so it would get support from the churches. The clergy were only too happy to comply. Christians didn't bother checking whether the biblical information on the birth of Jesus was based on reality, or at least supported by some evidence. They just took it on faith that the bible got it right. That assumption became the truth, and from that, lies by the thousands have poured forth from Christianity.
Christmas eventually came back into fashion in the 1800s, only this time around, it was given a more religious twist so it would get support from the churches. The clergy were only too happy to comply. Christians didn't bother checking whether the biblical information on the birth of Jesus was based on reality, or at least supported by some evidence. They just took it on faith that the bible got it right. That assumption became the truth, and from that, lies by the thousands have poured forth from Christianity.
Why do Christians still adhere to the Christmas myth? Simple. People don't want to have their illusions destroyed. They've practiced them for so long, the illusions have become like a warm and fuzzy security blanket. When life becomes complicated, just fall back on stories and fables you were taught as a child, like the Christmas story, and tell yourself that all life's mysteries will be answered after you die, as long as you believe the right versions of the legends and myths. It is more comforting to accept a beautiful lie than to confront the ugly truth.
There has never been a war on Christmas, only a make-believe war so that Christians can act morally outraged that others don’t prostrate themselves before the faithful's fairy tales. Christians are confusing ‘war’ with not getting what they want, which is everyone respecting and honoring their illusions and fantasies...and they are reacting like bratty, whiny, self-centered five year olds. Someone needs to tell them Santa Claus isn’t real too.
There has never been a war on Christmas, only a make-believe war so that Christians can act morally outraged that others don’t prostrate themselves before the faithful's fairy tales. Christians are confusing ‘war’ with not getting what they want, which is everyone respecting and honoring their illusions and fantasies...and they are reacting like bratty, whiny, self-centered five year olds. Someone needs to tell them Santa Claus isn’t real too.
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