Hmmm…If you rearrange the letters of Jesus Christ you get “Such jest sir.” Why, then, shouldn’t we think that Christianity is just a joke (in English speaking countries only, of course)?
Yikes! Will we be left with egg on our faces because George W. Bush actually means “Shrub egg woe?”:eek:
You are right. Specificly, the King(s) of Babylon. It irritates me to see Lucifer being referred to as Satan by people who claim to be spouting “God’s Truth.” If they seriously think they want to teach me the Bible, they darn sure better read it at least once.
But, really, about Santa? How cool is it to lie to your kids? Wouldn’t they feel more loved at that tender young age by knowing it was Mommie and Daddy showering them with gifts? Just a thought.
How does finding it with a search engine prove anything? If you google “Grownups letters to Santa” the first hit is for a page I set up three years ago. And I can assure you that it’s not “for real.”
Of course.
:rolleyes:
Create you own mystical truths:
Christmas has nothing to do with Christ’s birth. Early (1st - 3rd century) Christians did not celebrate Christ’s birthday. Virtually any Bible reference or encyclopedia will show you this, take your pick. Most reference works indicate he was prolly birthed in the fall, before the rainy, nasty, chilly weather.
Just a small hijack, no?
If God and dog are anagrams of each other, and a certain word spoken of in another thread is how you refer to a female dog in heat (see where I’m going?), and a certain baby worshipped as a devine one is the son of God, than could it possibly be construed that JC is a son of a ______? (I had to edit myself. Christmas is very important to some nominal and otherwise Christians)
Santa Claws?!? You Calvin (predestinationist) and Hobbes (forgot who he was) fans, you!
When I was much younger, I had a friend who was a fundamentalist christian and used to embarass us all by going on about how the record industry was run by Satanists and was bent on making Satanists of us all.
I composed a long essay 'specially for him, the intent of which was to show him that you could use the same sort of fuzzy “logic” to make anything evil. First I took on Christmas, as a high holiday. I haven’t read the link in the OP beyond skimming it, but I think I researched my essay pretty well. I dragged in Hollow Earth Theory– Why would Santa be associated with the North Pole? Because that’s where the entrance to the interior of the earth is located-- the gateway to hell! I pointed out that there are SIX letters between “H” and “O”, and therefore “HO HO HO” is a coded reference to the Number of the Beast. I intimated a connection between coal in stockings and the furnaces of hell. What creativity did I not descend to?
Instead of convincing him that his arguments for Satanic influence in the music industry were invalid, I only succeeded in ruining Christmas for him. He wouldn’t have any of it.
Frustrated, I gave Jesus Christ the same treatment. Christ is called the “Morning Star” and Satan is the “Evening Star”. Both the Morning Star and the Evening Star are the same astronomical body. He “encouraged ritual cannibalism.” What blasphemy did I avoid? None, and I’ll leave the rest of my “arguments” aside to avoid offending peoples. (And to cover up the fact that I’ve forgotten most of them after 15 years…)
End result-- My friend became convinced that Jesus was the devil, freaked out for a while, and then settled down and became a Jehovah’s Witness. And then drifted away…
You know that last South Park where Stan tries to explain John Edward’s routine logically to the faithful by imitating it, only to find that it doesn’t matter to the truly gullible if you explain up-front that what you’re about to do is a trick? I can relate.
Now I’m quite content to let sleeping gods lie.
Santa is not Satan, but he is a communist though- he is always watching your behavior, and rewards or push and he has these elves that work for “free” up at the north pole (gulag conditions anyone), he is secularizing a religious holiday, and of course he wears red.
and the Easter bunny? on second thought, I don’t really want to know.
Sinter Klaas sounds kinda evil though almost sinister. Sort of like Santa´s Evil Twin Brother ™.
I’ve actually read somewhere that old Nick is a euphemism for satan, so…
Ah, who cares!
It’s Sinterklaas, one word. It’s a contraction of “Sint Nicolaas”, Saint Nicholas.
Regarding Christmas: I have no beef with people celebrating the birth of Christ, but isn’t the actual date of that a point of discussion in itself? I read somewhere (going from memory here) that the actual date on our calendar should be somewhere in September. However, the Church chose to let it coincide with the Solstice festivities of the heathens in order to “sway” them to Christianity, and letting them keep their own party, in a way.
Any thruth to that explanation?
Coldfire
Yes, look in The New Catholic Encyclopedia (sp?) for just one of many cites on that subject. Lots of reference works list the history of Christmas and Christians.
Bios of St. Nicholas of Myra:
http://satucket.com/lectionary/Nicholas.htm
http://thebruces.stormbirds.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13440&perpage=15&pagenumber=2
Perhaps Coldie is aware of how Sanctus Nicholas (the Latin) was modified in Dutch into the Sinterklaas that gave rise to our Santa.
As for the 12/25 date, it’s very well known in literate Christian circles that the church early on placed it on a date where it would subsume the feasts of the birth of Mithras and the Sol Invictus feast (the image of God the Son as the Sun of Righteousness predates the English pun by several hundred years).
Just for the record: I grew up in a very very christian conservative household, a very happy, joyous one in fact…
where we embraced the myth of Santa Claus to the point that my father paid a man to stand outside our house and shake jingle bells and say ho ho ho to get us to go to bed.
His4ever, it IS possible to remember the true spirituality of the season and also enjoy the INNOCENT FUN and HAPPINESS (man there goes that fun and joyous christian lifestyle again!) at the same time.
Or one can say Christmas is just one step in the social evolution of various midwinter celebrations.
It’s human nature to react to the shortest days of the year with celebration of life. The landscape around you looks dead, it’s cold and there’s little daylight. So you gather your friends around and party.
Look back at the Roman tradition of Saturnalia: the huge fair, soldiers got the day off, prisoners weren’t executed that day, people exchanged gifts. The tradition of the christmas feast could probably be traced back to the roman tradition of masters eating with their slaves as equals. (There was a medieval custom where the whole household would eat together, only time of the year I believe).
Up until around 400 AD January 6 or 7 th was the day of christmas (Jesus’s baptismal date) but the date was changed to the 25th to coincide with Saturnalia and various equinox celebrations. However I think the E.O. church decided to keep January whatever as the date of christmas…
Then the church about 500, 600? Maybe sometime around 1000 AD forbade all of the feasts, pagents and all that other good stuff.
Anyway, look at the story of Jesus’s birth. There are a few inconsistancies, namly, nobody in their right mind would have livestock out in the middle of december. So the whole shepards heading out with their flocks seems doubtfull.
I mean, look at the average mean temperature of the middle east in modern times for this time of year. Never mind what the nighttime temperatures would have done to a newborn who had nothing but swaddling clothes for protection.
Anyhoo:
We’re left with that Christmas wasn’t origionally celebrated as the birth of Jesus, but as his baptism. The date was then changed to meet the old roman holiday. Then it evolved into the manger story.
Which I’ll grant you, could be the work of the devil.
I’d rather do what the holiday was intended to do, share good times with friends and give gifts to people that will make them happy.
I skimmed through the link and found it funny. It struck me as someone trying to make themselves important by destroying joy in other people’s lives.
Oh, and I’m not really sure about most of what I talked about. It’s been a DAMN long time since I bothered to study christianity. I think most of the dates are wrong.
Oh, one last thing:
The notion of a saviour being born on the ‘deadest’ day in nature is nicely poetic, a full circle sort of thing.
It doesn’t. But even if it did “Sinterklaas” isn’t the original form anyway.
Sinterklaas is a slur on the name of Saint Nicolaas. Saint in Dutch became ‘sint’ and ‘Klaas’ is the short version of Nicolaas. Somewhere the two got combined to get that tripple word value.
Nicolaas in turn is derived from Greek: Nike=to win(?) and Laos=population.
That someone would spend what must have been DAYS writing that crap…
Good Grief.
Good Fucking Grief. 