Today is quiet, and I am sitting by a nice roaring fire, next to a beautifully lit and decorated evergreen. Candles are glowing, beating back the gloom of the shortest days in the Northern Hemisphere. I am waiting for my in-laws to get here for a holiday visit, so while we wait, little children, let me tell you a story about how the Christians stole Yuletide.
You see, Yuletide is celebrated at the end of December because that is when the days are short and gloomy, and we need a festival to lift our spirits. So our pagan ancestors started a yearly celebration to replace the missing sunshine and warmth of summer. They would cut down a tree that was still green in spite of winter, bring it into the house, and decorate it with lights and round ornaments so that it looked like a tree full of fruit basking in sunshine.
They lit Yule logs and lots of candles. They sang songs and ate good food. And every year, just after the festival, the days start to get longer again!
The Romans celebrated a feast with holly and ivy and gift-giving at Solstice.
And do you honestly believe it is just a coincidence that the Jewish feast of lights occurs right around the Solstice?
Now, this is the time of year that Christians like to complain that society is taking the “Christ” out of “Christmas”. Churches put up signs saying “Jesus is the reason for the season” as if this celebration was about the birth of their fraudulent man-god, Jesus, and had somehow been stolen from them.
Bullshit, kiddies, bullshit.
For starters, even their own gospels, written decades after Jesus was allegedly born (if he ever existed at all) give us no indication of his date of birth. It was the Emperor Constantine, a ruthless, murdering tyrant who imposed Christianity on helpless people for his political ends centuries after Jesus who decided to hijack the Solstice feast of our ancestors and call it the birthday of Jesus.
The whole tradition of Christmas is full of holes and outright lies.
So, kiddies, those of you who have kids still ignorant and superstitious enough to subscribe to Christianity, here are a few facts you can give them as Yuletide presents.
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Nothing tells us that Jesus was born in a stable. Our only account, Luke 2:7 says that his mother Mary “laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn”. Nothing about any ox and ass. The manger could have been in an alleyway or under a tent, or anywhere.
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Why was a pregnant woman travelling anyhow? Because the Gospel writer had to find some way to have Jesus born in Bethlehem, because the Old Testament says that the Messiah was to be born there. But Jesus was clearly from Nazareth. So Luke (or somebody in the early Christian community) invented the absurd story of a Roman decree that “all the world should be taxed”. And get this. You had to travel back to the city of your birth to pay your taxes. Weird and very unlikely. People travelling with all that money would have been sitting ducks for robbers.
By the way, there is not a word about a Census in the Gospel of Luke, just about taxing.
There is also not a word in any Roman or other records about a special world-wide tax imposed by Caesar Augustus on or around 1 AD (or 4 B.C.) which was the real birth-year of Jesus if he existed.
Nothing tells us that there were three kings. The Gospel of Matthhew, Chapter 2, tells us that there came “wise men” from the east. Nothing says they were kings or that there were three. And nothing tells us they were white, black and brown.
And they came into the “house” where Jesus was, NOT a stable or a manger. So any manger scene that shows the Wise Men presnt does not even make sense according to the Gospels (which do not make sense either, kiddies).
What about the Star of Bethlehem? Well, it could have been anything. Eastern magi made a big deal of fallen meteorites. Or, as Anatole France pointed out, “the star of the Magi has lost its miraculous character for us, who know that the heavens are incessantly perturbed by the birth and death of worlds, and who in 1866 saw a star suddenly blaze forth in the Corona Borealis, shine for a month, and then go out.”
And what about the Little Drummer Boy, who had no gift to give but a solo drum performance? Well, he exists only in a song written in 1958. But don’t worry, kiddies. Someday, if Christianity still exists, if the human race has not yet put religion on the junk-pile of superstitions, Christians will tell you with a staight face that there was a little drummer boy in the stable alongside the Magi, Shepherds, ox and ass, doves, and maybe Chilly Willy the Penguin!
