Still is, in religious terms. The OP is asking about commercial celebrations, not religious ones; you seem to be confusing both.
Christians celebrate lots of secular holidays.
In some cases, like say Labor Day, they aren’t closely linked to religious observations. IN some cases, like Halloween and New Years, they are simultaneous or the next day. (Nov 1 is All Saints Day and Jan 1 is the celebration of the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God.) Christmas is only unique because it has the same name on both the secular and religious celebrations.
It wasn’t that hard as a kid raised Roman Catholic to know that the morning after trick or treat I had to attend mass.
That a huge segment of “Cultural Christians” go about basing their understanding of the faith on half-remembered Sunday School lessons from their youth (often taught by well meaning nonprofessional volunteers) and random gleanings from mass media, is no news. (A couple of months back I astounded a coworker by showing how one hour’s worth of The Ten Commandments stands for three paragraphs in the Bible. Short ones.)
**tomndebb **-- let’s remember also that very close to the USA, you’ve got in Mexico a noticeably different angle on how All Souls’ Day was incorporated into the people’s culture. Meanwhile here in PR that time was a purely Church fest until Halloween was introduced from the side of USAmerican cultural influence.
As DinoR points out most versions of mainstream Christianity have no conflict with there being a mundane festival happening in parallel with the Advent/Nativity/Epiphany* season of religious feasts, as long as you do comply with the latter. And really it is only relatively recently in history that it has exploded into such an out of control extravaganza of swag, that churches have to wag their fingers at it.
The mundane festival does have varying cultural forms – in some the fusion of St. Nicholas with Father Christmas that creates Santa Claus is not complete; in others the gift-givers are the Magi; obviously for half the world it cannot be possibly a “winter” holiday; etc. Some of the commercial trappings of modern Secular Christmas in many lands *have standardized due to the expansion of mass media and the huge volume of USA-sourced material pumped into the world mediasphere since the advent (
) of TV.
I tend to find Skammer’s approach quite sensible as an example of believers who raise their children from the start treating the likes of Santa and Easter Bunny as fantasy characters, and the actual teachings of faith occupy a different sphere. I mean, does anyone have a traumatic struggle to explain that Fluttershy and Batman don’t really exist? “Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus” was not a statement of factual existence of a flesh-and-blood person but of the existence of the spirit and meaning incarnated in that figure.
( This brings one interesting point: Religiously, Christmas season for Western Christians on the Gregorian Calendar is supposed to run at least until the Epiphany in January. The Twelve Days of Christmas are December 25 to January 5 NOT the 12 days before the 25th. In the USA, though, Secular “Christmas” shuts down with a thud after Boxing Day or at the latest on New Year’s Eve. Probably because there is nothing more to sell and now it is time to resume our primary worship of Football.)
Yes, you’re right. It’s only relatively recently - the past 200 years or so - that economies have been sufficient to support commercialisation. Easter has long been commercialised too with cards and eggs (at least here in the UK). I could also point out the commercialisation of July 4th and Thanksgiving in America. I suppose that’s a long-winded way of saying that Americans will commercialise anything they can.
I agree that the pageants conflate two different stories, and are certainly historically inaccurate. That being said, what aspects of the birth narratives do you think contradict “history, science, common sense and each other?” I don’t find anything especially impossible or contradictory about them, so let me know what you’r thinking of specifically and I’ll do my best to provide a defence.
I agree. Although I occasionally asked why we didn’t get presents for Hanukkah, and the answer was "Hanukkah isn’t Christmas. Wait till your birthday (two weeks after Christmas) or Purim (big gift-giving for kids, bot so much for adults).
I was, however, allowed to watch all the Christmas specials and movies on TV. A lot of my friends weren’t allowed to.
I can name all the books in the bible, most of the books of Christian scripture (I usually get them all, just in the wrong order after “Acts”).
I still thought that poll was ridiculously easy.
I can also name all the parashot of the Torah. Just really good at memorizing lists.
Ditto. It’s not even technically a holiday-- it’s a festival. There are no observances required for it. Lighting the candles isn’t a commandment, like Shabbes candles, just a tradition. You don’t treat the first and last days like a Shabbes days where you can’t work, the way you do with Sukkot or Pesach.
They are?
I mean, this is taken as such a truism that I don’t think we even dwell on this anymore. Sure, imagination is a good thing, but isn’t the duty of a parent to help a kid tell “real” apart from “fantasy”? I mean, would you tell your children that Lord of The Ring elves, Harry Potter’s school or Darth Vader are real people in actual settings?
Christmas itself, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, is not actually particularly Christian. It has no Biblical justification, and we have no idea what date Jesus was born.
Basically Christmas is a Christianization of pagan celebrations which were held at that time of year, and has plenty of pagan elements in it - giving gifts (from the Roman Saturnalia), divine birth (Mithraism), Christmas trees, yule log (Germanic), holly, ivy mistletoe (druidic or other pagan religions).
Santa: In Nordic myth, at the Winter Solstice Odin would ride through the sky leading the gods on a wild hunt. Odin was an old, laughing guy with a long white white beard, who is often shown dressed in red:
The myth has just evolved a bit, and continues to evolve, I think.
After the Reformation, many Protestant denominations forbade the celebration of Christmas. For example, in Scotland, celebration of Christmas was banned for nearly three centuries, until mid-Victorian times.
Yes, they are. I am not in favor of the odd quirk in which some parents go to great lengths to try to maintain a belief in Santa Claus until a child is well into elementary school. Discovering the reality behind the story provides a transition point in which the child can begin to recognize that he or she is “growing up.”
If you are saying that wonder is not a good thing, I simply feel sorry for you–even as an adult.
Fantasy is arguably a touchier subject and, certainly, a person who confuses fantasy with reality into adulthood suffers serious problems. However, Bruno Bettelheim laid out the natural developmental roles that fantasy plays in the healthy development of children in his The Uses of Enchantment and several other works. Erik and Joan Erikson, Jean Piaget, and many others who have studied child psychology have noted the function of fantasy in children’s development.
No, sorry, but “wonder” is just a word. There’s plenty of wonder in reality, and there’s plenty of wonder in fantasy that the wonder-ed knows is fantasy. Does a kid need to believe that the Grinch is a real person to feel enjoyment and wonder at the tale?
But again, would you tell your kid that Hogwarts is a real place? If not, what’s the difference?
Best comment I’ve seen so far! As a child my devout parents saw no problem in taking me to see Santa Claus, and we got Easter baskets as well, from The Bunny. I think they figured that church experience would show us what was really important, and they wanted us to have fun.
My mother didn’t know for years that I lost my faith in Santa just before I was five years old. We were setting out for church on Christmas Eve and Mom “forgot something” and had to go back into the house. She didn’t know that through a crack in the kitchen curtains I saw her put away the milk and cookies we’d left out for Santa. See, he was supposed to come while we were away at church.
And puritannical fundamentalist types, don’t forget them.
ISTM you are arguing against a point nobody is making. Read again from tomndebb’s statement:
I see in this thread a consensus that it is folly to try and artificially, for the sake of “innocence”, try to perpetuate a belief in the physical reality of Santa past the point in the child’s development when s/he starts being able to distinguish make-believe from the real world and understand the difference. However, before that stage, would it not be kind of pointless either way? After that, yes, you can feed the wonder in the manner it is present in any good fantasy story.
I see nothing in this holiest of Commandments that forbids belief in Santa Claus, as long as we hold the God of Abraham as our highest authority. There’s nothing in “the King of kings, the Lord of lords” that precludes other kings and lords. There’s nothing wrong with believing in a Santa Claus who also holds true to the God on High.
I think it’s the Muslims who believe there’s only one God, so perhaps it’s a sin for them … I don’t really know …
I agree with the Wiccan Goddess that nailing bunny rabbits to a cross doesn’t atone for sin … ever …
Shit, I killed Fluffy for nothing.
Shame on you, no naked witches for you tomorrow night …
I don’t. Tomndebb literally says that he “pities” me for questioning the idea of fooling the kids into believing in Santa. My argument is that it’s just rationalization of an act of silliness brought by tradition, not something that makes any sense.
The last is more a point in support of Quartz’ theme, not against it. Neither Quartz nor ZombieFatTongue said anything about the occasion of the autumn equinox–it was the subsequent cross-quarter day that was mentioned in relation to Halloween–but many cultures had or have quarter day harvest festivals.
I’m not sure what you mean by Spring celebrations making sense only in Northern Europe; it’s well known that many ancient Near East civilizations celebrated the vernal equinox, e.g. the Sham el nessim has been celebrated in Egypt for some 4500 years. So even if you believe the Bible to be inerrant, there were spring celebrations a thousand years before a single Jew existed.
And while it’s true that the gospels say that the resurrection occurred at the time of the Passover (although they disagree on which day), the Passover itself is arguably borrowed from other ancient Near East spring civilizations (especially given that there’s no evidence the Exodus was real), so it’s a matter of how far back you want to go.
I don’t think that they disagree on which day, no. He was killed on the Friday of Passover Week, and resurrected on the Sunday. Where do you see a disagreement / contradiction? A response to some of the purported ‘contradictions’ regarding the date is given here:
Easter itself isn’t ‘based on’ Passover. It integrates Passover into the Christian understanding of what’s happening, and it interprets Jesus’ resurrection in the light of Passover, but in its essence it isn’t based on Passover, it’s based on a (purported) historical event which occurred.
The census of Luke contradicts both history and common sense. It is not historically plausible that Augustus Caesar decreed a worldwide (or even empire-wide) census that required people to travel to the cities where their ancestors lived a thousand years before, without there being some surviving record of it (other than a single gospel writer, who is struggling to find a reason why “Jesus of Nazareth” would be born in Bethlehem). It is also known that Quirinius could not have conducted a census of Judea until ten years after Herod died, and could not have conducted a census of Galilee (where Joseph lived) at all. As for common sense, if you want to raise money (the purpose of the census), you don’t have everyone in the Empire suspend their businesses and travel, possibly for months or even years, to another city possibly thousands of miles away (e.g., a citizen in Lusitania whose ancestors are from Syria). It’s one of the most ridiculous claims in the Bible, which is saying something.
The Star of Matthew (Matthew didn’t mention the census, and Luke didn’t mention the Star or the Magi) contradicts both science and common sense. In spite of the countless people who embarrass themselves trying to prove that it was a conjunction or a comet or whatever, the text clearly shows that it didn’t act like anything known to science. Matthew says it traveled before the Magi, and led them to the exact house (not stable or barn, as in Luke) where the baby Jesus lived (Matthew gives no indication that Joseph had ever even heard of Nazareth before Jesus was born, let alone a census). If the Magi had been following a star, or comet, or planet, or conjunction, or supernova, they would have traveled in spirals, because all of the above rise in the east and set in the west, just like the sun and moon.
And even if you believe in magic Stars, it defies common sense because, even though it somehow knew the exact house where the Baby Jesus lived, it didn’t know which town — it had to stop in Jerusalem and ask.
Luke and Matthew contradict each other in their description of the relationship between Jesus and Herod. Matthew says that Herod was so murderously paranoid that as soon as he heard that a baby was born who some foreigners called a future king, he tried to kill him, to the extent that he sent soldiers to kill every male infant in Bethlehem (no other historian recorded this, not even the other gospel writers), and causing Joseph to flee to Egypt with his family. Luke says that six weeks after Jesus was born, he was publicly presented in the Temple, half a mile from Herod’s palace, and that various holy men and women publicly proclaimed him to be the Messiah. A paranoid like Herod must have had spies who reported this to him, yet he didn’t lift a finger, and Joseph and his family concluded their business and proceeded peacefully to Nazareth.
I suppose it’s possible that Matthew was the only historian who noticed a company of Herod’s soldiers going house to house and murdering the male infants of Bethlehem, even though Herod’s murders within the privacy of his palace walls are lovingly detailed. I suppose it’s possible that Luke set out to write the story of Jesus’ infancy, and decided that a little detail like Herod trying to kill him, and his family being forced to flee to Egypt, were not important enough to include. It would be like writing a biography of Lincoln and not even mentioning the Civil War, but it’s possible.
But it is not possible for Joseph to have remained in Egypt for an indefinite number of months or years until Herod died, as Matthew says, and even after that, staying out of Judea for fear of Archelaus (who ruled Judea for another ten years after Herod died), as Matthew says, and yet visit Jerusalem (where Archelaus lived) every year for Passover, as Luke says he did.
They are two completely different, irreconcilable stories, which contradict known history, science, common sense, and each other.