The Scandanvian/northern European holiday of Yule featured things such as boy children leaving hay and straw to feed Odin’s visiting flying horse Sleipnir and getting gifts of things like toy weapons (that, like today, were left by their parents). Odin was also known to give gifts to men, gifts made by magical crafters that are related to our modern perception of elves and dwarves. Any of that sound familiar?
There is also no denying that the Christian church conflated these stories and traditions with St. Nicholas, just as the Christians would build a church for their own faith over the site of a holy place of a prior faith.
Again, you divide everything into “Christian” and “secular”. It’s obvious you believe only Christianity has any validity as a belief system and lump everyone else - fanatic, believer, agnostic, atheist - into one pile.
I’m also pretty sure you have no clue how offensive that is. Let me be clear - your assertion that my heritage and beliefs regarding faith and religion are “secular” is OFFENSIVE TO ME. You do not acknowledge they even exist.
The whole point of this line of discussion is the influence that religion has on the modern world (openly as well as implicitly). There aren’t hordes of pagans who are trying to influence laws or whatnot, so what does that matter for these purposes? And yes, most people today conflate pagan and secular in terms of the tree, holly, etc, etc, because the vast majority of people that put them up aren’t doing it becaue they are Wiccan or follow Druidic faith - they are doing them because they believe in Christianity and that’s the tradition or they are atheistic and are doing it because that’s how they view secular Christmas to be.
In the past it was, indeed, “hordes of Pagans” that influenced these holidays, hence the Christian Church imposing holy days on top of ancient Pagan festivals and tolerating/syncretizing Pagan traditions and symbols.
You are obliterating that history, culture, and heritage.
You are belittling the fact that, aside from the Pagan traditions, American Christian culture has distorted the practices of the ancient religion of Judaism due to Christians attempting to somehow give “equal time” or demonstrate tolerance for that religion by treating Hanukah as “Jewish Christmas” while ignoring every other holy day in their calendar.
Again, someone who is not Christian in the US is VERY AWARE how Christianity infiltrates even the so-called “secular” in the US. You are “Christiansplaining” all that and refusing to listen to those in this thread who are not Christians and thus are more aware of the Christianity/water we all swim in.
Once again, this conversation is whether Christmas is considered a ‘Christian’ or ‘secular’ holiday in the US. Do you think that indicating pagan origins makes people go, oh wait maybe it’s a pagan holiday instead? Or pushes people to think it’s more secularly celebrated rather than Christian celebrated? In converse to the polling that @thorny_locust pointed out?
Yes, actually, there ARE Christians who do not celebrate Christmas in the usual sense meant in America because they regard it as a Pagan holiday. Notable groups with this feeling are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Quakers, members of various Church of Christ congregations, and Seventh Day Adventists, Reasons range from “the Bible doesn’t mention this holiday” to “Jesus wasn’t born in December” to “we don’t do Pagan stuff”.
That to me is the central point of this entire thread. Which is distinct from the last 15-20 posts’ tit-for-tat about the (non-?)secularity of Christmas.
Like fish they don’t know they are wet and they assume everyone else is comfortable being wet. Which just ain’t so.
Let’s try this again, for the folks that celebrate Christmas (which is what this whole line of discussion is about), do you think pointing out pagan origins makes them see it as a pagan holiday or a secular one? Does it make non believers abandon their celebration because they aren’t pagan?
Let’s go back to Halloween. Do you think the majority of people in the US who celebrate it consider it a pagan holiday or a secular one where one watches scary movies and goes trick-or-treating?
Until you cease Christiansplaining, ISiddiqui, I see no point in continuing an exchange with you.
I have stated my viewpoint as plainly as I possibly can. If you can not accept that I mean what I say then the problem lies with you and not with me. Asking me the same questions over and over will not change the answers.
It just has nothing to do with the conversation people in this thread were having, which is whether the vast majority of people celebrate Christmas today in the US as a secular or Christian holiday and whether it matters if they do celebrate it as a secular holiday.
While the birth of Jesus Christ is a primary aspect of Christmas for practicing Christians, many of the traditions associated with the holiday – including the Christmas tree – are not rooted in Christian religious practices, and a rising number of Americans will have secular celebrations.
A December Gallup poll shows that the percentage describing their Christmas celebrations as “strongly religious” has dropped to 35%, down from about half in Gallup’s prior measures in 2005 and 2010. Conversely, among those who celebrate Christmas, 26% say their celebrations are “not too religious.” This represents an increase of 10 percentage points over the past decade – and mirrors the percentage of Americans who say religion is “not very important” in their life.
Is I understandin this rightly?
Pagan ‘traditions’ adopted by Christians are, now, Christian traditions.
Christian ‘traditions’ adopted by the secular are, still, Christian traditions.
CMC
Although it should be noted that trees weren’t a big part of the Christmas celebration until the 16th-17th Century (in Germany) - though greenery had been. It wasn’t until the 19th Century when it became a part of it in Britain and then the US.
I guess it’s an interesting question as to why it was taken up at the time. Perhaps it had something to do with the rise of Protestantism - there is an apocryphal story that Martin Luther popularized the lighted tree
A survey that did not include the option for “Not religious at all” forces the truly secular amongst us to choose between “Not too religious” & “Do not celebrate”.
What a perfect demonstration that, as @Broomstick put it so well, Christian fish don’t know they’re wet.
The person who wrote that survey genuinely didn’t consider (or worse yet, considered but rejected) the notion that anyone could have presents, parties, trees, lights, fellowship, & cookies in late December without a shred of anyone’s religion in it and still call the event “Christmas” for lack of another commonly agreed term.
Every Christian is “somewhat” or “not too” religious. They are the ones with Santa, Frosty, Rudolph, and maybe a angel atop the tree. It’s the ones with a creche and nothing else that are celebrating Christmas as religious. Those are the ones with “Jesus is the reason for the season” stuff, and as told here “dont say Happy holidays”. They are a minority.
I never felt forced by Christians to celebrate Hanukah. More oppressed by kids who wanted presents. In my experience kids get Hanukah presents, adults don’t. I still light my Menorah partially because it is the one we had when I was a kid (Tradition!) and partially to make a statement in this very non-Jewish neighborhood.
I grew up in a majority Jewish neighborhood, and am not very sensitive about such things.
Nobody’s said that there aren’t a lot of people who consider Christmas secular. Ten or twenty or so percent of the USA is still a lot of people.
It just isn’t 90%; or the vast majority; or even half.
And what I got told I was “beyond hope” for was only saying that it doesn’t look like a secular holiday to a lot of non-Christians.
35 plus 26 is 61%. (Or, as GreenWyvern notes, maybe it’s 67%.) Saying that the people who checked “not too religious” meant to say “not religious at all” is a misrepresentation.
Those are figures describing peoples’ own celebrations. Non-Christians are left out of those figures entirely. Ignoring non-Christians when considering the perception of the holiday in the USA is an entirely improper thing to do. LSL has this one right:
and so does Broomstick:
I’m gonna disagree with that.
The thread started off being about religion in general and atheism. It blew up into a discussion of whether Christmas is secular with this sequence of posts (I’m leaving out several by other people in order to point out, not for the first time, the point I in particular have been trying to make):
Me, replying to DrDeth:
Kearsen1, replying to me:
Me, replying to Kearsen1:
So from my perspective, Broomstick’s point that there are additional perspectives besides those of Christians and Jews fits perfectly well with the discussion in this thread.
People now stop being religious if they have Santa as well as their creche?
You don’t get to decide for everybody that a celebration mixing religious and secular components becomes entirely non-religious.
And you certainly don’t get to decide that a celebration including significant religious components looks entirely secular to those outside that particular religious tradition.
35 plus 26 is 61%. (Or, as GreenWyvern notes, maybe it’s 67%.) Saying that the people who checked “not too religious” meant to say “not religious at all” is a misrepresentation.
I disagree strongly. You are adding “Somewhat religious 32%” to “Strongly religious 35%” and that is incorrect. What is “somewhat religious?” A Angel on the tree? Going once a year to church on Christmas? (and maybe Easter).