I do believe.

The commercialism of Christmas is probably the main reason why i´m not fond of it anymore.

I know this was not aimed at me, but it needed to be said.

People have been celebrating at this time of year long befire the jesus myth was bolted on to the pagan festival

I mean what have trees, santa, decorations etc got to do with jesus

Parts of Christmas and Chistianity are linked abd part of our history now but with around 3 percent
Of the population practicing christians religion has about as much say on Christmas as John Lewis has

You and others may believe it's stolen from a pagan festival and that's fine,but not everyone does,afterall the only proof you have of that is the written word,which is no different than Christians believing the nativity etc.Trees were left as a gift by St Nicholas this is where some believe .the trees and gifts come into play,there was also the gifts from the 3 wise men,which were given,it depends really on what you believe LT.

Didn't astrologers say that if the star scenario was true he can't have been born in december?

I'll be in Australia :amazed:

Christianity is not my faith but I will enjoy the holiday with my family, have a Christmas tree, enjoy the carols etc. I will celebrate Hanukkah which is earlier in December this year. The more things we can all celebrate the better.

Rebel Heart promo?

It's widely believed that he was born in June/July Kizzy,I guess no one knows for certain.

I hate how commercial it is as well, how many gift sets does a person need :shrug:

Nah, I'm sure he was a #LAD and all but I'll be celebrating the commercialised version we've stolen from him and all come to know and love instead

I have my personal reservations as to religion but I will be going to mass on Christmas eve or day.
If most catholic churches still had midnight mass then I would be there sadly they don't and want to get their churches locked early.

I like to think of Christmas as special and I would look at myself as a Christian so in a very toned down way, my answer to the OP's question is yes.

I'm an Atheist. But I believe in peace and love which is what Christmas is all about.

I don't drink, so I won't raise a toast. I'm not going to Church.

I may watch carols on the TV and if I do sit in contemplation, it will be to think about Christmas long gone. When I was a kid. It was a nice time. :)

I'm not religious but my boyfriend probably has work on Christmas day, I'll spend the day with his extended family if so, they are quite religious and I won't exclude myself from whatever they are doing.

http://www.livescience.com/25779-chr...-paganism.html


When you gather around the Christmas tree or stuff goodies into a stocking, you're taking part in traditions that stretch back thousands of years — long before Christianity entered the mix.

Pagan, or non-Christian, traditions show up in this beloved winter holiday, a consequence of early church leaders melding Jesus' nativity celebration with pre-existing midwinter festivals. Since then, Christmas traditions have warped over time, arriving at their current state a little more than a century ago.

Read on for some of the surprising origins of Christmas cheer, and find out why Christmas was once banned in New England.

1. Early Christians had a soft spot for pagans

It's a mistake to say that our modern Christmas traditions come directly from pre-Christian paganism, said Ronald Hutton, a historian at Bristol University in the United Kingdom. However, he said, you'd be equally wrong to believe that Christmas is a modern phenomenon. As Christians spread their religion into Europe in the first centuries A.D., they ran into people living by a variety of local and regional religious creeds.

Christian missionaries lumped all of these people together under the umbrella term "pagan," said Philip Shaw, who researches early Germanic languages and Old English at Leicester University in the U.K. The term is related to the Latin word meaning "field," Shaw told LiveScience. The lingual link makes sense, he said, because early European Christianity was an urban phenomenon, while paganism persisted longer in rustic areas.

Early Christians wanted to convert pagans, Shaw said, but they were also fascinated by their traditions.

"Christians of that period are quite interested in paganism," he said. "It's obviously something they think is a bad thing, but it's also something they think is worth remembering. It's what their ancestors did." [In Photos: Early Christian Rome]

Perhaps that's why pagan traditions remained even as Christianity took hold. The Christmas tree is a 17th-century German invention, University of Bristol's Hutton told LiveScience, but it clearly derives from the pagan practice of bringing greenery indoors to decorate in midwinter. The modern Santa Claus is a direct descendent of England's Father Christmas, who was not originally a gift-giver. However, Father Christmas and his other European variations are modern incarnations of old pagan ideas about spirits who traveled the sky in midwinter, Hutton said.

2. We all want that warm Christmas glow

But why this fixation on partying in midwinter, anyway? According to historians, it's a natural time for a feast. In an agricultural society, the harvest work is done for the year, and there's nothing left to be done in the fields.

"It's a time when you have some time to devote to your religious life," said Shaw. "But also it's a period when, frankly, everyone needs cheering up."

The dark days that culminate with the shortest day of the year *— the winter solstice — could be lightened with feasts and decorations, Hutton said.

"If you happen to live in a region in which midwinter brings striking darkness and cold and hunger, then the urge to have a celebration at the very heart of it to avoid going mad or falling into deep depression is very, very strong," he said.

Stephen Nissenbaum, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist "The Battle for Christmas" (Vintage, 1997), agreed.

"Even now when solstice means not all that much because you can get rid of the darkness with the flick of an electric light switch, even now, it's a very powerful season," he told LIveScience.

3. The Church was slow to embrace Christmas

Despite the spread of Christianity, midwinter festivals did not become Christmas for hundreds of years. The Bible gives no reference to when Jesus was born, which wasn't a problem for early Christians, Nissenbaum said.

"It never occurred to them that they needed to celebrate his birthday," he said.

With no Biblical directive to do so and no mention in the Gospels of the correct date, it wasn't until the fourth century that church leaders in Rome embraced the holiday. At this time, Nissenbaum said, many people had turned to a belief the Church found heretical: That Jesus had never existed as a man, but as a sort of spiritual entity.

"If you want to show that Jesus was a real human being just like every other human being, not just somebody who appeared like a hologram, then what better way to think of him being born in a normal, humble human way than to celebrate his birth?" Nissenbaum said. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

Midwinter festivals, with their pagan roots, were already widely celebrated, Nissenbaum said. And the date had a pleasing philosophical fit with festivals celebrating the lengthening days after the winter solstice (which fell on Dec. 21 this year). "O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born … Christ should be born," one Cyprian text read.

4. The Puritans hated the holiday

But if the Catholic Church gradually came to embrace Christmas, the Protestant Reformation gave the holiday a good knock on the chin. In the 16th century, Christmas became a casualty of this church schism, with reformist-minded Protestants considering it little better than paganism, Nissenbaum said. This likely had something to do with the "raucous, rowdy and sometimes bawdy fashion" in which Christmas was celebrated, he added.

In England under Oliver Cromwell, Christmas and other saints' days were banned, and in New England it was illegal to celebrate Christmas for about 25 years in the 1600s, Nissenbaum said. Forget people saying, "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," he said.

"If you want to look at a real 'War on Christmas,' you've got to look at the Puritans," he said. "They banned it!"

5. Gifts are a new (and surprisingly controversial) tradition

While gift-giving may seem inextricably tied to Christmas, it used to be that people looked forward to opening presents on New Year's Day.

"They were a blessing for people to make them feel good as the year ends," Hutton said. It wasn't until the Victorian era of the 1800s that gift-giving shifted to Christmas. According to the Royal Collection, Queen Victoria's children got Christmas Eve gifts in 1850, including a sword and armor. In 1841, Victoria gave her husband, Prince Albert, a miniature portrait of her as a 7-year-old; in 1859, she gave him a book of poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

All of this gift-giving, along with the secular embrace of Christmas, now has some religious groups steamed, Nissenbaum said. The consumerism of Christmas shopping seems, to some, to contradict the religious goal of celebrating Jesus Christ's birth. In some ways, Nissenbaum said, excessive spending is the modern equivalent of the revelry and drunkenness that made the Puritans frown.

"There's always been a push and pull, and it's taken different forms," he said. "It might have been alcohol then, and now it's these glittering toys.

There is nothing new under the sun and all that, I don't know why it's surprising that cultural traditions cross religious boundaries or that generations are influenced by the practices of previous ones. Most Christians won't celebrate Christmas because it was literally the day that Jesus was born and most don't think they're celebrating an entirely original festival. It's just a symbolic day to commemorate his birth and the values he supposedly introduced, regardless of whether it was his actual birth date or not.

I dont think anyone really thinks about Jesus other than perhaps a nativity play or a midnight mass - and the midnight mass in the same way people go to fireworks but are not really thinking about Guy Fawkes


Christmas is all about family I would think for the vast majority

I will get my pic ready

Just the written word,that you chose to believe LT :hehe:Some people believe the other written word.

Hell will have to freeze over or i will have to have lost all of my marbles before i pray or thank an imaginary person.:nono:

Yes but there is peer reviewed historical documents and hard scientific archaeological evidence and middle eastern myths that were popular in many societies that were cobbled together over 400 years..

Kesha will be in my thoughts

I'm an atheist so for me Christmas is more about spending time with my family. It's quite rare unfortunately that we are all under the same roof so when everyone is home for Christmas it really does feel special. Saying that, I always go to midnight mass. My Dad is a strong Catholic and I go so doesn't have to be on his own. It's quite nice actually, even though I don't believe in God, to just sing along with all the hymns and it reminds me to remember those less fortunate, because it is always a topic in the prayers.

I'm not a Christian, however I still occasionally go to the church for the nativity thing they put on given that one of my brothers always seems to be doing it with their school. (even though my local church are a bunch of homophobic twats!)

Christmas

Lets all celebrate an adultress who blamed getting up the duff on a fictional god who shagged her

Aye right

Disgusting bitch

Merry Christmas

Christmas is actually nothing to do with the birth of Christ (go ask some Pagans) but ok