bouzane said:
kain_kusanagi said:
blackstarr said:
Mr Khan said:
kain_kusanagi said:
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christmas was a "re-branding" of a pagan holiday
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That's a twisting of history. The truth is that the church moved Christmas and adopted a smidgen of the pagan holiday's traditions to subvert the pagan holiday to more easily convert the pagans. The church did not rebrand it, they replaced it.
A rebrand would be to take the original, change the name, and sell it as something else. But what Church really did was compete for the minds of the potential converts with an alternative holiday and make it as easy for them to accept as possible.
What we ended up with today is a Christmas with a little extra flavor. What your suggesting is we have a pagan holiday with a Christian title.
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Depending on how you look at it, Jesus may have been against political participation altogether, being a distraction from life with and for others.
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To add to the conversation... I am Christian and most Christians I know (although this may be my specific demographic in northeastern US, I have no idea about other areas) are well aware that Jesus was not born on December 25th or on the year 0, but celebrate Jesus' birthday on that day symbolicaly. Most people I know have no qualms about this, but I know many atheists who bring up these facts as if it should change our celebration.
Also, if you look at church history (which I am not the most proud of), when Christianity began to mix politics with religion (in the Roman empire, around 4th century AD with Constantine declaring Christianity the state religion), there were many instances of replacing pagan ideas and traditions with Christian ones... This wasn't just holidays, but places of worship, the type of art that was created, etc. I don't know.. I began doing some readings on this topic and I think it's pretty damn complicated. I don't think it's really as simple as "christian rebranded the pagan holiday!" but I guess it's one way to simplify what happened. But it does have to be viewed in the greater context of that time period.
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I've been saying it over and over, but they have their mind made up. They think that Christmas is a rebranded pagan winter solstace and no amount of truth is going to convince them otherwise. I've spelled it out over and over that Christmas's date was moved. But they think the Church just grabed a random pagan holiday and decided to make up a brithday for it. I've given up. Some people won't listen to reason.
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Yule logs, caroling, decorated trees, wreaths, mistletoe, feasting, gift giving and just about every single other aspect of Christmas are Pagan, that's hardly a "smidgen". The only Christian thing about Christmas is the name. The Church took an existing holiday and traditions, added nothing significant, moved it a couple of days and changed the name. Sorry but you're the only person failing to see this for what it is. Christmas is the Winter Solstice, the only non-Pagan aspect is Jesus.
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