Meta !Sober//iZs started this discussion 7 years ago#82,142
The commercial gift-buying/Santa part of Christmas gets moved to December 21 (the solstice) and becomes a secular commercial holiday called "The Holiday". The Christian part stays on December 25th and is called Christmas. This will make it so when you wish someone a "Happy Holiday" you're wishing them a happy buying things, not a happy Jesus' birthday.
Jesus commanded that we commemorate his death, not his birth.—Luke 22:19, 20.
Jesus’ apostles and early disciples did not celebrate Christmas. The New Catholic Encyclopedia says that “"the Nativity feast was instituted no earlier than 243 [C.E.],"” more than a century after the last of the apostles died.
There is no proof that Jesus was born on December 25; his birth date is not recorded in the Bible.
We believe that Christmas is not approved by God because it is rooted in pagan customs and rites.—2 Corinthians 6:17.
Anonymous D joined in and replied with this 7 years ago, 14 seconds later, 7 minutes after the original post[^][v]#949,975
Saying "Merry Holiday" would then be a Nazi hate crime, said by bigots
Anonymous E joined in and replied with this 7 years ago, 4 minutes later, 11 minutes after the original post[^][v]#949,979
> The commercial gift-buying/Santa part of Christmas
I think this and the fact that Christmas shit starts in the end of November is really 99% of what pisses people off. If some Christians want the day off to go have a holiday, no one will fucking care. I don't want to have to hear about it and congratulate them on it for 1/12th of the year.
Sheila LaBoof replied with this 7 years ago, 5 minutes later, 16 minutes after the original post[^][v]#949,982
Anonymous E replied with this 7 years ago, 27 minutes later, 56 minutes after the original post[^][v]#949,990
@949,984 (C) > repulsive and ridiculous
Yeah, that's really your shtick.
Meta !Sober//iZs (OP) replied with this 7 years ago, 1 hour later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#949,999
@949,979 (E) > I think this and the fact that Christmas shit starts in the end of November is really 99% of what pisses people off. If some Christians want the day off to go have a holiday, no one will fucking care. I don't want to have to hear about it and congratulate them on it for 1/12th of the year.
This is the problem I'm hoping to solve. I think most people who celebrate Christmas are only nominally Christian. Or in my case not Christian at all. What I'm excited about is giving gifts, spending time with family, taking a four day weekend, hot chocolate, that kind of thing. Not Jesus. But I'm locked in to Christmas because this is what everyone else is doing. I wouldn't mind one bit shifting the secular part I celebrate to December 21 and renaming it The Holiday or Yule or whatever.
There are a lot of people who want a winter celebration that involves exchanging gifts, but aren't crazy about the Jesus part. There are a lot of Jesus people who feel the commercial part displaces Jesus. I think breaking up Christmas into a secular holiday and a religious holiday will please both. You can pick whether you want to do the secular part, the religious part, or both. It won't cause much disruption, either, because we're only moving the gift giving by 4 days. Holidays aren't set in stone either: FDR moved the date of Thanksgiving in the 1930s and people eventually got used to it.
The way I see it, we can't get rid of Santa and shopping so to make it more inclusive we divorce it from Christ and this way non-Christians can feel included. Of course you can still celebrate Hanukkah too, though I guess this would no longer involve gift giving (or change to really scaled down token gift giving). It might piss off pagans who already celebrate the solstice by commercializing December 21, but they'll have to take one for the team because they're a lot smaller than the other religions.
Doing some digging I find this from Wiki:
The custom of gifting to children at Christmas has been propagated by Martin Luther as an alternative to the previous very popular gift custom on St. Nicholas, to focus the interest of the children to Christ instead of the veneration of saints. Martin Luther first suggested the Christkind as the bringer of gifts. But Nicholas remained popular as gifts bearer for the people.[12][13][14]
It appears the Christians actually did inflict this on themselves. Give kids gifts so they think about Christ??? Seriously?? I wasn't raised religious but Jesus was the last thing on my mind when I tore open my Christmas presents.
I feel something similar should be done for Easter: do egg hunts and Peeps™ and whatnot on the vernal equinox as a celebration of Spring and leave Easter to be a day of churchgoing and solemn and/or joyful contemplation of the resurrection. Halloween is secularized enough (and indeed a lot of Christians don't celebrate it and consider it a Satanic holiday) that it can be left as-is.
Anonymous E replied with this 7 years ago, 1 hour later, 4 hours after the original post[^][v]#950,010
@previous (Meta !Sober//iZs)
The holiday is going to be commercialized no matter what. I've long since resigned myself to just accepting all the holiday crap. The only thing that still pisses me off is seeing decorations featuring penguins hanging around with Santa. I've mellowed over the years, but that is the one thing I still can't help but complain about when I see it happen.
I'm all for your idea. It sounds great. I think there might be a Christian backlash from trying to secularize the gift giving. They've kind of laid claim to the holiday and all that surrounds it, and equality feels like persecution if you are in the privileged majority. They might see it as secular government co-opting Christian practices. Maybe if we sold it as campaign to 'protect the sanctity of Christmas' we could get them on board.
Catherine !ttGirlsPl2 joined in and replied with this 7 years ago, 5 hours later, 9 hours after the original post[^][v]#950,042
Actually, it makes more sense if the Christian stuff moved to a different day since it was an addon to the main holiday anyway. Jesus didn't become a part of the holiday until the churches added it to give them a reason to join in on festivities. Christmas was once a banned festival from church grounds.
Then again, Christianity has enough holidays so another one isn't entirely needed.