And spawned an even longer shit fit.
Some people just want to be offended and we should simply let them.
Wait, did I read that correctly and they replaced the hat with a snowflake?? Hahahaha
And yes, people often forget that generally offense is taken. When it’s intentionally given, it’s pretty clear.
I’m from Australia and snowflakes during December is hemispherist and offensive to us down under.
We can replace it with an emu.
Christmas is no longer a holiday that honors the Christian god, it’s a holiday that honors the god of capitalism, money.
Cool, so it’s still worth eschewing /s
I would like to note though that xmas is a very sore time of year for a lot of people (mostly queer, but others too) who do not have a good relationship with their family
That’s why I think it’s important that we bring Christmas back to its true religious roots: Fertility, hunting, and maybe a cult of the dead.
Well, that and I just kind of want to piss off all of my pearl clutching relatives.
But seriously, thank you for the reminder that this can be a particularly hard season.
I hope your solstice is marked by good times with real friends and chosen family.
Forget all the other traditions, the true meaning of the season is a battle of rhymes with a skeletal horse
It’s true that Christians have killed more people and commited more genocides, and are obsessed with putting their religion in everything… I think I’m on the side of this guy tbh
Christmas is religion yes, but Santa doesn’t really have anything to do with religion other than being on Christmas right?
Santa is a stand-in for Jesus… for children. They’re both magical beings that can perform miracles and have similar methods: Both Santa and Jesus have naughty lists and forms of punishment that come later; much later (both are equivalent lengths of time to a child though 🤣). Both bring “gifts”. Both have traditional appearances. Both have followers that wear silly hats and strange clothes. But most importantly…
Both are imaginary.
If you believe in Santa as an adult you’re ridiculed. If you believe in Jesus as an adult you’re just labeled, “Christian”. Yet the fact that nearly every child eventually finds out Santa isn’t real is quite disturbing to a lot of Christians. After all, if they could stop believing in Santa–who is so similar to Jesus in every way–then they could stop believing in Jesus.
After all, if they could stop believing in Santa–who is so similar to Jesus in every way–then they could stop believing in Jesus.
This is a laughably bad faith interpretation of the issue. Please, please leave this r/atheism exaggerated strawman rhetoric out of this website. I’m pretty sure most people on Lemmy are already atheist anyways.
The article they share in the issue to explain why Christmas is so offensive is absolutely wild. To quote:
Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday. Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.
That analogy seems a better fit for a lot of Jewish holidays then Christmas. Passover is about the mass death of innocent Egyptian children. Chanukah is about a revolt against Greek rule where:
Christmas is just about some baby being born ( on probably a different day)
The “real meaning” of Christmas was getting the pagans on board with Christianity, don’t let anyone lie to you otherwise lol.
Yep the birth of Christ just coincidentally coincides with the end of Brumalia, which of course noone noticed when the emperor suddenly insisted everyone become Christian and had the bible written by committee. And it’s of course a coincidence that that was (back in the day) exactly the winter solstice. And it’s also just a coincidence that Jesus’ life story has quite some parallels to that of earlier sun gods from the general area.
Most current Christmas traditions are more Germanic in nature, though, e.g. the Christmas tree. While in the current form a quite recent invention, decorating the house with evergreen stuff was common through the ages – branches, wreaths, not whole-ass trees. The needles btw are fine smudging material don’t just sweep them away.
Which earlier sun gods does Jesus’s life story have parallels with?
Sol Invictus, in particular it’s also where the halo in depictions comes from… which isn’t really “other sun gods”, it’s in particular the Roman sun god. Misremembered the resurrection part, that’s Osiris who isn’t a sun god and the Horus parallels have been shown to be bunk, aside from getting nursed by Mary depictions being inspired by Horus getting nursed by Isis.
I read something about them (mainly in Wikipedia), and I see some parallels in artistic style or symbolism, but I don’t see a substantial parallel in their stories, although I didn’t find much about the story of Sol Invictus. I don’t see that someone was nursed as a significant parallel because almost every human was nursed.
I focused on parallels in their stories because I don’t see parallels in the style of art depicting them as problematic to Christianity. But most of your previous comment was about artistic depictions, so, if you think that they are problematic, please, explain that more in details.
I’m not even Christian what would I care about depictions or inspiration being “problematically Pagan”.
What I can say is that it’s unlikely that much of the parallels (like the Osiris thing) existed before Rome became Christian as over in staunchly monotheist Palestine people wouldn’t have taken inspiration like that, while turning multiple gods into one sounds quite reasonable for a people going from polytheism to monotheism.
For modern Christian, I think, the question is “How much did the Romans change”. That is, how different was early, pre-Roman, Christianity to what’s now considered authoritative, like the Bible, which wasn’t brought down from a mountain by Jesus.
