Our Life

We all know that the birthday of Jesus is 'on' christmas (even though it was much much more likely sometime in March, and the only reason that it's in December is b/c that's when the days start to change in which means we're celebrating stuff w/ the sun. Of course, this was only b/c we wanted to ease the Pagans and others into christianity. Another example of sun worship are halos (NOT the game =))) Anyways, who else gets sad when they realize the season of Jesus has turned into the season of greed?

Not me. I'm not religious so I'm all for the commercial element! I love it :)

I'm not religious, but it still is kinda sad that it's ruined by commercialism. Although it happens to all holidays nowadays.. Easter, Valentine's day…

I try not to think about it and just enjoy the holiday part of it as much as I can =)
As for the greed/commercialism part I don't get sad because I've come to accept that it's just human nature.
It's just more obvious around Christmas time.

I see where you're coming from but for me it's no more than an excuse for the family to get together, give eachother prezzies, eat far too much food and drink far too much beer! It's just a standard holiday! With valentines day I think it depends how you take to it. You can still be romantic without using all the commercial stuff. Plus with easter, the religious part of society still celebrate it in their own way, and the non religious part gorge themselves on chocolate!

Because it is a lovely secular holiday.

I agree 100% with this.
Speshly the part about the chocolate gourging.

I, also, get sad when I think of how much people ignore the real reason of CHRISTmas.

Yes. It isn't X-mas

No, I agree. I just mean if you were religious it would kind of suck.
That said, I enjoy it.

Amen!

Who even made up Santa, anyway?

Actually it isn't too bad of a story. He was real and gave to poor families that had girls that wanted to marry (they had to pay the groom). It started in Austria and Saint Nick was, after all a saint. Then in turned into Santa (french maybe?) the christmas tree story is even more inspiring

Tell us the christmas tree story!

Really? I didn't know that…

Thanks for the enlightenment.

Christmas tree story..?

there are different names for all over the world for santas….my grandma has little collectibles that all look like a different version of santa and have different names for different countries

Whats wrong with commercialism? Don't you like getting presents? It is also fun to give presents.

Go ahead and be an ebenezer, hording all your money and saying Christmas is stupid. You are the grinch, not us…

I'm waiting for the Christmas tree story!

So am I! Come on Brain, we're waiting…

It's a German story (actually fake, but it's where the tree came from). Two really poor kids were in their cabin in the woods (The Black Forest if we're saying it's Germany). They were cleaning up after dinner, and were saving some soup for the mourning, because they knew they couldn't eat all of it right away even though they were hungry since then they wouldn't have anything for awhile. So when they went to bed they heard a knocking on their door. When the boy and girl went to the door hey found a poor, ragid girl who was clearly starving and cold. They took her in and gave here food (their leftover soup) and a hot drink. They then put her in front of their fire. Later that night, they heard a noise so they went to check on the girl, but she was gone. They then saw some light coming from outside, and when they open the door they saw a 'christmas tree' with silver and golden tinsel (which is where the 'silver and gold' song came from) when they went to the tree they saw a note: you took me and a so I give you this gift. They then took the tree in just as they had done w/ the little girl.
note: Parallels can be drawn between this story and Greek/ Roman god stories b/c the girl is assumed to be a transformed angel

Yeah. for example, a santa in South Africa wears a black robe w/ stars on it!

Ok ok… what about the reindeer and sleigh… where's that from? And that 'santa' lives in the north pole..?

Haha. I'm pretty sure the reindeer and sleigh and everything else comes from passing down stories and making the story more and more elaborate.

I think RUDOLPH was invented by Sears-Roebuck in 1917.

yes, people transforming the story

I love Christmas and I give and get as many presents as the next person. It the fact that it's losing its meaning.

Santa Claus is actually a mispronounciation of the name Saint Nicklous. A priest from Germany who would leave coins in people's socks as they were drying by the fire. It's easy to see the evolution of the name to st nick, or Santa Claus. I don't know where Chris Cringle came from, nor do I know why he lives in northern Canada (Probably just lucky) and has elves and flying reindeer.

The term X-mas is not as wrong as many Christians seem to think. X is the Greek symbol for Christ, so it is a simple abreviation.

Perhaps it would be best for people to pick which religion they would like to adhere to, and which holidays they would like to celebrate. Take three a year. Christians could take Christmas, Good Friday, and some other one. Jewish people could take Yom Kippur, and two others… and down the list. Secular people or athiests would have to make up some. Maybe that's where "present-day" could come in. A day celebrating gluttony and greed, instead of the birth of the most influential man in all of history.

Sorry for the long post, but those are my thoughts.

The story about St. Nick leaving coins is another possible thing he did. He also gave money to future brides.

Lets see.. Apart from the idiot parents that can't say no to their kids who wants the latest video game but yet bitches about childhood obesity or those lovely commercials that flash all the images of child actors having fun with these games/toys/etc. People should realize that most kids are like fish, run something flashy and bright infront of them and they will bite the hell out of it. Now we have these political correctness jerk off's telling us that we can't say christmas tree, its the "Holiday tree" and Santa is out the window, he is now a "Non-specific holiday figure". My grandfather was a Jehovah's witness and even he didn't try and stop us from beliving in those things.. WTF?!