Christmas began as a secular holiday prior to it becoming known as Christmas. When the Roman Empire began it's expansion into Europe, "Pagan" villages celebrated the Winter Solstice with various festivals, calling the time of year Yule.
In order to more easily convert the local pagans to the "proper path of the Lord God", Christianity subsumed many of these local religions, converting thier Gods into Angels and Demons, and various other entities found throughout Catholic Dogma today, and thier feast days also became part of the Catholic calender. While most of these days have eventually faded (the celebration of May Day, and the Summer Solstice being prime examples) and some of those days became completely secular (All Hallows Eve/Halloween, in example), one remained ingrained in the new religion, the Yule Celebrations, becoming known as Christmas, the celebration of Jesus Christ, Son of God, product of the Immaculate Conception (which means he was conceived without Original Sin, by Catholic dogma, Mary is the only one who can lay claim to this, and Jesus her only offspring to be born without original sin).
Now, I stated all that as preface to this:
Dakarne wrote:Of course... the "holiday trees" is also stupid, very freaking stupid. Basically, a Christmas Tree is a Christmas Tree is a Christmas Tree, it is only ever used to celebrate Christmas (and provide oxygen if it's natural), and therefore it is a Christmas Tree.
Correction, the Christmas Tree, while perhaps having it's meaning changed through time, was originally known as the Yule Tree, in accordance with it being used in Yule celebration.
So it wasn't only ever used as a Christmas Tree, it was part of the earlier Pagan celebrations.
Secularization of Christmas:
No one is telling Christians to not celebrate Christmas, but to actually realieze thier not the only ones with holidays out there. Those of Jewish persuassion still celebrate Chanuka(correct spelling if I'm wrong), some of African descent now celebrate Kawanza (as far as I can tell some do, I personally, have not been introduced to any who admit to celebrating the holiday) and those of Pagan beleifs have readopted the celebration of Yule. Plus you also have the celebration of the Julian Calender's New Year (January 1st) just seven days away. That's minimum of four (4) holidays within a relatively short span of time.
The phrase "Happy Holidays" then, is all inclusive and the correct term to use, no one should be offended by this, it's not a attack on your beleif structure.
What do I say? I say Merry Christmas, Happy Yule, Happy Holidays, whichever springs to my mind first.
Secularization of "Silent Night"
They changed the lyrics to a song, simply reusing it's melody. I do not see a problem with this. It's been done enough times with popular, secular music, even in recent years.
The fact that this has also apparently gone on for several decades, and no one has ever felt threatened or has taken into offense, leads me to beleive this is one of the few who beleive there is a War going on to eliminate thier faith, when it can be further from the truth, especially in a public school. The fact we
have (idealy) a seperation of Church and State, is so this sort of thing should not happen.
If you beleive your religion should be preached and spoken, then you should allow the freedom of others.
It is somewhat hilarious, that I've only witnessed U.S. Catholic's decrying this "secularization of the holiday" in the news, of politicians (oddly enough,
conservative Republicans (show me a true Conservative in the Republican Party today and I'll be surprised as hell) speaking out against this. Anyone else find this somewhat funny?
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Eh, perhaps not. Man that got long winded.....
