Agnostics visiting slightly religious family members for Xmas

[Anonymous]

I should add that the point of mentioning the winter solstice is that early Christianity deliberately put the holiday on a pagan one. I don't believe the pagans railed against the Christians, saying "get your own day!". In fact putting the Christian holiday on a pagan one made it more acceptable to everyone concerned, and it probably served as a useful bridge for the newly converted.

BTW I'd be careful about using words like "crazy", if that was also your post. The winter solstice is a cosmological fact. Christianity is a belief. And I'm not a pagan. I am Christian and I guarantee you I have spent as much time in a pew as you have.

[Anonymous]

I don't buy that BS about breaking bread with our friends, the Native Americans. And yet, I still celebrate Thanksgiving. I celebrate Christmas and Easter with family and friends without giving consideration to their religious connotation. Some of the posters sound like they want their holidays trademarked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't buy that BS about breaking bread with our friends, the Native Americans. And yet, I still celebrate Thanksgiving. I celebrate Christmas and Easter with family and friends without giving consideration to their religious connotation. Some of the posters sound like they want their holidays trademarked.

ITA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't buy that BS about breaking bread with our friends, the Native Americans. And yet, I still celebrate Thanksgiving. I celebrate Christmas and Easter with family and friends without giving consideration to their religious connotation. Some of the posters sound like they want their holidays trademarked.

ITA

I think this first post proves the point of some of the religious posters before. You are free to celebrate a religious holiday (which Thanksgiving is not, so it is a bad comparison for the purpose I suspect you intended) anyway you want, but that doesn't mean they aren't -- first and foremost -- religious holidays. Christmas is about the (alleged) birth of Christ and it has been for 2009 + 33 or so years. Hanukkah has been about the miracle of the oil for, oh, I dunno, more than 6000 years. That doesn't mean that you can't have the secular celebration you want to have if you like wrapping presents and the smell of a tree in your house and dig on lakes and gelt. But your celebrating the way you want to doesn't and can't take away from the fact that those holidays have their roots in religion.

Why can't people celebrate the holiday as all-out religiously as they want, as long as they let you celebrate it as secularly as they want? What's wrong with some people keeping the religion in these holidays? Why water the holidays down? Seems to me to be the opposite of diversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Why can't people celebrate the holiday as all-out religiously as they want, as long as they let you celebrate it as secularly as they want? What's wrong with some people keeping the religion in these holidays? Why water the holidays down? Seems to me to be the opposite of diversity.

10:06 - you raise a good question. I, too, am a Christian who is a bit put off by the militant individual who keeps posting. But, I can also understand the desire not to have a religious holiday "watered down" by those who want the secular trappings while abandoning the inconvenient religious foundations of the holiday. Don't get me wrong -- I love trees and Santa and Christmas cookies and presents (by contrast, I have evangelical friends who don't do Santa or the Easter Bunny with their children because they want to keep as much of the secular out of the holidays as possible). But, for those who want to remember and celebrate "the true meaning of Christmas" with their kids, it is admittedly more challenging in a world where it has become so commercialized.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why can't people celebrate the holiday as all-out religiously as they want, as long as they let you celebrate it as secularly as they want? What's wrong with some people keeping the religion in these holidays? Why water the holidays down? Seems to me to be the opposite of diversity.

I think most of the secularists here would say that's perfectly fine. There are one or two religion-only posters would seem to disagree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't people celebrate the holiday as all-out religiously as they want, as long as they let you celebrate it as secularly as they want? What's wrong with some people keeping the religion in these holidays? Why water the holidays down? Seems to me to be the opposite of diversity.

I think most of the secularists here would say that's perfectly fine. There are one or two religion-only posters would seem to disagree.

Yep. I think it's the very "Christ in Christmas" posters who are trying to "trademark" the holiday as another poster put it. The secularists don't care what the religious want to do on or call their holidays. Remember how we got off on this tangent - Most of us were saying, "explain to your child that this is what some people like Aunt x believe" when the "Christ in Christmas" faction wanted to more strictly define the holiday.

The secularists seem to be saying, to each their own (way of celebrating). The very (overly?)religious seem to be saying fine, do what you want but don't use my label for your heathen holiday ("Christmas"). We own that trademark.

[Anonymous]

Yep. I think it's the very "Christ in Christmas" posters who are trying to "trademark" the holiday as another poster put it. The secularists don't care what the religious want to do on or call their holidays. Remember how we got off on this tangent - Most of us were saying, "explain to your child that this is what some people like Aunt x believe" when the "Christ in Christmas" faction wanted to more strictly define the holiday.

The secularists seem to be saying, to each their own (way of celebrating). The very (overly?)religious seem to be saying fine, do what you want but don't use my label for your heathen holiday ("Christmas"). We own that trademark.

But I think there's a big difference between "this is what some people believe" (which can come off as condescending or patronizing) and "Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, but we have a different tradition/view/belief/meaning". The first SEEMS or could seem, to a kid I think especially, that the non-secular view is the tradition and that the Christians have added some meaning to it (which, understood, the earlier PP seems to believe).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yep. I think it's the very "Christ in Christmas" posters who are trying to "trademark" the holiday as another poster put it. The secularists don't care what the religious want to do on or call their holidays. Remember how we got off on this tangent - Most of us were saying, "explain to your child that this is what some people like Aunt x believe" when the "Christ in Christmas" faction wanted to more strictly define the holiday.

The secularists seem to be saying, to each their own (way of celebrating). The very (overly?)religious seem to be saying fine, do what you want but don't use my label for your heathen holiday ("Christmas"). We own that trademark.

But I think there's a big difference between "this is what some people believe" (which can come off as condescending or patronizing) and "Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, but we have a different tradition/view/belief/meaning". The first SEEMS or could seem, to a kid I think especially, that the non-secular view is the tradition and that the Christians have added some meaning to it (which, understood, the earlier PP seems to believe).

Well, personally this is exactly what I believe, based on my study of the history of these holidays, but it is up to the OP to decide what SHE believes and wants to teach her child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yep. I think it's the very "Christ in Christmas" posters who are trying to "trademark" the holiday as another poster put it. The secularists don't care what the religious want to do on or call their holidays. Remember how we got off on this tangent - Most of us were saying, "explain to your child that this is what some people like Aunt x believe" when the "Christ in Christmas" faction wanted to more strictly define the holiday.

The secularists seem to be saying, to each their own (way of celebrating). The very (overly?)religious seem to be saying fine, do what you want but don't use my label for your heathen holiday ("Christmas"). We own that trademark.

But I think there's a big difference between "this is what some people believe" (which [b]can come off as condescending or patronizing)[/b] and "Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, but we have a different tradition/view/belief/meaning". The first SEEMS or could seem, to a kid I think especially, that the non-secular view is the tradition and that the Christians have added some meaning to it (which, understood, the earlier PP seems to believe).

Condescending and patronizing to whom? To Christians? To you personally?