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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We're Jewish and Santa comes to our house every year.  Santa is not really a Christian figure, just one appropriated by Christianity a long time ago, so we don't see any relationship between Santa and other religions.  I taught my child from an early age not to taunt other kids and to remember that not everyone celebrates holidays so it's best not to talk a lot about it at school.

It concerns me that OP thinks Santa is only for Christians, and makes sense that her kid might taunt other kids.  [/quote]
If your family enjoys the Santa tradition, I’m glad he visits you. Nobody else gets to dictate your household celebrations. However, your view on Santa is not widely shared. Santa is definitely associated with Christmas, and Christmas with Christianity.[/quote]

I disagree.  The majority of educated folks know that [b]Santa has nothing to do with Christianity[/b] and don't feel any obligation to be Christian while celebrating a secular Christmas.  Only Christians constantly whine about how everyone needs to put Jesus back into Christmas and how materialistic and secular it all is today, without realizing the irony of all of that being much older than Christianity itself.[/quote]
I mean, he's been pretty secularized, but it's just wrong to say he has "nothing" to do with Christianity.  Christmas is a Christian holiday, celebrating the birth of Christ.  Santa is based on a Christian saint.  Even if he's been turned into a secular cartoon, his origins are pretty clearly based in Christianity, and not everyone agrees that there are no religious aspects to either Santa or Christmas.  Not all Jews celebrate Christmas or "do" Santa, for example.  [/quote]

I'm guessing if non Jews started celebrating Hanukkah because 8 days of gifts is better than one some Jewish people would find that offensive. Choosing to celebrate one of the holiest days for a different faith because it's "secularized" even though the name of it has the name of their Savior IN the name of the holiday is a bit of appropriation. I'm an atheist but I can see why some Christians would not be happy with folks and yes I celebrate. I was raised a Christian and it is part of my family culture. Don't care what anyone else does but the inability of people to consider the other side of anything is disheartening. [/quote]

You have it the wrong way around.  Christmas traditions like trees, gifts, lights, and a guy on a flying sleigh who gives gifts to good children are all traditions that pre-date Christianity.  Many are part of the celebrations of pre-Christian religions.  They were deliberately and consciously appropriated by the Christian church, with a kind of "if you can't beat 'em, make them join you" mentality, as a way to combat what it saw as pagan tradition in a population it was actively trying to convert.  By not recognizing that appropriation, we simply take back what was always ours.[/quote]

Who was the guy flying on a sleigh giving out gifts, before Santa?[/quote]

Good point.  No One.  that story started with the poem "A night before Xmas"

Before that, supposedly a good Slavic king, named Nicholas, gave out gifts at Xmas and he became "Saint Nick"

The original gift giving idea supposedly came from the 3 wise men in the Bible, who came from afar, guided by a star, to bring gifts to the baby Jesus[/quote]

Sorry, that's incorrect.  A whole host of gods and folk figures from Greek to Slavic to Norse and Germanic mythologies flew across the sky and left gifts for children.  From Odin to Father Frost,  there is no shortage of them.  There were even plenty of reindeer around in pre-Santa mythology.  The poem referenced above came much, much later, and merely repeated and expanded on those folk beliefs, plus actually gave names to the reindeer.  It did not invent the idea.  Likewise, St. Nicholas (he was not Slavic, he was a Greek bishop in the 4th century, hundreds of years before the Slavs became Christian) was not the origin of most of Santa Claus - Santa has only his name (deliberately given to him by the early church in order to appropriate existing beliefs they saw as pagan) and the red clothing, which resembles a bishop.

In fact, almost nothing is known of the original St. Nicholas - all the stories of his gift-giving were written long after his death.  The conflation of a popular folk character with the saint was strategic.  As for the Slavs, they had their own stories about a guy with a sleigh full of gifts, and still do.  [/quote]

Sorry, it's not incorrect, it's just another story -- like the many stories told above.[/quote]

I have to conclude that you are either wilfully ignorant or just not educated enough to see the difference.

The three wise men is a biblical story.  I don't think you understand the timeline.  The bible is much more recent than the mythologies mentioned above.  The stories of men flying across the sky, giving gifts to children, etc. - all those are much older than the bible, and older than Christianity itself.  I am just amazed at how many people claim to be Christians but don't even understand its basic history, including how long it's been around and what preceded it.[/quote]

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