"Jeff Strickland" <crwlr@yahoo.com> wrote:
:|
:|"Josh Rosenbluth" <jrosenbluth@gotcha.comcast.net> wrote in message
:|>> Why? Again, I said nothing about Russia. I said that everybody that
:|>> celebrates Christ's birth does so on Dec. 25. Happy Jesus Birthday.
:|>
:|> Russia celebrates it on January 7.
:|>
:|> Josh Rosenbluth
:|
:|Can you cite?
:|
It doesn't surprise me that sheltered life jeffy wouldn't know about
January 7 being Christmas
Christmas Januray 7
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=christmas+january+7&btnG=Google+Search
Additional things jeffy doesn't know about Christmas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas
[excerpts]
Pagan Scandinavia celebrated a winter festival called Yule, held in the
late December to early January period. Yule logs were lit to honor Thor,
the god of thunder, with the belief that each spark from the fire
represented a new pig or calf that would be born during the coming year.
Feasting would continue until the log burned out, which could take as many
as twelve days.[14] In pagan Germania (not to be confused with Germany),
the equivalent holiday was the mid-winter night which was followed by 12
"wild nights", filled with eating, drinking and partying.[15] As Northern
Europe was the last part to Christianize, its pagan celebrations had a
major influence on Christmas. Scandinavians still call Christmas Jul. In
English, the Germanic word Yule is synonymous with Christmas,[16] a usage
first recorded in 900.
Origin of Christian festival
Origen, a father of the Christian church, argued against the celebration of
birthdays, including the birth of Christ. Origen, a father of the Christian
church, argued against the celebration of birthdays, including the birth of
Christ.
It is unknown exactly when or why December 25 became associated with Jesus'
birth. The New Testament does not give a specific date.[13] Sextus Julius
Africanus popularized the idea that Jesus was born on December 25 in his
Chronographiai, a reference book for Christians written in AD 221.[13] This
date is nine months after the traditional date of the Incarnation (March
25), now celebrated as the Feast of the Annunciation.[17] March 25 was also
considered to be the date of the vernal equinox and therefore the creation
of Adam.[17] Early Christians believed March 25 was also the date Jesus was
crucified.[17] The Christian idea that Jesus was conceived on the same date
that he died on the cross is consistent with a Jewish belief that a prophet
lived an integral number of years.[17]
The identification of the birthdate of Jesus did not at first inspire
feasting or celebration. Tertullian does not mention it as a major feast
day in the Church of Roman Africa. In 245, the theologian Origen denounced
the idea of celebrating Jesus' birthday "as if he were a king pharaoh." He
contended that only sinners, not saints, celebrated their birthdays.[7]
The earliest reference to the celebration of Christmas is in the Calendar
of Filocalus, an illuminated manuscript compiled in Rome in 354.[3][18] In
the east, meanwhile, Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus as part of
Epiphany (January 6), although this festival focused on the baptism of
Jesus.[19]
Christmas was promoted in the east as part of the revival of Catholicism
following the death of the pro-Arian Emperor Valens at the Battle of
Adrianople in 378. The feast was introduced to Constantinople in 379, to
Antioch in about 380, and to Alexandria in about 430. Christmas was
especially controversial in 4th century Constantinople, being the "fortress
of Arianism," as Edward Gibbon described it. The feast disappeared after
Gregory of Nazianzus resigned as bishop in 381, although it was
reintroduced by John Chrysostom in about 400.[3]
Middle Ages
In the Early Middle Ages, Christmas Day was overshadowed by Epiphany, which
in the west focused on the visit of the magi. But the Medieval calendar was
dominated by Christmas-related holidays. The forty days before Christmas
became the "forty days of St. Martin" (which began on November 11, the
feast of St. Martin of Tours), now known as Advent.[20] In Italy, former
Saturnalian traditions were attached to Advent.[20] Around the 12th
century, these traditions transferred again to the Twelve Days of Christmas
(December 26 - January 6), [20] appropriating the intercalary days of the
old Anglo-Saxon calendar. The evening of January 5 was called Twelfth
Night, a festival later celebrated in the play of that name by William
Shakespeare. The fortieth day after Christmas was Candlemas.
The prominence of Christmas Day increased gradually after Charlemagne was
crowned on Christmas Day in 800. King William I of England was crowned on
Christmas Day 1066.
By the High Middle Ages, the holiday had become so prominent that
chroniclers routinely noted where various magnates celebrated Christmas.
King Richard II of England hosted a Christmas feast in 1377 at which
twenty-eight oxen and three hundred sheep were eaten.[20] The Yule boar was
a common feature of medieval Christmas feasts. Caroling also became
popular, and was originally a group of dancers who sang. The group was
composed of a lead singer and a ring of dancers that provided the chorus.
Various writers of the time condemned caroling as lewd, indicating that the
unruly traditions of Saturnalia and Yule may have continued in this
form.[20] "Misrule" — drunkenness, promiscuity, gambling — was also an
important aspect of the festival. In England, gifts were exchanged on New
Year's Day, and there was special Christmas ale.[20]
Often the "misrule" got quite out of hand. According to the History
Channel's documentary, Christmas Unwrapped: The History of Christmas, there
was even a Christmas custom pre-dating trick-or-treat, in which revelers
would knock at a door and demand the best portion of their host's food and
ale, with "severe consequences" if he did not agree.
Excerpt from Josiah King's The Examination and Tryal of Father Christmas
(1686), published shortly after Christmas was reinstated as a holy day in
England.
The Reformation and the 1800s
During the Reformation, Protestants condemned Christmas celebration as
"trappings of popery" and the "rags of the Beast". The Catholic Church
responded by promoting the festival in an even more religiously oriented
form. Following the Parliamentary victory over King Charles I during the
English Civil War, England's Puritan rulers banned Christmas, in 1647.
Pro-Christmas rioting broke out in several cities, and for several weeks
Canterbury was controlled by the rioters, who decorated doorways with holly
and shouted royalist slogans.[21] The Restoration of 1660 ended the ban,
but most of the Anglican clergy still disapproved of Christmas
celebrations, using Protestant arguments.
In Colonial America, the Puritans of New England disapproved of Christmas;
its celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681. At the same time,
Christian residents of Virginia and New York observed the holiday freely.
Christmas fell out of favor in the United States after the American
Revolution, when it was considered an English custom.
By the 1820s, sectarian tension in England had eased and British writers
began to worry that Christmas was dying out. They imagined Tudor Christmas
as a time of heartfelt celebration, and efforts were made to revive the
holiday. Charles Dickens' book A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, played
a major role in reinventing Christmas as a holiday emphasizing family,
goodwill, and compassion over communal celebration and hedonistic
excess.[22]
Interest in Christmas in America was revived in the 1820s by several short
stories by Washington Irving appearing in his The Sketch Book of Geoffrey
Crayon and "Old Christmas",and by Clement Clarke Moore's 1822 poem A Visit
From St. Nicholas (popularly known by its first line: Twas the Night Before
Christmas. Irving's stories depicted harmonious warm-hearted holiday
traditions he claimed to have observed in England. Although some argue that
Irving invented the traditions he describes, they were widely imitated by
his American readers.[23] The numerous German immigrants and the
homecomings following the American Civil War helped promote the holiday by
bringing with them continental European traditions. Christmas was declared
a U.S. Federal holiday in 1870.
BTW
WASHINGTON IRVING was the man who INVENTED the MYTH that Washington said
SO HELP ME GOD when he was swron in as President.
Throughout the 20th century, the United States experienced controversy over
the nature of Christmas, and its dual status as a religious feast day and a
secular holiday of the same name. Some considered the U.S. government's
recognition of Christmas as a federal holiday to be a violation of the
separation of church and state. This was brought to trial several times,
recently including in Lynch v. Donnelly (1984)[26] and Ganulin v. United
States (1999).[27] On December 6, 1999, the verdict for Ganulin v. United
States (1999) declared that "the establishment of Christmas Day as a legal
public holiday does not violate the Establishment Clause because it has a
valid secular purpose." This decision was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court
on December 19, 2000. At the same time, many devout Christians objected to
what they saw as the vulgarization and cooption of one of their sacred
observances by secular commercial society and calls to return to "the true
meaning of Christmas" were common. (See:Christmas controversies)
Debates about Christmas in America continued into the 21st century. In
2005, when commercial interests sought to ameliorate Christians concerned
with protecting the sacredness of their holiday and non-Christians
uncomfortable with the perceived connection to faith, some Christians,
along with American political commentators such as Bill O'Reilly, protested
perceiving that it represented the secularization of Christmas rather than
its protection. They felt that the holiday was threatened by a general
secular trend, or by persons and organizations with an anti-Christian
agenda. The perceived trend was also blamed on political correctness.[28]
***************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the US and a couple from overseas as well]
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
****************************************************************
USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
****************************************************************
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