Skepticum

The post-Christmas days have been filled with news of conflict, from Benazir Bhutto’s assassination to a less noticeable story, but a very entertaining one nonetheless:

Seven people were injured on Thursday when Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests came to blows in a dispute over how to clean the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. (breitbart.com) … For a quarter of an hour bearded and robed priests laid into each other with fists, brooms and iron rods while the photographers who had come to take pictures of the annual cleaning ceremony recorded the whole event.

The Church of the Nativity is physically divided into sections administered by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic authorities respectively. Any encroachment into another’s space can result into conflict.

During the pre-Christmas cleaning yesterday, a Greek Orthodox priest placed a ladder into Armenian territory and the brawl ensued.

The Orthodox church of Jerusalem celebrates Christmas based on the old Julian calendar, rather than the Gregorian calendar used worldwide today. In the Julian calendar Christmas falls on Jan. 7, thus the pre-Christmas cleaning.

Seeing that the spirit of Christmas had not seeped yet into the hearts of the Church of Nativity Keepers, Palestinian policemen stepped in to keep the peace.

Let me repeat that, Palestinians had to separate fighting Christians.

Tags: Christmas, church, nativity, orthodox, Religion

Sound Off’s Roland S. Martin wrote a commentary on CNN.com today in which he claims,

Because of all the politically correct idiots, we are being encouraged to stop saying “Merry Christmas” for the more palatable “Happy Holidays.” What the heck are “Seasons Greetings”? (…)

But this seeming backlash against Christianity is bordering on the absurd, and we should continue to remember that Jesus is the reason for the season.

What is disturbing about paranoid rants such as Martin’s is that he’s making arguments that are unfriendly (when people say Happy Holidays they’re backlashing against Christianity) and unsupported (Jesus is the reason for the season).

When people say Happy Holidays they actually try to be nice and not make assumptions about one’s religion. If I know someone is Christian I have no issues saying Merry Christmas, but when I don’t know, or when I know someone is not Christian I’d rather wish them Happy Holidays than nothing at all. Of course I could come up with something more creative, such as “Happy Winter Time Off!”

To use Martin’s own linguistic choices I must say you have to be an idiot to claim that Jesus is the reason for the season. Jesus is the reason for the celebration of Christmas as in “the mass of Christ,” the birth of jesus, but he is certainly not the reason why people throughout centuries have celebrated this time of year.It is common knowledge that the Christmas traditions are borrowed from a number of pagan celebrations such as the Northern European Yule and the Roman Saturnalia.

Decorated fir-trees, gift giving, mistletoe, holly, carol singing etc. are all traditions predating Christianity.

So if how we celebrate is a collection of pre-Christian traditions, and what we celebrate is highly varied based on religion why would saying Season’s Greetings or Happy Holidays be an attack on Christianity?

Tags: , atheism, Christmas, holidays, Religion, saturnalia, yule

I was following a Yahoo Answers! discussion on whether or not it is bad to give cash as a gift for Christmas. The two main reasons against giving cash were:

1. Cash is impersonal, it’s more thoughtful to pick out a gift for someone

2. If you give a certain amount to someone it creates the expectation that they should give the same to you.

Today I got a card with cash in it, and I thought it was the coolest thing. My teeth are about to fall off from all the candy canes people have been dropping off for me so the cash was actually more personal than impersonal. And the fact that my friend did not worry about me feeling pressured to give a gift of same value to her makes it even cooler.

Here’s to the best gift I got this season:

Tags: Christmas, friendship, gifts, Religion

Walking home this evening I had one of the best laughs of the week when I noticed the Christmas Story leg lamp in a window. I was looking from window to window noticing the colorfully lit Christmas trees. After a few windows I expected yet another tree, but found instead this:

Tags: , Christmas, movies

Pets of Christian families who choose to go with Dr. Dobson’s list of where not to shop for Christmas will be left out in the cold this winter. Petsmart is listed on Dobson’s “The Bad” list and PetCo committed an even more serious crime on Christmas and was listed on “The Ugly” list of stores Christians shouldn’t shop at.

Why is he boycotting these stores? Because Jesus wouldn’t shop there either, after the stores shifted their focus from Christmas to The Holidays.

“The Bad”(Best Buy and Borders etc.) and “The Ugly” (the GAP family of stores, Barnes and Noble, eBay, Discovery Channel Store, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and other), “depend on the Christmas season to generate a high percentage of their profits for the year, and yet they want to do it by distancing themselves from the traditional Christmas story,” according to Dobson.

How deluded do you have to be to think that the stores who use the term “Christmas” in their ads have a different goal in mind than profit. If retailers had data to show that their neutral holiday language was going to drive Christians away from their stores, they would use Christmas instead. All retailers are focused on revenue and based on their customer profile they know what language would work best with the customer without endangering their revenue.

Best Buy, Borders and Barnes and Noble were quoted for their “no-solicitation policy.” In other words, they don’t allow those dudes in funny outfits to shout Merry Christmas and expect donations for it. That was their big crime on Christmas.

However, if you want to do a charity thing this Holiday season, I encourage you to stop by Borders (”The Bad”) and donate to help with children’s literacy, or buy something from the (RED) campaign at one of the GAP stores (”The Ugly”).

Tags: atheism, charity, christian, Christmas, red, shopping