The Christmas lie?

[Rum]

It occurs to me thinking about Christmas, that the whole history of the last two thousand years may well be based on attempts of a young woman to lie her way out of having had pre-marital sex with someone other than her betrothed.

'What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive' suddenly has a whole different order of meaning!

[FedUpWithFaith]

It occurs to me thinking about Christmas, that the whole history of the last two thousand years may well be based on attempts of a young woman to lie her way out of having had pre-marital sex with someone other than her betrothed.

'What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive' suddenly has a whole different order of meaning!

You can tell by how he treats his mom in the New Testament that Jesus knew she was a slut.

[Thinking Aloud]

Alternatively, the whole Nativity story, tacked on to the Jesus story after the first telling, could have been just a badly-thought-out rehash of previous Virgin Birth stories from other cultures.

Or the whole lot was designed by God just to throw us sceptics off the scent and cause us to dream up more logical explanations for the whole thing.

[Feck]

Alternatively, the whole Nativity story, tacked on to the Jesus story after the first telling, could have been just a badly-thought-out rehash of previous Virgin Birth stories from other cultures.

Or the whole lot was designed by God just to throw us sceptics off the scent and cause us to dream up more logical explanations for the whole thing.

Virgin birth WTF just so the bitches can saddle you with a brat even without the sex, that's just wrong

[Thinking Aloud]

Alternatively, the whole Nativity story, tacked on to the Jesus story after the first telling, could have been just a badly-thought-out rehash of previous Virgin Birth stories from other cultures.

Or the whole lot was designed by God just to throw us sceptics off the scent and cause us to dream up more logical explanations for the whole thing.

Virgin birth WTF just so the bitches can saddle you with a brat even without the sex, that's just wrong

Which reminds me of a Hymn I spotted back in my churchgoing days, entitled:

"Joseph was an honest man."

It went something like: Joseph was an honest man, Joseph was an honest man, Joseph was an honest man, he was an honest man.

TALK ABOUT MAKING STUFF UP! Where the hell does it say that in the Bible, huh?

And anyway [rant] what the hell's all that descendancy stuff for Joseph from King David, if he didn't even sire the brat? Self-contradictory before the kid's even born!! [/rant] :pissed:

[Feck]

Alternatively, the whole Nativity story, tacked on to the Jesus story after the first telling, could have been just a badly-thought-out rehash of previous Virgin Birth stories from other cultures.

Or the whole lot was designed by God just to throw us sceptics off the scent and cause us to dream up more logical explanations for the whole thing.

Virgin birth WTF just so the bitches can saddle you with a brat even without the sex, that's just wrong

Which reminds me of a Hymn I spotted back in my churchgoing days, entitled:

"Joseph was an honest man."

It went something like: Joseph was an honest man, Joseph was an honest man, Joseph was an honest man, he was an honest man.

TALK ABOUT MAKING STUFF UP! Where the hell does it say that in the Bible, huh?

And anyway [rant] what the hell's all that descendancy stuff for Joseph from King David, if he didn't even sire the brat? Self-contradictory before the kid's even born!! [/rant] :pissed:

Start lying at the beginning get your audience used to it before they read the rest of the bull shit .
And no illegitimate children for 27 generations and A few substitutions to make the numbers fit a Kabbalic significance and a couple of the names changed.
LIES all LIES .

[Pappa]

Aside from the point that the virgin bit is based on a misunderstanding of the double meaning of a word (think "maiden").... Christmas has got very little to do with Christianity. If you remove the nativity, nearly all the other traditions are non-religious or were co-opted by the church. It's a winter solstice festival. People give presents, spend time with family and friends, party and celebrate, sing, dance and be merry. They tell stories round a warm fire, play games with the kids.... all that's got fuck all to do with Jesus.

[floppit]

Just as a point of interest you call a mare that has never been covered a maiden.

There that helped didn't it?

[charlou]

It's a winter solstice festival. People give presents, spend time with family and friends, party and celebrate, sing, dance and be merry. They tell stories round a warm fire, play games with the kids.... all that's got fuck all to do with Jesus.

Aussies celebrate it at the wrong time of year.


But, then, we don't have to ... hmmm ...

[Beelzebub2]

Actually the history of Saturnalia and Christmas is not as marry as it may seem.

Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.

The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681. However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”

As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.” On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

The Real Story of Christmas

[Pappa]

It's a winter solstice festival. People give presents, spend time with family and friends, party and celebrate, sing, dance and be merry. They tell stories round a warm fire, play games with the kids.... all that's got fuck all to do with Jesus.

Aussies celebrate it at the wrong time of year.


But, then, we don't have to ... hmmm ...

I've hear that many Aussies have a christmas dinner in mid winter too, around July. Anyone here done that?

[FedUpWithFaith]

Actually the history of Saturnalia and Christmas is not as marry as it may seem.

Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.

The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681. However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”

As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.” On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

The Real Story of Christmas

While I enjoyed this quote above I question the source. It's a conservative Jewish site. I've seen almost this exact diatribe printed verbatim on a bunch of sites and I question it's full veracity. The first thing that hit me was the period, the celebration originally, and for most of its duration, ended on December 23, not 25. When I went to the source of the quote about human sacrifice (Lucian) I read his works on Saturnalia here. I found no such description of human sacrifice nor have I found evidence that human sacrifice was an accepted practice at any period of Saturnalia. If anybody has more complete and referenced information about that I'd like to read it.

[Beelzebub2]

This is what came up after quick five-minute google search - it has been referenced here, here, here, and here as well:

By the time Jesus came on the scene, the most barbaric feature of the Saturnalia, human sacrifice, had vanished from polite society. But even though the king of the feast was no longer sacrificed, contemporaries reported a week of reveling that would induce apoplectic seizure in a Puritan.

Here too:

...but in the Saturnalia a human victim seems to have been slain till the 4th century A.D.

Etc etc.

I gotta go now, I will investigate thoroughly later. It can be trusted as anything else on the web.

[FedUpWithFaith]

This is what came up after quick five-minute google search - it has been referenced here, here, here, and here as well:

By the time Jesus came on the scene, the most barbaric feature of the Saturnalia, human sacrifice, had vanished from polite society. But even though the king of the feast was no longer sacrificed, contemporaries reported a week of reveling that would induce apoplectic seizure in a Puritan.

Here too:

...but in the Saturnalia a human victim seems to have been slain till the 4th century A.D.

Etc etc.

I gotta go now, I will investigate thoroughly later. It can be trusted as anything else on the web.

If you read your second reference you'll see it's very skeptical as well - only able to document one known case of sacrifice. i don't see evidence it was a common practice.

[Beelzebub2]

It seems that the links above were referencing the work of Sir James George Fraser - Scottish anthropologist who discussed it in his comparative cultural study of mythology and religion - The Golden Bough.

From the The Golden Bough/Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity:

Now, when we remember that the liberty allowed to slaves at this festive season was supposed to be an imitation of the state of society in Saturn's time, and that in general the Saturnalia passed for nothing more or less than a temporary revival or restoration of the reign of that merry monarch, we are tempted to surmise that the mock king who presided over the revels may have originally represented Saturn himself. The conjecture is strongly confirmed, if not established, by a very curious and interesting account of the way in which the Saturnalia was celebrated by the Roman soldiers stationed on the Danube in the reign of Maximian and Diocletian. The account is preserved in a narrative of the martyrdom of St. Dasius, which was unearthed from a Greek manuscript in the Paris library, and published by Professor Franz Cumont of Ghent. Two briefer descriptions of the event and of the custom are contained in manuscripts at Milan and Berlin; one of them had already seen the light in an obscure volume printed at Urbino in 1727, but its importance for the history of the Roman religion, both ancient and modern, appears to have been overlooked until Professor Cumont drew the attention of scholars to all three narratives by publishing them together some years ago. According to these narratives, which have all the appearance of being authentic, and of which the longest is probably based on official documents, the Roman soldiers at Durostorum in Lower Moesia celebrated the Saturnalia year by year in the following manner. Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from amongst themselves a young and handsome man, who was then clothed in royal attire to resemble Saturn. Thus arrayed and attended by a multitude of soldiers he went about in public with full license to indulge his passions and to taste of every pleasure, however base and shameful. But if his reign was merry, it was short and ended tragically; for when the thirty days were up and the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the god whom he personated. In the year A.D. 303 the lot fell upon the Christian soldier Dasius, but he refused to play the part of the heathen god and soil his last days by debauchery. The threats and arguments of his commanding officer Bassus failed to shake his constancy, and accordingly he was beheaded, as the Christian martyrologist records with minute accuracy, at Durostorum by the soldier John on Friday the twentieth day of November, being the twenty-fourth day of the moon, at the fourth hour.

Since this narrative was published by Professor Cumont, its historical character, which had been doubted or denied, has received strong confirmation from an interesting discovery. In the crypt of the cathedral which crowns the promontory of Ancona there is preserved, among other remarkable antiquities, a white marble sarcophagus bearing a Greek inscription, in characters of the age of Justinian, to the following effect: "Here lies the holy martyr Dasius, brought from Durostorum." The sarcophagus was transferred to the crypt of the cathedral in 1848 from the church of San Pellegrino, under the high altar of which, as we learn from a Latin inscription let into the masonry, the martyr's bones still repose with those of two other saints. How long the sarcophagus was deposited in the church of San Pellegrino, we do not know; but it is recorded to have been there in the year 1650. We may suppose that the saint's relics were transferred for safety to Ancona at some time in the troubled centuries which followed his martyrdom, when Moesia was occupied and ravaged by successive hordes of barbarian invaders. At all events it appears certain from the independent and mutually confirmatory evidence of the martyrology and the monuments that Dasius was no mythical saint, but a real man, who suffered death for his faith at Durostorum in one of the early centuries of the Christian era. Finding the narrative of the nameless martyrologist thus established as to the principal fact recorded, namely, the martyrdom of St. Dasius, we may reasonably accept his testimony as to the manner and cause of the martyrdom, all the more because his narrative is precise, circumstantial, and entirely free from the miraculous element. Accordingly I conclude that the account which he gives of the celebration of the Saturnalia among the Roman soldiers is trustworthy.

This account sets in a new and lurid light the office of the King of the Saturnalia, the ancient Lord of Misrule, who presided over the winter revels at Rome in the time of Horace and Tacitus. It seems to prove that his business had not always been that of a mere harlequin or merry-andrew whose only care was that the revelry should run high and the fun grow fast and furious, while the fire blazed and crackled on the hearth, while the streets swarmed with festive crowds, and through the clear frosty air, far away to the north, Soracte showed his coronal of snow. When we compare this comic monarch of the gay, the civilised metropolis with his grim counterpart of the rude camp on the Danube, and when we remember the long array of similar figures, ludicrous yet tragic, who in other ages and in other lands, wearing mock crowns and wrapped in sceptred palls, have played their little pranks for a few brief hours or days, then passed before their time to a violent death, we can hardly doubt that in the King of the Saturnalia at Rome, as he is depicted by classical writers, we see only a feeble emasculated copy of that original, whose strong features have been fortunately preserved for us by the obscure author of the _Martyrdom of St. Dasius._ In other words, the martyrologist's account of the Saturnalia agrees so closely with the accounts of similar rites elsewhere which could not possibly have been known to him, that the substantial accuracy of his description may be regarded as established; and further, since the custom of putting a mock king to death as a representative of a god cannot have grown out of a practice of appointing him to preside over a holiday revel, whereas the reverse may very well have happened, we are justified in assuming that in an earlier and more barbarous age it was the universal practice in ancient Italy, wherever the worship of Saturn prevailed, to choose a man who played the part and enjoyed all the traditionary privileges of Saturn for a season, and then died, whether by his own or another's hand, whether by the knife or the fire or on the gallows-tree, in the character of the good god who gave his life for the world. In Rome itself and other great towns the growth of civilisation had probably mitigated this cruel custom long before the Augustan age, and transformed it into the innocent shape it wears in the writings of the few classical writers who bestow a passing notice on the holiday King of the Saturnalia. But in remoter districts the older and sterner practice may long have survived; and even if after the unification of Italy the barbarous usage was suppressed by the Roman government, the memory of it would be handed down by the peasants and would tend from time to time, as still happens with the lowest forms of superstition among ourselves, to lead to a recrudescence of the practice, especially among the rude soldiery on the outskirts of the empire over whom the once iron hand of Rome was beginning to relax its grasp.