Get Behind Me, Santa!

[pianomaniac]

Okay, so I was going to post this before Christmas... but, well... things have been rather busy the last few weeks. It was going to be this spiel on the evils of Santa Claus and perhaps more specifically, if I should ever have kids, would I promote this preposterous posterboy of the Yuletide

Comments

[polarme]

lately i've been thinking that to me, christmas most of all, is something to cheer us up in the darkness.
and i'm thinking it goes way back from the pre-christian era (vikings) when we celebrated that the sun was on it's way back. midwinter-sacrifice and all that ;)

[pianomaniac]

Well yeah.... it was a pagan holiday of sorts back in the day. And it's the same with Halloween. One of the reasons Christmas was moved to this time of year was to kinda ease the transition between the two religions/cultures. But, to me personally, I don't celebrate Christmas just for a pick-me-up when the daylight is at its shortest. It seems like many people have tried to reclaim Christmas as a secular holiday ever since the first.

I also find it interesting that with many other mainstream religions, their holidays seem undiluted throughout the ages. It's like.. we have the Easter bunny... but we don't have the Passover platypus. Then again, maybe 'selling out' major Christian holidays is a way to get non-Christians to become familiar with the holidays and their meanings... just as the early Christians blended pagan traditions into Christian holidays.

[idioteque]

The only thing that annoys me are those who are offended by the religious connotations with christmas, and this is coming from someone who isn't religious.

One of my jewish friends complained the whole time through christmas and how they hate it and its such a awful time for them, and I was thinking about it, and as a none religious person, christmas to me is pretty much the same christmas songs/adverts on television, christmas specials and presents, I couldn't really recall the last time I saw anything about the nativity or Jesus while at a horrible crowded store trying to pick out presents.

I mean really, if you don't want to treat Christmas as a religious holiday, it's easier than ever, if anything I'd even hazard to say it's more secular than anything now.

He shut up when I pointed out my muslim colleagues took part in secret santa at my work and said that although they don't celebrate christmas, they really enjoy having two days off work.