Wednesday, December 5, 2012

A Tale Of Two Christmases

In fact, let's be clear: Christmas has always been a pagan holiday. . .  Just about every aspect of this holiday has pagan origins.
This means Christmas predates Christianity.

It's amazing to me that there are still so many people who do not know how many supposedly Christian traditions are actually Pagan.  Christmas trees, Easter eggs, and the dates for the holidays that go with both.  Is anything more associated with Christmas than decorated, lit evergreen trees?  Is anything more associated with Easter than bunnies and decorated eggs?  Notice how I didn't have to mention Jesus at all?

This is part of what I find amusing about the fake "War On Christmas" that comes up every year.  The Christian complaining often reveals an ignorance of the existence of two different Christmases.  Christian Christmas and Secular Christmas.  They often confuse the two, while also being enraged that the latter is clearly the more popular Christmas.

The complaints are primarily focused on forcing everyone to say "Merry Christmas".  They vilify "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays".  They're determined to make the two Christmases compete against each other.  It's an interesting approach considering people vastly prefer Secular Christmas and don't give a shit if Christians want to celebrate their religious holidays in their churches or homes.  Christian Christmas isn't under attack at all.

Although, Secular Christmas is under attack.  "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays" or calling it a "Holiday Tree" actually helps the Secular Christmas, as they make it more inclusive.  In other words, they allow everyone to participate without feeling like religion is being pushed on them.

They wanted us all to celebrate Christmas, which is how we got Secular Christmas.  But it backfired on them, because the Pagan traditions they stole for Christian Christmas now belong to Secular Christmas.  The moronic complaining about the War On Christmas pits the two Christmases against each other.

I call it moronic because it's counterproductive to the goals of the people pushing it.  They want Christian Christmas to be dominant, but it doesn't stand a chance against Secular Christmas.  Secular Christmas has presents, trees to decorate, and even Santa.  Christian Christmas has a story everyone's heard and church at midnight.

They either get to have Christmas be a religious holiday or they get to have us all celebrate.  It simply cannot be both, without letting them be two entirely different things that share a name and a date.  If they want to keep their religious holiday, they would be wise to stop making it fight against the juggernaut that is Secular Christmas.  But they won't.  

They'll keep whining that people celebrate things in December other than the Jesus myth, and everyone else will go on mocking them, then ignoring them while celebrating whatever they want however they want with whatever words they choose to wish people well.  And there's not a goddamn thing Christian Christmas can do about it.

Allowing Secular Christmas to be all inclusive and leaving it alone, while celebrating Christian Christmas in private wouldn't allow them to once again force their religion onto the rest of us.  It also wouldn't allow them to complain and once again paint themselves as perpetual victims.  And who wants that?

I certainly don't.  I want them to keep up the tantrum.  It means they're losing.  We should commercialize the rest of the (formerly Pagan) Christian holidays and take those back too.  All they could do to us is more whining and more pointless yelling from Bill O'Reilly.

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