The annual War on Christmas

[Swatopluk]

As every year the usual suspects cry "War on Christmas!". The tradition is a wee bit older than most would suspect and is a good deal more sinister.
It includes the John Birch Society, white supremacists and has some strong antisemitic undertones too.
A friendly atheist gives his thoughts on it here.

[Sibling DavidH]

Well, Cromwell and the Puritan regime tried to ban celebrations in the 1640s and 50s.  It was quite effective for a while.

I'm not against it at all, though I won't go to carol services.  I just wish it could be scaled back a bit, though.  Mrs H has been getting ready for months; eventually it ceases to be a pleasure and becomes a worry.

A lot of poorer parents now feel they have to spend several hundred pounds on their kids, money they just don't have.  The whole thing is getting out of hand if you ask me.

[Swatopluk]

A sign of the (bad) times is that in this year's Letters to Santa in the US the requests for toys are down and replaced by those for clothes or even medical treatment.
---
Scotland kept the ban on Christmas until WW1. Scottish soldiers witnessing the celebration (totally alien to many of them) in the trenches brought it back home and demanded legal recognition.

[Swatopluk]

In the comment thread of that letter there was also this direct quote from scripture:

Jer. 10:1-5.
" Do not learn the way of the Gentiles;
Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven,
For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.
For the customs of the peoples are futile;
For one cuts a tree from the forest,
The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.
They decorate it with silver and gold;
They fasten it with nails and hammers
So that it will not topple.
They are upright, like a palm tree,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot go by themselves.
Do not be afraid of them,
For they cannot do evil,
Nor can they do any good."

Jeremiah and the Christmas trees?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Most interesting.  A bit too long for me to read thoroughly, but what I did read was good.

Thanks for the heads' up.

[Opsa]

I don't have a problem with Christmas. It's a nice way to cheer up the darkest part of the year. We indulge a little- mostly on fun food with friends and family, and a few things for the Opsalette- art supplies and stuff to spur her creative side and give her something to do when it's otherwise too cold. We do not have much and we do not spend much. This month we cut our satellite TV, so we're not being bombarded with tedious advertisements. So it's been fairly cool.

Except...

I would like to wage war against holiday family spaz attacks. Mom is doing her usual passive aggressive ballet, a dance that was as old fifty years ago as it was today when I phoned her. G'ARRRGGGH! It's the same damned thing year after year. She's normally like this, but something about the holidays makes it even worse. And she's the Christian, not me- so you'd think it would mean more to her to try to be nice at this time. I don't get it.

Okay, you can have your plane back, even though Cuba is sounding  pretty good right now.

[Griffin NoName]

I have mixed views on Christmas = if a non-believer is allowed mixed views. Certainly sitting round with silly paper hats on having pulled crackers with awful jokes in seems a good tradition - I am all for lowering the tone. I like it that people I have missed all year suddenly send me cards (I don't send cards as it is against my religion). The present giving is ridiculous - my sisters and I buy each other the same things year in year out which all go in the jumble as we are too mean to be inventive. On the other hand buying my grandchildren stuff is fun. But it needn''t be at Christmas. As for the family tiffs, resentments and so on, being forced into each other's company should be banned.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Okay, you can have your plane back, even though Cuba is sounding  pretty good right now.

It isn't warm enough this time of the year, you can go further south to Venezuela though...

[Lindorm]

Interesting article -thanks for the link!

Diverging slightly from right-wing nutjobs who try to push their agenda of shrill hysteria everywhere, it is quite interesting to see how many of our "old and genuine" christmas traditions actually are quite recent.

A few examples from Sweden: Christmas trees were an imported idea from Germany, originally very much an upper-class thing and only gaining widespread popularity among the urban middle class in the late 1800's, not really becoming a working class thing until even later.

"Jultomten", Father Christmas/Santa Claus in modern Sweden is exactly the same fat and jolly old man as in the US, invented by Coca-Cola and their PR man Haddon Sundblom in the 1930'ies. The traditional Swedish "tomte" was a quite different creature, a small person, mostly dressed in greys and greens, who kept an eye on the farm and it's inhabitants, not necessarily very jolly or even nice at times, more akin to perhaps the russian "bannik".

And now, we have business organisations trying to get Sweden to abandon their traditional christmas ham and start eating turkey instead. Though Coca-Cola's attempt att getting Swedes to abandon the traditional fizzy drink of "julmust" ( a dark, sweet beverage flavoured with malt, somewhat similar to german non-alchoholic "malzbier") and drink coca-cola instead backfired spectacularily, and now Coca-Cola make their own brand of "julmust" instead. 

[Swatopluk]

The Santa figure was no Coca-Cola invention. They just fixed the colour. As far as I know in France he traditionally wears blue, and in deifferent parts of Germany brown, green or white were common.
In a way the midwife was Martin Luther who did not like the St.Nicholas cult and propgated the Christkind (baby Jesus) instead. People then shifted the present bringing bearded guy from St.Nicholas Day to Christmas and dropped the name (In Germany he is simply called the Weihnachtsmann = Christmas Man). The sock/boot tradition crept back in though for Dec.6.
The Christmas tree came to Britain with Prince Albert (not in the can). The images of Victoria&Albert with the tree were popular and people copied the custom.