I think we’re all tired of the War on Christmas. The atheists have won; it’s officially a secular, federal holiday, the capitalists promote it as a consumerist orgy of mass consumption, most people see it as a nice time of year to get together with friends and family, and this Jesus guy, as always, is superfluous. But like the Japanese soldiers occasionally found holed up on remote Pacific islands, there’s Bill O’Reilly, dug in and flailing. Apparently, we have some grand plan to destroy Christmas so we can win entitlements and get gay married and have lots of abortions.
Give it up, O’Reilly. You’re just sounding increasingly deranged. War’s over.
I quite like this sentiment:
But of course, Bill O’Reilly would see that as oppressive and atheistic, because it doesn’t elevate his “Judeo-Christian” values to an exalted position.
Just to spite O’Reilly, this year I’m going to have two Christmases, one with the youngest daughter and middle son in Boulder, and another with the oldest son in St Cloud. Nyah.
The Grinch could take lessons from such as he.
From the title of your post it is clear that my secret plans directory has been compromised. I hope they didn’t get the schematics for the time machine as well.
Wait, is that not the plan? Shit, I don’t think I can get my money back for the drugs.
PZ, I take issue with your first sentence in this post. I think it’s time we started calling it “Fox’s War on Christmas”.
The hyper-consumerist version of Christmas is worse than having it as a simple religious holiday.
Easter, for example, isn’t pushed to anywhere near the extent that Christmas is, even though it’s the most important Christian holiday.
Can we please just get rid of the shitty music? That’s all I ask.
Might be easier to just call it “Fox’s War on Everyone Else”, and this war is year-round.
Love that second image. Want.
Can we declare war on radio stations who begin playing christmas music on Nov 1st?
Exactly which part of Christmas comes from the Judeo part of Judeo-Christianity?
I usually use “Happy Winter Solstice.”
If they really wanted to restore the sanctity, they (whoever, but say the RCC) should do a whole lot of research and find when the nativity was more likely to have taken place – as I understand, shepherds weren’t likely to be out with their flocks near the winter solstice – and declare a new feast day for Christ’s birth. Then the secular world would ignore it, like Easter, and they wouldn’t have to bear the indignity of being wished “Happy holidays.”
The Pilgrims didn’t approve of Christmas anyway (too “popish”), and it wasn’t a very popular holiday for most of early American history. Christmas as we know it in the Anglophone, the more or less secular holiday of presents and good cheer, was created by Dickens’ “Christmas Carol.” If you want to experience a Christmas celebration where the emphasis is really on Christ, you would need to go to a Catholic country, preferably somewhere in Latin America.
Eh, I’ve had sex on a corpse. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
…
I’ve said too much.
As the leftovers said on the Sunday after Thanksgiving: “Curses! Foiled again!”
Since I agree with Fox and I think the phrase “Happy holidays” is wrong and sickening. However, it’s not because I am an uberChristian, it is because I am a shit of a human being. And I can not possibly wish people well for two or more days. So I usually say, “May either your Christmas or New Year’s be good, and the other day be shit.”
Sasquatchmas
I’m dreaming of a real solstice,
Just like the druids used to know.
It would be so pleasing,
To stand there freezing,
At Stonehenge, in the sleet and snow.
I’m dreaming of a real solstice,
With no eclectic modern feel.
If your blade be silver, not steel,
Then may all your solstices be real.
Maybe I’m deluded by Colbert’s version of O’Reilly. Maybe Bill is just playing a character (like Colbert), who’s purpose is just to overplay our opposition so we will clarify our points so everyone will be convinced of how “right” we are. But then I think that is just wishful thinking, is there any evidence that O’Reilly is just “playing a part” and isn’t a complete a$$hole?
re 11:
Happy Solstice to you also! My favorite “spin” on the holiday season. It’s my only attempt to remind people that Christmas is just the Christians usurping the pagan holidays surrounding the solstice, when they celebrated that the days would not keep getting shorter and they are starting to get longer again. (and Easter was the proof that the days are getting longer) Almost EVERYTHING associated with X-mas is from the pagans and not from the Babble: trees, candles on the tree, lights on the houses, feasting, drinking, time of the year, etc. etc. Even the Babble says Jesus was born in the Spring, not the Winter. Lambs are birthed in the Spring, that is when the Shepherds would be out in the field all night. But that would put it too close to Easter, can’t have two holy days so close together. And then, of course, the legend is that the specific date was chosen, not just because of the pagan celebration, but the Romans were also celebrating that 5 day gap between their paper calendar (360 days) and the sidereal cycle (365), so who would notice the Christians celebrating while everyone else is drunk.
doublereed @ #6
Amen to that. No War on Christmas maybe, but a War on Christmas Music…yes! At least, the endless bleating of it in every retail outlet you walked into.
I like the consumerism.
Anyone who buys their kids Christmas presents but whines about consumerism is a dick.
Stevem @18
Happy Saturnalia!
Narciblog @ 10
The Christian Right tacked on the “Judeo” part in a lame attempt to whitewash their historic anti-semitism. “See! We positively mentioned Jews! We don’t hate them!”
Oh, he’s playing a character, all right. The difference from Colbert is that Billy’s audience isn’t supposed to be in on the joke.
I don’t really want to watch the video, but he’s dead-on right there.
Also, a lot of the juicy vengeance talk in the Bible is in the Judeo part, so they don’t want to ditch that.
Stevem #18
I’m not quite sure, but you seem to be saying that Christmas was moved to late December so it could be celebrated without incurring the wrath of the pagan Roman officials. But Wikipedia says:
This would have been after Emperor Constatine, so Christianity was already the official Roman religion by this time.
@Rey Fox, #24:
I disagree.
I think it’s arguable one has to diminish “Judeo-Christian influence” in certain areas. But traditions?
I guess part of what I’m struggling with is the definition of “tradition” in this case.
“Traditional J/C” framing of US government was…well, nil. The US government framing was enlightenment-framed. I’d be happy if magical thinking took on this traditional role, if religion openly framed itself as antithetical to democracy and the US constitution the way it did in the late 18th & early 19th centuries.
But maybe you’re saying that individual families must practice their traditions less often? Is that actually necessary to create a “secular progressive society”? It’s certainly not if the goal is a secular society. And if the goal is progressivism, what would that mean? Not discriminating against people at work based on your home traditions? No hate crime?
I’m not sure how advent calendars work against that.
As a response, a simple “Bah, Humbug” should suffice.
re 26:
That’s why I used the word “legend”, my research I didn’t do. Thanks for pointing out my erratum. Happy solstice to you also!
(to clarify my erratum, I was only saying they PUT it in late December, not that they MOVED it there. my erratum says that the First celebration of Christmas was during Saturnalia, never elsewhen. But that is all just my erratum, I knew it was probably wrong so that’s why I labelled it a “legend”.)
Pretty much how I see it. Had I still been Christian when I first heard of O’Reilly’s war, I would have framed it has him fighting Christians who celebrate it in more friendly fashion. For Faux News, the holiday is about sectarian conflict, not togetherness or generosity. It’s not a celebration until they can make someone suffer unnecessarily.
Meanwhile, my atheist family is celebrating the secular side of Christmas. Sometimes I call it Decemberween just to distance it from O’Reilly’s Christmas. One year, I had occasion to play the Dethemberween Th’nikkaman, sticking some blank CDs in my dad’s slippers.
I call it Cthuletide, myself.
The coincidence of Saturnalia and Christmas in 4th century Rome was likely a case of a celebration looking for a holiday. That is, Christian leaders could have co-opted the persistent practice of revelry around the Solstice by more or less inventing a Christian feast day to go with it. Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (“The birthday of the Unconquered Sun”) provided the obvious model for the new state-sanctioned cult: the Big Guy’s birthday. We don’t know when or if Christians were celebrating the Nativity prior to this.
Christmas? You mean the time of year that the university I work for closes for a week-long Winter Break? That’s the opportunity for me to go visit the in-laws out of state. This year, the husbeast and I will take a couple of extra days and visit Serpent Mound on the actual solstice. That’ll be a good time.
The overdone Christmas carols don’t bother me much unless they’re playing the same damn ones over and over (and over and over and…). What keeps me out of the shopping malls during this season are the SA bellringers!! I have a little bit of tinnitus. Just enough to make the sound of handbells painful.
I’d rather the bellringers were singing Christmas carols.
Out of tune.
Accompanied on vuvulzela.
thinkfree83 #13
At least in my corner of Latin America, I’m afraid the consumerist spirit has already replaced whatever traditions that might have existed before. I guess there are more nativity scenes in homes here than in the US, and I suspect my grandparents still attend mass at Christmas, but most younger people don’t care about any of that. It’s just the season to waste money, see your distant relatives and admire the bizarre contrast between the wintery decorations and the excruciating heat of the tropical summer. Besides, there is no “Christ” in either Navidad or Natal.
Callinectes #31
I was going to mention Yuletide, but this one sounds much cooler, actually.
moarscienceplz @ #26
Christmas was placed at December 25th probably because in the Roman era there were several gods whose birth was celebrated on that date. The most important of these was Attis, who was born of a virgin and was resurrected after his death. He was the consort of the Cybele (the Great Mother), a role that the character Mary basically usurped. The parallels with the Jesus myth are rife. Religion is syncretic.
Christianity didn’t become the official religion of Rome until the late 4th century. Constantine just promoted tolerance with the Edict of Milan in 313. Constantine himself wasn’t baptized until just before his death in 337, if you can believe that legend.
With Japanese soldiers, there actually was a WWII. This is like finding people holed up in bunkers after watching “Red Dawn”.
Matthew Buckley @ 36
You’ve just described the modern conservative/libertarian movement in a nutshell.
Constantine himself wasn’t baptized until just before his death in 337, if you can believe that legend.
It’s likely true. At least, that was typical, even among unproblematically professing Christians. It was not considered an initiation among the elites of the late Roman empire, but an expiation. You got baptized at the point of maximum efficacy: hopefully you had done all the sinnin’ you were gonna do.
Just because you’re the grand big poopyhead of tentacled evilness, doesn’t mean you can give away all our plans.
Ixnay I say, Ixnay!!
I live in a country that is much less influenced by religion and occasionally I like to have a laugh at the US about this sort of thing. And then I remember that we have 1 small territory that has only just allowed gay marriage and it is most likely going to be squashed by the federal government. Yet the US has 15(?) states that allow it.
Maybe a war on Christmas would help us?
@pianoman #9:
Excellent idea! Just reach over and operate the on/off switch to the o f f position.
Thank you.
And if we all do that together, radio will soon be dead and the world will be a better place……..
Ha ha! Billy boy dishes up a veritable fruitcake of straw persons.
I think secularists could make a valid argument that de-emphasizing the religious aspect of the holiday in government sponsored celebrations is specifically why Christmas is so ubiquitous…. If most of the traditions are broken off from their religious connotations, or their Pagan origins are emphasized instead, everyone feels like they’re just celebrating the end of the year and a good time to huddle inside with tasty food and mulled wine. Also, don’t know why hardcore Christians didn’t foresee present and consumer frenzies… they are the ones constantly promoting no-holds-barred capitalism.
Sometimes I don’t know whether I hate Christmas music because my autism affects my perception of sound, or if I hate it because it’s objectively terrible.
The trouble with Christmas music isn’t so much that it’s bad, but that it’s stuck on repeat for two months every year.
Same songs. Every year. Over and over again.
On the radio, in every store you enter, at every bar… until you want to rip your own ears out.
Akira MacKenzie @ 22:
“Until Easter, anyway!”
None of the ancient sources for the Cybele myth (Herodotus, Pausanias, Ovid, and Diodorus Siculus) note a birthdate for Attis, or suggest he was believed to have been resurrected in any straightforward sense except maybe as a fir tree. The Romanized cult of Cybele was celebrated in the Spring, as befits a vegetation goddess, and Attis was hardly “the most important” anything at Rome, even if he had been known to have been born on that date. The Attis myth was an exotic story out of the barbarian East, and functioned as an etiology for the peculiar practice of the priests of Cybele, who castrated themselves.
The persistence of this inaccurate identification (popularized by the Zeitgeist silliness and its author, Achyra S) may have arisen from the sometime conflation of Attis with (Roman) Mithra, the latter’s status as a solar deity, and a yet further tenuous identification with Sol Invictus, who is the only real candidate for “other Roman savior born on December 25th”.
As for Mary usurping the role of Cybele, the early iconography of Mary with the infant Jesus owes a great deal to depictions of Isis and Horus the child, or Harpocrates. Again, Cybele, as a vegetation goddess, doesn’t make any but a very generic Mother of God figure. She was not held to be the mother of Attis.
Religion is syncretic, indeed, but for too many this vague assertion is taken as a license to accept any old identification between superficially similar figures without having the slightest clue what the ancient sources actually say.
The Jesus part. He was a Jew, as was his mother. His father??? Who knows…
OT (and delete if uncool to be doing this) but THERE’S A TED CRUZ COLORING BOOK!!!!
And, no, it isn’t the Onion!!!
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/ted-cruz-releases-new-childrens
@#17 That was great. I can only offer: An Edgar Allen Poe Christmas.
Up on the rooftop the raven sat,
Preening, black and sleek with fat.
At the bird feeder no suet store,
Quoth the raven: “Bring some more.”
Oh, my word, what a bird!
Crook, crook, crook, not a Rook,
Up on the rooftop, feathers flick,
Bring some suet, mighty quick!
First through the door was little Nell,
with thistle seed and millet bell.
With ebon beak and eyes that bore,,
Quoth the raven: ‘Bring some more.”
chorus
Next through the door was little Bill,
with a bag of grain to overfill.
House sparrows fluttered about, galore.
Quoth the raven: ‘Bring some more.’
chorus
(bridge: spoken) In neighbors’s yard walked sweet Lenore,
and in her arms, a tray she bore.
Piled high with suet, and what is more,
reindeer gibbets, nigh half a score.
So, from his perch did the raven glide,
alighting on the other side.
Now at her gable, there he stays,
awaiting other holidays.
Oh my word, what a bird!
Crook, crook, crook, not a rook.
Up on the rooftop, feathers flick,
Merry Xmas, good St. Nick.
“Secular Humanists want to abort the Christ child so they can snort drugs and have gay sex on its corpse!”
For some reason I have not received my invitation! Where is my goddamned invitation?!
sorry people, but the sex-on-its-corpse thing (gay, of course. i was looking forward to that) was cancelled for anyone over 20 inches tall. im so sorry, but theres just not enough space, even if we stretch it out. were offering full refunds on the drugs. im so sorry.
O’Reilly is complaining that not everyone is doing Christmas the way he wants Christmas done.
Hey Horde,
At the risk of being called an ‘Off topic thread derailer type’, I’m looking for a suggestion for a gift for a friend for the holidays.
I’ve decided to grab her a general psychology book as she’s really keen on psych, but definitely wouldn’t appreciate a textbook. She’s reasonably smart, and has been listening to a lot of online psych lectures (just for pleasure, she’s not in classes or anything).
Any book recommendations? I’d describe the perfect book as ‘Carl Sagan’s Cosmos but for Psychology’ or ‘Hawking’s A Brief History of Time – for psychology’ or ‘Ben Goldacre’s Bad Psychology’ if you get what I’m aiming for. Something smart, but approachable and not laden with pop-psych mind dribble.
I’m not a psych fan personally, so I’m not familiar with the who’s who and what’s highly regarded and what’s just a terrible waste of the carcass of a dead tree. Any tips/suggestions would really be appreciated.
Thanks all!
eoleen #48:
Apparently he was Scottish, according to Accelerated Christian Education.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/12/09/the-dumbifying-of-christianity/#comments
What do you mean “tired” of the War on Xmas?! Its my favorite time of year!! Nothing helps with the annoying commercials, Salvation Army bells and constant xmax music than the butthurt of O’Reilly and pals over his imaginary war.
As far as I’m concerned, Christmas is a time for seeing my extended family, getting incredibly drunk, and overeating. It’s a little bit of good cheer in the midst of an otherwise cold and miserable season. It’s a lot of fun, and I do not appreciate these christofacsists rampaging around telling me I should be spending it in a church wailing to Jeebus about how much I appreciate him sacrificing himself in order to cancel out the sin that his evil alter-ego gave me in the first place. That’s like me knocking over a glass and then expecting a thank you for clearing my own mess up. He can fuck off, and so can O’Reilly.
@Adimvs Maximvs
You want The Lounge, mate. Look in the sidebar just above PZs picture, there’s a link. It’s a friendly thread with no set topic designed for situations exactly like the one you find yourself in.
Thanks Thumper, I didn’t see a recent lounge on the mainpage and I never even noticed the link on the side. Much appreciated.
As Jon Stewart has noted, Xmas is alive and well and actually eating other holidays! (stomp, stomp, stomp, anschluss)
Oh, that sounds like a good plan for jesusmas.