Homeowners recieve letter denouncing their Christmas light displays as Pagan

[Deberg_1990]

http://www.wzzm13.com/news/article/190343/14/Note-calls-neighbors-Christmas-displays-Pagan



HUDSONVILLE, Mich. (WZZM) -- Wednesday night was like any other evening during the holidays along Vintage Drive in Hudsonville -- as daylight disappeared, Christmas lights began turning on. Except on this night, neighbors with light displays began discovering notes attached to their mailboxes.

The note, in brief, suggests that anyone with Christmas lights or decorations on their property should re-think their beliefs. It states that the Christmas displays honor the "Pagan Sun-God" and do not pertain to the birth of Jesus.

Besides speaking against the holiday lights, the note went on to state the use of mistletoe, wreaths, and yule-logs, were in no way representative of Christmas, and were a "Pagan festival of lights."

The people who received the notes have no idea who would leave them, and many feel the act is extremely un-Christian-like in the first place.

"It's a sin to judge other people and to tell people that if they have Christmas lights they are Pagans", said Danette Hoekman. "We're not Pagans, we go to church regularly, my kids go to the Christian school."

No lights are coming down just yet in this neighborhood, and should they show up again, some have already have a way of counteracting the judgemental note-sender.

"I think next year we should put on a huge display!" added Hoekman.

[Frazod]

Celebrating Christmas in December is pagan. I wonder if the note people know that?

Probably not.

[tooge]

I had an open faced roast beef sandwich for lunch. Just dropped what can only be described as a Yule log i'n the crapper that literally made me sweat.

[pr_capone]

It is pagan. Not seeing anything wrong with enlightening people of that fact via note.

[ReynardMuldrake]

It is pagan. Not seeing anything wrong with enlightening people of that fact via note.

It's kind of shitty to leave a letter of complaint in your neighbor's mailbox and not even sign your name to it. It's arguably a form of intimidation.

[SLAG]

It is pagan. Not seeing anything wrong with enlightening people of that fact via note.

if I may offer an article for your consideration:

http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-10-012-v



Calculating Christmas

William J. Tighe on the Story Behind December 25

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.

On the Origins of the Primary Feast of the Christian Church
by William J. Tighe

A Mistake

The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.

In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.

There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.

As things actually happened, Aurelian, who ruled from 270 until his assassination in 275, was hostile to Christianity and appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual “rebirth” of the sun. He led an empire that appeared to be collapsing in the face of internal unrest, rebellions in the provinces, economic decay, and repeated attacks from German tribes to the north and the Persian Empire to the east.

In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for “rebirth,” or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule. If it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.

A By-Product

It is true that the first evidence of Christians celebrating December 25th as the date of the Lord’s nativity comes from Rome some years after Aurelian, in A.D. 336, but there is evidence from both the Greek East and the Latin West that Christians attempted to figure out the date of Christ’s birth long before they began to celebrate it liturgically, even in the second and third centuries. The evidence indicates, in fact, that the attribution of the date of December 25th was a by-product of attempts to determine when to celebrate his death and resurrection.

How did this happen? There is a seeming contradiction between the date of the Lord’s death as given in the synoptic Gospels and in John’s Gospel. The synoptics would appear to place it on Passover Day (after the Lord had celebrated the Passover Meal on the preceding evening), and John on the Eve of Passover, just when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple for the feast that was to ensue after sunset on that day.

Solving this problem involves answering the question of whether the Lord’s Last Supper was a Passover Meal, or a meal celebrated a day earlier, which we cannot enter into here. Suffice it to say that the early Church followed John rather than the synoptics, and thus believed that Christ’s death would have taken place on 14 Nisan, according to the Jewish lunar calendar. (Modern scholars agree, by the way, that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33.)

However, as the early Church was forcibly separated from Judaism, it entered into a world with different calendars, and had to devise its own time to celebrate the Lord’s Passion, not least so as to be independent of the rabbinic calculations of the date of Passover. Also, since the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar consisting of twelve months of thirty days each, every few years a thirteenth month had to be added by a decree of the Sanhedrin to keep the calendar in synchronization with the equinoxes and solstices, as well as to prevent the seasons from “straying” into inappropriate months.

Apart from the difficulty Christians would have had in following—or perhaps even being accurately informed about—the dating of Passover in any given year, to follow a lunar calendar of their own devising would have set them at odds with both Jews and pagans, and very likely embroiled them in endless disputes among themselves. (The second century saw severe disputes about whether Pascha had always to fall on a Sunday or on whatever weekday followed two days after 14 Artemision/Nisan, but to have followed a lunar calendar would have made such problems much worse.)

These difficulties played out in different ways among the Greek Christians in the eastern part of the empire and the Latin Christians in the western part of it. Greek Christians seem to have wanted to find a date equivalent to 14 Nisan in their own solar calendar, and since Nisan was the month in which the spring equinox occurred, they chose the 14th day of Artemision, the month in which the spring equinox invariably fell in their own calendar. Around A.D. 300, the Greek calendar was superseded by the Roman calendar, and since the dates of the beginnings and endings of the months in these two systems did not coincide, 14 Artemision became April 6th.

In contrast, second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa appear to have desired to establish the historical date on which the Lord Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian they had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. (As an aside, I will note that this is impossible: 25 March 29 was not a Friday, and Passover Eve in A.D. 29 did not fall on a Friday and was not on March 25th, or in March at all.)

Integral Age

So in the East we have April 6th, in the West, March 25th. At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.

This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed.

It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.

Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.

Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones—a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).

In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.

A Christian Feast

Thus, December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.

And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”

[Skyy God]

The people who received the notes have no idea who would leave them, and many feel the act is extremely un-Christian-like in the first place.

Nah, that's exactly the kind of behavior I'd expect "Christians" to engage in.

[BigMeatballDave]

Everything about Xmas is Pagan.

Well, except for the whole birth of Christ thing.

And no one knows when Jesus was born.

[loochy]

Everything about Xmas is Pagan.

Well, except for the whole birth of Christ thing.

And no one knows when Jesus was born.

Correct.

Christians adopted the already pagan holiday as a good time to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

[Pushead2]

its receive

[htismaqe]

Latin paganism and early-Christianity are inextricably linked. That's a fact.

[kaplin42]

When will people learn that if you keep your Politics, Religion and Sex at home, the world would be a much better place.

[ReynardMuldrake]

if I may offer an article for your consideration:

http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-10-012-v

That's a biased source. The entire Christmas holiday is based on astrology. The early Christians intentionally appropriated early pagan imagery in order to appeal to their audience, the pagans. Over time, the pagan origins were forgotten as its followers died out.

[petegz28]

Everything about Xmas is Pagan.

Well, except for the whole birth of Christ thing.

And no one knows when Jesus was born.

My brother who is educated in such matters claims Jesus' true birthday is probably closer to April if anything. Despite the attempt of the article above, Christmas was chosen on Dec. 25th to either slap the Pagans or adopt the date to help conversion. This is the time the Pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice. Pagan traditions are found throughout chrisitanity and many experts claim it was done to help convert Pagans to christianity.

[petegz28]

Correct.

Christians adopted the already pagan holiday as a good time to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Wrong but ok

[petegz28]

Christmas marks the birth of Christ, and it is celebrated by Christians around the world. But this holiday has close ties to an older festival known as the "Unconquered Sun." The impact this Pagan tradition had on how Christmas was celebrated is one of the ways in which The Christian tradition changed as it developed through the ages.

The winter solstice is the time when the Sun reaches it’s southernmost rising and setting points in the northern hemisphere and the Suns apex at noon is at it’s lowest point of the year. The days are shortest and the nights are longest.

December 25th was the date of the winter solstice in the calendar Julius Caesar devised for Rome in 46BC. Today the winter solstice usually occurs on December 21st. Although Caesar used a 365 1/4 day year, a year is actually a little shorter, and this made the solstice occur a little earlier over the years. There was a discrepancy of 1 day in 128 years.

The pagans celebrated the winter solstice as the Unconquered Sun. After this day, the Sun would begin to stay in the sky longer each day, and there would be less cold, and less night; the Sun would win the battle of night and day. There would be feasts, evergreens would be brought into the house to be decorated and lighted with candles to pay tribute to the Sun.

There is nothing in the Christian Bible to specify the day of Christmas. Prior to the fourth century, Christ’s birth had been associated with Three King’s Day on January 6. But the pagans and the newly converted were being a major problem to the church because they were still celebrating the Unconquered Sun. Nothing the church did or said made a difference; the winter solstice was just too important a festival.

What the Christians did in this dilemma, was execute a move seen over and over in history. If you can’t defeat them, and refuse to join them, at least make it appear that you defeated them. Sometime between AD 354 and 360 a few decades after Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, the celebration of Christmas was shifted to the day of the Unconquered Sun. But the tradition of the Sun god lived on a long time.

The Romans got the idea of the sun god from the Syrians. Their Sun god, Deus Sol Invictus, became the chief god of the Roman State under Aurelian. The Fathers of the Church however, insisted that Christ was the true Sun God, and said that any celebrations for the Sun, were really in celebration of Christ.

Both the Sun worshipers and the Christians saw the solstice/birthday as a transition from darkness to light. Christ conquered the darkness, as did the Sun. Since the theme was similar, the traditions of one blended well with the other.

People have still carried over these traditions, though their earlier pagan roots have mostly long been forgotten. "Christmas" trees are still brought into the house. Colored lights and candles light the darkness. The Yule Log is lit.

In some Christian churches, on Christmas eve, the electric lights are dimmed. In the semi- darkness, the Christmas story is told, and near the end, a single candle is lit. It signifies the movement out of the darkness.

http://home.ccil.org/~kmiles/dln/12-95/decsol.html

[loochy]

My brother who is educated in such matters claims Jesus' true birthday is probably closer to April if anything. Despite the attempt of the article above, Christmas was chosen on Dec. 25th to either slap the Pagans or adopt the date to help conversion. This is the time the Pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice. Pagan traditions are found throughout chrisitanity and many experts claim it was done to help convert Pagans to christianity.

Correct.

Christians adopted the already pagan holiday as a good time to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Wrong but ok

WTF? That's what you just said, then you say I'm wrong. :hmmm:

[htismaqe]

My brother who is educated in such matters claims Jesus' true birthday is probably closer to April if anything. Despite the attempt of the article above, Christmas was chosen on Dec. 25th to either slap the Pagans or adopt the date to help conversion. This is the time the Pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice. Pagan traditions are found throughout chrisitanity and many experts claim it was done to help convert Pagans to christianity.

I believe in order for the star to be in the position in which it was described, it would have had to been summer.

However, it's also necessary to remember that the timeline roughly coincides with the introduction of the Julian calendar, so April would have been the 2nd month of the year.

[petegz28]

I think this puts some perspective on the entire "Pagan vs. Christian" argument..

Why do we celebrate Christmas just a few days after the winter solstice when almost no one thinks Jesus was born on December 25th? Is the astronomical connection with Christianity's high holy day a fluke or an ancient cynical political calculation. Or, more importantly, does it point us to a deeper truth now almost entirely lost in a world alienated from its own most intimate experience of the night sky?

Before we answer that question we must stop for a word from our solar system.

What, exactly is the winter solstice? The winter and summer solstices mark the poles of Earth's temporal cycle as it marches around the Sun. Our planet's spin axis is tilted 23 degrees relative to the line linking us with our Star (that line defines the plane of our orbit as we sweep around Sol). Since the spin axis direction remains fixed relative to the stars (i.e. it points for now towards Polaris, the "North Star"), the duration of daylight changes as the Earth moves around the Sun. In the northern hemisphere the Earth's axis is tilted towards the Sun in the summer and we have long days (more hours of sunlight). Likewise the axis is tilted away from the Sun in the northern hemisphere in the winter and we have short days. The winter solstice marks that day with the fewest sunlit hours (again, in the northern hemisphere).

At winter solstice the sun marks its southern-most rising. Also on the solstice the Sun's noontime position is its lowest (closest to the horizon) of the entire year. Each of these extremes are connected (rising position, noontime position and hours of daylight) and all result from the basic fact that the axis of our planet's spin and the axis of its orbit around the Sun are not aligned.

Which brings us back to, and before, Christmas.

There remains a lot debate about the how Christmas got its location on the calendar. The popular account makes hay of the ancient Roman's pinning the solstice to December 25th. Early Christians simply co-opted the solstice for the own ends, or so the story goes. To make things more explicit, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Given this Roman holiday and the fact that barbarian peoples of both western and northern Europe would have had their own festivals during this period, it seems reasonable that Christmas is really "a spin-off" from early pagan solar holy days.

There are, however, scholars who do not support this idea. The detractors note that Aurelian was vehemently anti-Christian and may have established his feast after the Christians began their celebrations of Jesus' birth on December 25th. The scholars also see little hard historical evidence for the co-opted pagan holiday theory. As theologian Andrew McGowen puts it:


"Early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods."

Reading over the debate one finds a definite undercurrent of either antagonism or reactive defensiveness. Sometimes the "pagan-co-opt" camp seems intent on proving the political machinations of Christians in stealing the solstice holiday of others for their own ends. The "anti-co-opt" camp can seem just as intent on liberating the church's founders from claims of holiday pilfering. What is lost in all this argumentation, however, is the very real loss we have all suffered in the long march of centuries.

Astronomy, you see, has always been destiny. We have simply been able to forget that fact for a century or so.

Most of us we have little first hand experience of the solstice and its celestial message. Living in a world saturated with artificial illumination and run off meticulously accurate, mechanical (or electronic) chronometers, we rarely notice anything that happens in the sky. But the genes we carry in every cell of our bodies know. They remember. For those thousands of human generations — those whose ancestry you inherited — the Sun, the sky and the stars were the only true pageant and its turnings signaled life and death. The sky foretold the end of winter and hunger, it signaled the beginning of warmth and renewed growth. In this way our great, great, great grandparents could not help but see the heavenly wheels turn and they could not help but turn their imaginative creations, sacred or otherwise, to its imperatives.

Seventy kilometers or so north of Dublin stands the Neolithic monument at Newgrange. The 80-meter wide circular mound was built 500 years before the pyramids and 3,000 years before anyone thought about when to hold Christmas. There is only one entrance, a narrow 25-meter long passageway that leads into a vaulted central chamber. Without a flashlight, it is darker than death itself within the chamber. But for a few days each year around the winter solstice the rising sun aligns with the ancient passageway and something remarkable happens. A shaft of sunlight pierces the darkness and, for a few minutes, the central chamber glows in warm ochre — a promise of the light and life to come with the approaching spring. With the massive effort required to build Newgrange 5,000 years ago the forgotten builders of Newgrange show us that they knew something in their bones that we can barely recall.

The sky has always been our first tabernacle, our first vault of the sacred. That we live in a scientific age does not change this fact. No one need feel offended, defensive or outraged that Christianity's holiest day falls near the turning of the year. It should not be a surprise. In fact, it should serve as a reminder. The solistice was always a holy day.

We are born of the world and we are born of the stars. None of our changing perspectives, religious or scientific, can change that fact. We once knew it in our bones. Buried down deep we still know.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/12/22/132217608/pageants-before-christmas-the-winter-solstice-makes-time

[petegz28]

WTF? That's what you just said, then you say I'm wrong. :hmmm:

I don't think it's accurate to say they "chose it as a good day" based on the face of the statement. There was a reason they did so, imo. To that point I apologize if that is not what you meant.

[loochy]

I don't think it's accurate to say they "chose it as a good day" based on the face of the statement. There was a reason they did so, imo. To that point I apologize if that is not what you meant.

That's KIND OF what I meant. I knew there was a good reason, I just couldn't remember what I had read it was.

[petegz28]

I believe in order for the star to be in the position in which it was described, it would have had to been summer.

However, it's also necessary to remember that the timeline roughly coincides with the introduction of the Julian calendar, so April would have been the 2nd month of the year.

I don't really want to get into a religous debate but from what I have read and given the context of religion, christian and otherwise, I firmly believe it was a calculated move for one reason or the other to adopt the winter solstice as a holiday then rename it to suit the context of said religion.

Unfortunately christmas is not the only example of this but that is for another thread.

[petegz28]

That's KIND OF what I meant. I knew there was a good reason, I just couldn't remember what I had read it was.

Good depending on what side of the fence you stood\stand.

[petegz28]

Personally I don't claim to be of any religion. I am a pantheist by label and probably lean more towards paganism if I had to pin myself down. That being said, I personally have no issues with christmas being when it is. I just wish more people were more educated about the holiday, it's history and origins is all.

[petegz28]

Celebrating Christmas in December is pagan. I wonder if the note people know that?

Probably not.

I work with a person who is of what I think most would call a fringe element of christianity. Her family does not celebrate Christmas at all because as they say "it's not Jeus' birthday". She is very devout but of course casts no dispersions upon others who think otherwise. I have to admire her belief and the fortitude to follow them and not give in to what would be mainstream.

[FD]

I, for one, celebrate Saturnalia.

[Stewie]

I, for one, celebrate Saturnalia.

Loser! Festivus for all of us!

It's time for the Airing Of Grievances and I'll start!

Cassel sucks!

[loochy]

Loser! Festivus for all the rest of us!

It's time for Airing Of Grievances and I'll start!

Cassel sucks!

FYP

[Garcia Bronco]

http://www.wzzm13.com/news/article/190343/14/Note-calls-neighbors-Christmas-displays-Pagan



HUDSONVILLE, Mich. (WZZM) -- Wednesday night was like any other evening during the holidays along Vintage Drive in Hudsonville -- as daylight disappeared, Christmas lights began turning on. Except on this night, neighbors with light displays began discovering notes attached to their mailboxes.

The note, in brief, suggests that anyone with Christmas lights or decorations on their property should re-think their beliefs. It states that the Christmas displays honor the "Pagan Sun-God" and do not pertain to the birth of Jesus.

Besides speaking against the holiday lights, the note went on to state the use of mistletoe, wreaths, and yule-logs, were in no way representative of Christmas, and were a "Pagan festival of lights."

The people who received the notes have no idea who would leave them, and many feel the act is extremely un-Christian-like in the first place.

"It's a sin to judge other people and to tell people that if they have Christmas lights they are Pagans", said Danette Hoekman. "We're not Pagans, we go to church regularly, my kids go to the Christian school."

No lights are coming down just yet in this neighborhood, and should they show up again, some have already have a way of counteracting the judgemental note-sender.

"I think next year we should put on a huge display!" added Hoekman.


Next time...tell those round-head puritans that Oliver Cromwell was a dick.


(I'll be impressed if anyone gets the reference.

[htismaqe]

I, for one, celebrate Saturnalia.

Sorry but that sounds like a medical term for some weird fetish.