Homeowners recieve letter denouncing their Christmas light displays as Pagan

[Deberg_1990]

http://www.wzzm13.com/news/article/1...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.

[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]

Originally Posted by petegz28

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.

Originally Posted by loochy

Correct.

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

Originally Posted by petegz28

Wrong but ok

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

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by petegz28

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/13.7/2010/1...ice-makes-time

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by loochy

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

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]

Originally Posted by petegz28

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]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

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]

Originally Posted by loochy

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]

Originally Posted by frazod

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]

Originally Posted by Forward Dante

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]

Originally Posted by Stewie

Loser! Festivus for all the rest of us!

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

Cassel sucks!

FYP

[Garcia Bronco]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

http://www.wzzm13.com/news/article/1...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]

Originally Posted by Forward Dante

I, for one, celebrate Saturnalia.

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