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Merry Christmas Everyone

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Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#351

Post by satvikpendem »

lolinder wrote: post #347
sbuk wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. You're conflating tradition (tree in this case) with festivals and ancient religious rites. See: - Yule - Dísablót - Koliada - Lohri - Saturnalia - Yaldā Night - Nardoqan

No, I'm not. All of these are, to the extent we know about them at all (which in some cases we don't know much), entirely unlike any Christmas traditions we have today which are claimed to be pagan in origin.

How do you know Christmas simply didn't align itself to those holidays themselves, because after all, a year end winter feast is nothing new in history? Or that the traditions we have today may have at once been part of such syncreticization but then died out until the modern day? In other words we don't necessarily have to see such traditions today per se for Christmas to have absorbed them over its time.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#352

Post by satvikpendem »

cperciva wrote: post #318
consf wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

It does, doesn't it? This might say something about English authors -- a lot of them went to Oxford or other places heavily inspired by Oxford.

Seems like that commenter's comments are all AI, albeit with an atypical prompt.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#353

Post by EchoReflection »

lolinder wrote: post #331
Aloha wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will argue that in the US Christmas is in part a secular holiday - given its sorta pagan origins that makes total sense to me. It's a solstice feast basically.

The pagan origins thing is a myth, btw—all the various bits which people point to as evidence still date back to a Christian-era Europe and cannot be traced back further. Christianity has been around for a very very long time and has had a lot of time to evolve its own traditions. :) For example, Christmas trees date back no later than the middle ages: https://youtube.com/watch?v=m41KXS-LWsY

ChatGPT and Grok say Christmas either does or might have pagan origins, but not that it definitely does not have pagan origins (yes, I know "proving negatives"is very difficult†).

ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/share/676c8fd1-b6e0-8005-a86f-d43ac17634...

Grok: https://x.com/i/grok/share/8fQKIFO1WGl3nDVZ6uFaJmPTW

†Grok on proving negatives: https://x.com/i/grok/share/kcHkjqzJ5lx5kMyl4GL0nMuw3

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#354

Post by lolinder »

EchoReflection wrote: post #353
lolinder wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pagan origins thing is a myth, btw—all the various bits which people point to as evidence still date back to a Christian-era Europe and cannot be traced back further. Christianity has been around for a very very long time and has had a lot of time to evolve its own traditions. :) For example, Christmas trees date back no later than the middle ages: https://youtube.com/watch?v=m41KXS-LWsY

ChatGPT and Grok say Christmas either does or might have pagan origins, but not that it definitely does not have pagan origins (yes, I know "proving negatives"is very difficult†). ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/share/676c8fd1-b6e0-8005-a86f-d43ac17634... Grok: https://x.com/i/grok/share/8fQKIFO1WGl3nDVZ6uFaJmPTW †Grok on proving negatives: https://x.com/i/grok/share/kcHkjqzJ5lx5kMyl4GL0nMuw3

LLMs do very poorly at judging the truth of long-term myths. When something has been asserted confidently on the internet over a long enough period of time it becomes baked into the weights, regardless of truth.

I provided a source from a religious studies scholar on Christmas trees specifically (one of the most frequently-cited "pagan" traditions). If you can point me to something with similar provenance I'll read it, but I'm not going to waste time on LLM responses.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#355

Post by loumf »

I took digital electronics when I was in high school. Some classmates wrote a version of “The 12 Days of Christmas” except with names of chips instead of the usual gifts.

The only line I can remember is “Five 555s”

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#356

Post by asveikau »

i_am_a_peasant wrote: post #343
asveikau wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One meal won't kill them.

if it makes it any better I had a plant burger xD, i find it hilarious how everyone fixated on the mcdonalds part of the comment

I mean I share the sentiment against low quality food and its effect on health, as probably everybody who eats there is also probably aware of too, but again, this is not the time or the place...

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#357

Post by lolinder »

satvikpendem wrote: post #351
lolinder wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not. All of these are, to the extent we know about them at all (which in some cases we don't know much), entirely unlike any Christmas traditions we have today which are claimed to be pagan in origin.

How do you know Christmas simply didn't align itself to those holidays themselves, because after all, a year end winter feast is nothing new in history? Or that the traditions we have today may have at once been part of such syncreticization but then died out until the modern day? In other words we don't necessarily have to see such traditions today per se for Christmas to have absorbed them over its time.

We don't. But we also don't know that they were, and we don't have enough quality evidence in favor of that hypothesis to justify the confidence with which it is asserted.

In the absence of evidence about the timing being affected by other festivals and in the presence of much evidence that all the actual traditions are far more recent than pagan, I don't believe it's fair to claim Christmas has pagan origins. The absolute best we can do is say that its timing may have been influenced by other, pre-Christian celebrations.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#358

Post by satvikpendem »

lolinder wrote: post #357
satvikpendem wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know Christmas simply didn't align itself to those holidays themselves, because after all, a year end winter feast is nothing new in history? Or that the traditions we have today may have at once been part of such syncreticization but then died out until the modern day? In other words we don't necessarily have to see such traditions today per se for Christmas to have absorbed them over its time.

We don't. But we also don't know that they were, and we don't have enough quality evidence in favor of that hypothesis to justify the confidence with which it is asserted. In the absence of evidence about the timing being affected by other festivals and in the presence of much evidence that all the actual traditions are far more recent than pagan, I don't believe it's fair to claim Christmas has pagan origins. The ab…

I agree but I also would be interested to see any proof for the claims you're talking about with regards to Christmas not having any pagan roots, where are you finding this information or rather, where can I read more?

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#359

Post by doormatt »

rvba wrote: post #327

Building the plastic christmas tree.. with my cat. First taking out the branches from the top shelves of the closet. What was supervised by her - every branch had to be checked and smelled. After the branches were remowed she would laudly meow to be put on the shelf. For inspection. Then she would demand to be taken down (or would jump out with a loud thud) and lie down on a branches. Finally after some discussion th…

I'm sorry for your loss - cats can be the most loving creatures imaginable.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#360

Post by v8xi »

Christmas 1999 my father's business had just gone under when the banks stopped lending after the dot com bubble. We didn't have any presents until Christmas morning when our church dropped off a bunch of presents for us. We got a Razor scooter and I spent all day riding it downstairs. I just got my daughter a scooter and she's doing the same this year :)
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