MERRY CHRISTMAS YO!
Merry Christmas Everyone
341–350 of 407 posts
Re: Merry Christmas Everyone
#342Merry Christmas!
Re: Merry Christmas Everyone
#343Re: Merry Christmas Everyone
#344My (14yrs older) brother stared a business on the back of our rural property and later build a home on acreage next door. The biz was a mixed bag for my mom and us. I had steady work from 9-19 (along w/ all of my friends) but all the peace and quiet went away.
That slowly became a schism between our already chaotic households (his wife, my mom) It culminated with him buying my 100yo birth home, suddenly evicting us and then razing the house to make sure we never returned. I was 19 and homeless. Also, my mom had terminal cancer.
Nevertheless, my best Christmas memory is just me and my brother and a walk in the woods. There isn't much to it other than an exceptional moment where having a brother felt like a good thing.
When I was 16, we (Wash DC region) had a rare white Christmas. My brother called the house early and invited me to walk. No families, just us, the snow and the woods (the land was my childhood and is all gone now). Mostly he called me because he had coke and wanted company. (His wife didn't know; he did quit after.)
For that hour or so, we were happy and unburdened by everything we'd ever done to each other. The morning felt like a gift. Probably our last one.
Re: Merry Christmas Everyone
#345Earlier 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
All of the bits that do make up secular christmas, do have pagan origins, which is more or less my point.
My general take is that every major religion has some sort of solstice related celebration.
Re: Merry Christmas Everyone
#346Earlier 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
All of the bits that do make up secular christmas, do have pagan origins, which is more or less my point. My general take is that every major religion has some sort of solstice related celebration.
No, they don't. That's my point—all the bits that make up secular Christmas have Christian origins and have become secularized over time. For every tradition that is commonly cited as having pagan origins, we can trace it back until it becomes entirely unrecognizable and it's still all Christians all the way down.
As near as I can tell the myth of the pagan origins of Christmas has its roots in fundamentalist Christians who wanted to abolish things that aren't contained in the Bible. "Pagan" made a good rhetorical whip at the time, but it's since been taken as a serious approach to history by popular culture.
Re: Merry Christmas Everyone
#347Earlier 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
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.
Re: Merry Christmas Everyone
#348Merry Christmas to everyone! I've read a few great stories in here and thought of sharing mine. My childhood Christmas were never that special unfortunately and during my teen years, life was pretty tough. But I do have great memories from all the Christmas I had my wife over the past 20 years. We established a lot of Christmas traditions for our families, since I never had any from my childhood to share. Actually we just finished watching the Raiders of the Lost Ark and spent two hours talking about great cinema and of course me playing the Indiana Jones game from Lucasarts. Oh wish, I could get back in time and play that game for the first time. Not quite the same playing it these days, the magic unfortunately is gone.
So yeah today was a great Christmas day! All the best to the HN community.
Re: Merry Christmas Everyone
#349Earlier 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.
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Re: Merry Christmas Everyone
#350Christmas is also my birthday. On my 30th birthday I ignored all of my friends and family and played Crash Bandicoot on PS4 all day. It was great.
I have a cousin who shares your birthday. Her name is Merry Noel. Hope you're having a merry Noel as well. ^_^
Sounds like a tragedeigh.