Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Merry Christmas Everyone

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 407 posts

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#391

Post by lolinder »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #387
lolinder wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that there's almost nothing that overlaps with Christmas besides the timing, and that the timing has other plausible explanations. FWIW, I'm very open to the timing having been shifted to coincide with other festivals, but that's not what most people mean when they say Christmas has pagan origins . They're not saying that Christmas isn't actually the day Jesus was born (I'm totally on board with that idea),…

> fact that there's almost nothing that overlaps with Christmas besides the timing The drunken revelry?

Given these two explanations for the drunken revelry,

1. Christmas has its origins in Saturnalia, but the only remaining similarity is the approximate date and the drunkenness.

2. Humans will happily accept any excuse to get drunk during the longest nights of the year.

I lean towards option 2 as a much simpler and more likely explanation.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#392

Post by mollerhoj »

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.

In Scandinavia languages, xmas is still called Yule. Not sure if having the same name is enough to prove that its a continuation?

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#393

Post by [deleted] »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #224
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm largely of the "hell is other people" mindset around Christmas, from the overtly fascist elderly relatives to the incomprehensible demands of immediate family. I would love just one Christmas like that!

I think people tend to fascism as they age, the more they've done and seen and accumulated, the more conservative they get and the more their personal experience of the world must be maintained, protected. Talk to them about their youth, when they were wild and rebellious. Find out what trouble they caused. Remind them, and it just might crack the encrusted exterior a little bit.

[deleted]

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#394

Post by tyrd12io »

michaelsshaw wrote: post #136
katamari-damacy wrote: post #73

[flagged]

Christmas is not about Jesus at all, it's the American red-and-green snowy holiday with family, Santa, gifts and drinking. It's not perceived as a religious holiday by most of us. If you want those other threads, then perhaps you should personally create them. I'm sure nobody here will be upset with that. As an aside, the letter X a literal form of Jesus's name.

It's not perceived as a religious holiday by most of us - of course not when majority of them are christians. For rest of us its a religious holiday. by not acknowledging it as religious event, you are just ignoring people of other faiths.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#395

Post by duckmysick »

memhole wrote: post #281
jedberg wrote: post #13

I'm Jewish, so all my Christmas's growing up were kinda the same. Sleep in, have brunch, wander over to my neighbor's house around noon to see what kind of loot they got and help them play with their new toys. Sometimes we'd go out for Chinese food and a movie. But my favorite was Christmas 1999. My girlfriend was out of town with her family and there was no reason to go home to mine, so I was alone (my roommates wer…

This is the top comment I hope for on every Christmas. Some of us draw snowmen instead of Santas. We all get a day to enjoy in our own way though. Sounds like a great time.

My upbringing was pretty secular but we still did plenty of snow angels.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#396

Post by duckmysick »

delibaltas wrote: post #53

Christmas of 1981 in Athens, Greece. I was 15. Father had died 3 years ago from heart attack at 42. His last words to my mother: "Educate the kids". She did her best, given that my grandfather was old fashioned and had stopped her from going to school after she became twelve, although she was among the smartest in her class. That Christmas she had bought me the brand new then Sinclair ZX81 personal computer. We were…

That is such an awesome story! Immediate favorite for me. Can relate to typing in the code published in the gaming magazines. Mine was with memory-editing the game values, albeit not on Christmas.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#397

Post by 29athrowaway »

ilbeeper wrote: post #303
29athrowaway wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jews have contributed significantly to what is recognizable today as Christmas time. Many catchy classic Christmas songs were written by Jewish songwriters.

We also contributed the protagonist.

We all know that the protagonist of Christmas in 2024 are Santa Claus and the gifts. It has been massively secularized.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#398

Post by afpx »

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.

Yeah, but you can 100% remove Christian theology and still have a fun time.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#399

Post by lolinder »

afpx wrote: post #398
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.

Yeah, but you can 100% remove Christian theology and still have a fun time.

Correct, but that's because most of the traditions have always been somewhat secular in nature (with religious significance strapped on after the tradition was already going) and have only become more so, not because they were borrowed/appropriated/adapted from a pre-Christian source.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#400

Post by rat87 »

abustamam wrote: post #227
Sam6late wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Muslim, so all my Christmas's school and college days were kinda the same, 1980s. I would have a real small tree xmass decorated at home and no one would blink about it, then wander over to my christian friends' neighborhood around noon to see what kind of cherry and wine they were serving. This is that neighborhood now https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1031546789002116&set=pcb...

I'm Muslim too and I always find it interesting to see how various non-Christian theists observe Christmas. Obviously we don't "celebrate" but I personally don't see anything wrong with partaking in the secular parts of Christmas (and let's be real, in the west, it's pretty much all secular). My parents felt otherwise when I was growing up, so my siblings and I weren't allowed to do anything Christmas related, but no…

The Soviet Union cancelled Christmas then later took the secular parts of Christmas (New Year's tree,a Santa like figure Ded Moroz/Grandfather Frost was original some sort of pagan slavic mystical figure before somehow being molded into a very Santa Claus character) and moved it to New Year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novy_God

Soviet style New Year's is still celebrated in a number of post Soviet countries including I believe to some extent in some of the Muslim ones. It's also celebrated by post Soviet Jews in Israel and to some extent the US. Although the recent full scale invasion on Ukraine might effect popularity due to it's Soviet association.

Post reply on HN