Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: rhg2@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (Rich Graham) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Christmas Message-ID: Date: 24 Aug 89 06:26:18 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Services Lines: 42 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article kriz@skat.usc.edu (Dennis Kriz) writes: >Dear President Bush, > >We the undersigned are tired of standing by watching the courts and shopping >centers define for us what Christmas should be like. Christmas is foremost >a religious holiday. And that is now lost. We feel that this is because, >the holiday is also a holiday recognized by the State. ... Last Christmas, I saw a program (on a Christian station) urging Christians not to celebrate Christmas. The reasoning went something like this. One of the first Christian Roman emporers was doing his best to promote Christianity. He did this by (among other things) offering freedom to any slave who converted. The result was lots of "Christians" who wanted to continue their old ways, including their winter celeration, then attributed to some Roman god, maybe Apollo. Unable to stop the celebrations, the emporer just decided to dedicate the celebration to Christ instead. So Christmas merely a Christian label on a non-Christian celebration. I still celebrated Christmas, but it made me think a little more about the holiday. Regardless of the nativity scenes and the carols on the radio, Christmas - as celebrated in the US - is NOT primarily a religious holiday. It is primarily a cultural one. Far more people go to parties and shopping malls than go to church or participate in genuine religious rituals. I would advise anyone who wants to get more serious about celebrating Christ's birth to separate this from the cultural Christmas in their own lives, and possibly express their feelings about the matter. Mainstream America doesn't realize that their holiday is not really very religious, and probably doesn't care anyway. -- Richard H. Graham University of Pittsburgh - CIS rhg2@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu