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Well Christmas originated as a way for Christians to escape persecution by polytheist officials. Why it continued as such is a mystery to me.




And how, exactly, was that supposed to work?

I think there was some sort of winter holiday at about that time for pretty much ever, and every culture that came along just did a different thing with it. Gotta have something to get through the winter.

Jerako wrote:QUOTE (Jerako @ Dec 26 2009, 02:08 PM) Do you have a source for this? I'd be interested to read it, since I'm not aware of this theory. My own research led me to believe that Christmas was a pre-existing pagan winter-solstice holiday that was simply adapted by Constantine to make the transition to his state-run Christianity easier.

Well from what i can recall from theology class, the Romans were going to basically execute anyone who was not celebrating the winter-solstice holiday (being that Christians would not celebrate it) but this failed because the Christians decided to go out and celebrate (albeit celebrate something different) but it was enough to avoid being rounded up. As such "Christmas" was born.

string wrote:QUOTE (string @ Dec 26 2009, 04:16 PM) Well Christmas originated as a way for Christians to escape persecution by polytheist officials. Why it continued as such is a mystery to me.

Traditions just remain forever and ever.

I did see a pretty hilarious quiz online though that's "How connected are you to Jesus?" and one of the questions was

"When was Jesus born?

a) December 4th
b) Around christmas but we don't know the exact date
c) On Christmas."

I wanted to send a message to the idiot who wrote it saying "Actually Jesus was born some time in summer according to the Bible, so um... yeah."