Wrong. It's been a holiday since at least 10,000 years before Jesus was even born, and it only became a Christian holiday when the Church realised they couldn't force people to stop celebrating Yuletide, and decided to hijack it and call it Christmas instead.

 

I don't care what it's called, or who celebrates it. I am not offended by Jewish, Chinese, African, or pagan holidays. Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays is a pleasantry extended by many. It's far nicer than being told to stick a yule log up your ass.

If you are celebrating a holday today - enjoy.

 

A good friend of mine will be very offended by this. He's been carving and chiseling the finest of Yule-logs this side of the canal for three decades now and no-one ever complained

 

I doubt he's taking the time to shove his beautifully carved work into anyone's back door.

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas, ejls

Which NY river is it, by the way... East, Harlem or Hudson?

 

Happy Holidays has the politically correct way of saying Merry Christmas. I'm not who decided this. It certainly wasn't a Christian. I know non-Christians that still say Merry Christmas.

It certainly doesn't refer to the Muslim Ramadan which ended in september. It certainly does not refer to the Jewish Hannukah, which is a minor holiday. For witches, Christmas is close to the winter solstice, but most people aren't witches.

On the other hand, when you take thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years as three consecutive holidays, even a Christian would call it the holiday season.

Merry Christmas,
Whitey

 

The problem is that December was the tenth month on the Gregorian calender. Nowadays, it's the twelfth. So, when Jesus was born on the 25th of December, in Ancient Rome, he should be feted around the end of October in our time.

Roman Chatolic church took over most of the Kelts and Gaul's festivals. Easter is another example. Easter was the feast in celebration of the Keltic/Gaul Goddess of fertility, called Ishtar (in the Middle east) or Isatar (in Central Europe). Isatar had a Rabbit as a symbol (Goddess of fertility, remember), that's why we're stuck with the rabbit on a catholic holiday.

The same date is also the feast known as 'Pass-Over", or the summer's equinox, when the light finally wins the battle over the darkness and the days last longer than the nights...

 

December was originally the tenth month because Roman New Year was in March; it's always been where it is in the calendar. Jesus' birth, on the other hand, was most likely in August and was most definitely in late summer; the Church just plonked it in December because they couldn't stop people celebrating the winter festival.

 

This seems like a sock festival to me.

I also think its so funny when people blame the politically correct Happy Holidays on foreigners instead of the US Jewish population, which actually insisted on it.

 

"I just can't help but laugh when people think that saying Merry Christmas is forcing your belief on someone. It's not. And why must we conform to Happy Holidays? Christmas is a CHRISTIAN holiday. Always has been. Just because people don't like Christians is no excuse to completely change their holiday (or get rid of it). Let them enjoy their holiday in peace. Or you can act like an immature child and complain."

Hate to burst your bubble, but Christmas was the time ADOPTED for the celebration of Christ's birth. The original celebration on the date we now call Christmas was a pagan ritual celebrating the Winter Solstice.

 

+1

 

Suddenly I like Tennessee :rose:

 

That might have looked less laughable if you had posted it BEFORE everyone pointed out how utterly, stupidly wrong the OP actually is.

 

It is whatever you want it to be. psh. Not like you are dependent on what someone else thinks.

 

Well I guess if we're going to make it politically correct:

'Twas the night before Christmas and Santa's a wreck...
How to live in a world that's politically correct?
His workers no longer would answer to "Elves",
"Vertically Challenged" they were calling themselves.

And labor conditions at the north pole
Were alleged by the union to stifle the soul.
Four reindeer had vanished, without much propriety,
Released to the wilds by the Humane Society.

And equal employment had made it quite clear
That Santa had better not use just reindeer.
So Dancer and Donner, Comet and Cupid,
Were replaced with 4 pigs, and you know that looked stupid!

The runners had been removed from his sleigh;
The ruts were termed dangerous by the E.P.A.
And people had started to call for the cops
When they heard sled noises on their roof-tops.

Second-hand smoke from his pipe had his workers quite frightened.
His fur trimmed red suit was called "Unenlightened."
And to show you the strangeness of life's ebbs and flows,
Rudolf was suing over unauthorized use of his nose

And had gone on Geraldo, in front of the nation,
Demanding millions in over-due compensation.
So, half of the reindeer were gone; and his wife,
Who suddenly said she'd enough of this life,

Joined a self-help group, packed, and left in a whiz,
Demanding from now on her title was Ms.
And as for the gifts, why, he'd ne'er had a notion
That making a choice could cause so much commotion.

Nothing of leather, nothing of fur,
Which meant nothing for him. And nothing for her.
Nothing that might be construed to pollute.
Nothing to aim. Nothing to shoot.

Nothing that clamored or made lots of noise.
Nothing for just girls. Or just for the boys.
Nothing that claimed to be gender specific.
Nothing that's warlike or non-pacific.

No candy or sweets...they were bad for the tooth.
Nothing that seemed to embellish a truth.
And fairy tales, while not yet forbidden,
Were like Ken and Barbie, better off hidden.

For they raised the hackles of those psychological
Who claimed the only good gift was one ecological.
No baseball, no football...someone could get hurt;
Besides, playing sports exposed kids to dirt.

Dolls were said to be sexist, and should be passe;
And Nintendo would rot your entire brain away.
So Santa just stood there, disheveled, perplexed;
He just could not figure out what to do next.

He tried to be merry, tried to be gay,
But you've got to be careful with that word today.
His sack was quite empty, limp to the ground;
Nothing fully acceptable was to be found.

Something special was needed, a gift that he might
Give to all without angering the left or the right.
A gift that would satisfy, with no indecision,
Each group of people, every religion;

Every ethnicity, every hue,
Everyone, everywhere...even you.
So here is that gift, it's price beyond worth...
"May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on earth."

 

Or if you want it to be even more politically and intellectually correct:

'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the
annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence,
kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this
potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus
musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the
wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure
regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among
whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas.

The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective
accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual
hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through
their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head
coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness
when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended
such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity
from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source
thereof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing
this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance
without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline
precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian
itself - thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to
behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight
diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a minuscule,
aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly
apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his
ungulate motive power travelling at what may possibly have been more
vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated
loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and
addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen - "Now
Dasher, now Dancer..." et al. - guiding them to the uppermost exterior
level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the
concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities.

As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was performing a
180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved - with utmost
celerity and via a downward leap - entry by way of the smoke passage. He
was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from
oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls
thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the
plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious
cloth receptacle.

His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary
dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The
capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with
blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the
coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium,
or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so
much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment
appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose grey
fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive
of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was
high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region
undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical
container. He was, in short, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund,
multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly
frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being. By rapidly
lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to
one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the
aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned
articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously
dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task,
he executed an abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in
lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium
forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his
egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then
propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a
musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the
antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a
movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions
of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible
immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of
visibility: "Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to
that self same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously
beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and
dawn."

 

haha that is so fucked up.

I am SO not relearning that to memory. I will stick with the old version.

 

are you really one to lecture on christian terminology when you are signed up to a porn forum?

Oh and BTW, god isn't real.

 

Well, it still is better (and safer) than lecturing porn at a seminar for priests in Vatican City. Although I fear that there's not much we could teach the lot, come to think of it, considering how many porn channels there are in Italy...

 

Just to piss people like the OP off, I will give a greeting thats appropriate for the holiday, I do say merry christmas but only on christmas, before I say happy hanukah and after I say happy kwanza, its great fun to see the reactions.