Page 1 of Winterval Or Christmas?

This piece is very long-winded and for some, very boring or needless. Fine. I just want to put it on here for anyone who might want to read it. Fine.
It is from the London "Standard".
At least give me a pat on the back for typing the entire piece out by one finger!. And don`t say "why did you bother?" (I got in on that one early :) )
Not all the opinions are shared by the messenger (OK, me then). Near enough though.
"Jesus was born, in which it was stated that a young girl would conceive and bear a son whose name should be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty Lord.
In fact, most educated people who have read about these things do not merely suspect, they know, that the original Christmas stories are legends.
Such educated Christians are sometimes fearful of finding themselves on the same side of the argument, not just as the good-hearted multi-culturists, but of the out and out atheists who say that religion is just a fairy story.
If I am right in thinking this is the case, then it is surely time for the bishops and churchmen to think more clearly and more boldly.
Even children can understand that a truth can be conveyed by means of a myth - indeed that is the usual way for truth to be told.
They should not be afraid of saying that Christianity, like all religions, has an abundance of mythology in its stories and traditions, but that these stories symbolize something which is very decidedly not a fairy tale.
The world is a wonderfully and demonstrably different place thanks to the coming into it of Jesus Christ, and the movement which developed in his name into the various Christian churches. It is a much better place. Christmas is the time to celebrate this new beginning in human culture.
Richard Dawkins, in his bestseller "The God Delusion", has tremendous fun mocking the biological impossibility of the Incarnation. Yet the idea of God-in-Man, the Divine-in-Flesh, has been believed, not just by fools and peasants but by nearly all the finest minds in the past 1,500 years.
Martin Luther, the 16th century theologian whose teachings inspired The Reformation, Blaise Pascal the 17th century French physicist and religious philosopher, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the 19th century Russian novelist and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who fought Nazism - these people were not numbskulls.
They knew as well as Professor Dawkins how babies are born into the world.
But they were humble enough, because they were clever enough, to see the inexhaustible riches and implications of 'the Female figure with a Child' who look out at us from Christmas cards, and who cause such offence to the secularists. The coming of Christ inspired the greatest music, architecture and literature in our Western culture.
The old Greek and Roman gods depicted by Homer and Virgil were unscrupulous buffoons and they died because the ideas generated by their mythology were exhausted.
The implications of worshipping a God who came to Man as a vulnerable baby are quite literally inexhaustible and they have inspired, of course, not just all the great buildings and oratorios and paintings which I have mentioned, but much more importantly, millions of lives.
This is not something for which anyone born into a Christian culture needs to apologies. The traditional story of Christ the saviour is not destroyed by the gleeful schoolboyish dismissal of the Bethlehem legends as "fairy tales".
For the Christ Child undermines all our pretensions to power and wealth, and teaches us the most valuable lesson a human being can learn, how to be humble, and how to love.
I used to be a boring Puritan about Christmas, and I professed to hate the crowds thronging through the shopping streets, the banal cards and decorations, and the shops who commercialized what I thought what I thought of as a dead myth.
The experience of life and love has changed me. The sight of Christmas lights, and the tinselly vulgar decorations in the shops, and the silly office parties with paper hats and secretaries becoming tiddly now all delight me.
But if these innocent expressions of Yuletide spirit were divorced from Christmas, if there were simply a secularized "Winterval" I should indeed revert to thinking of them boring to the point of nausea.
Worse than boring, positively offensive. For they would just be yet another example of big business conning a gullible public into spending money, while our politicians and spiritual leaders did what they are far too good at - desecrating and destroying our past."

This item was edited on Friday, 15th December 2006, 18:22

The word "Winterval" makes me want to stab whoever came up with it.

Now "Festivus"... :D

--
www.soundalikes.com

Eeeeek! :/

Sorry, for this US resident it is Christmas. Last year when all you heard was Happy Holiday I cringed inside and replied Merry Christmas! I greet my Jewish and Muslim friends with appropriate greetings for the season and occation (but Happy Rosh Hashana and Happy Yom Kippur just sound hackneyed), why can`t non Christians greet everyone else the same way? It shows a lack of respect for others when you force them into the mindframe you have built for yourself.

Give a little get a little, it is a yin-yang sort of world, you know.

The consumerism and commercialism we know as Xmas today is due to Christ being taken out of Christmas. If we only remember who is the reason for the season, then maybe we will have a more fulfilled Christmas season and even non Christians would feel comfortable celebrating it.


....and you thought life was tough

This item was edited on Friday, 15th December 2006, 19:30

i just utter `bah humbug` that way i offend nobody! :/



`i am going to live forever or die trying`

I suppose that must make a change from "Your nicked sunshine!". ;)


I consider myself an optimist, albeit an optimist with cynical tendencies and a dark side that Lucifer himself would find a little creepy. (Perhaps you've noticed.) You don't normally associate cynicism with an upbeat pov. But I have exactly that combination and will defend it.

Todays goal is to exceed yesterdays record level of totally unverifable productivity.

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i just utter `bah humbug` that way i offend nobody

Always new you coppers were a bunch of miserable bastards :p

Brubby

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i just utter `bah humbug` that way i offend nobody!

Which usually preceeds

" Watch You Don`t Slip That Oil That Has Been Spilled On The Top Step Of A Twenty Step Flight In The Nick" :D :D

Choagy FFCUK The SPL :D :D

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Richard Dawkins, in his bestseller "The God Delusion", has tremendous fun mocking the biological impossibility of the Incarnation. Yet the idea of God-in-Man, the Divine-in-Flesh, has been believed, not just by fools and peasants but by nearly all the finest minds in the past 1,500 years.

This to my mind is one of the most dangerous parts of organised religion. If you are indoctrinated early enough, no one is immune.

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But they were humble enough, because they were clever enough, to see the inexhaustible riches and implications of 'the Female figure with a Child' who look out at us from Christmas cards, and who cause such offence to the secularists.

I don`t think that either atheists or religious people have the monopoly on humility. Atheists are seen as arrogant because they are perceived to be unwilling to admit any possibility of something beyond their ken. Christians are accused of arrogance because they are so quick to believe they are made in God`s image and so unwilling to accept the possibility that our towering intellects disappear without trace when we die, and that there is no supreme being interested in us at all.

It is a tired argument that misses the fact that both groups are just folks, and folks underneath it all, are the same the world over.

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The old Greek and Roman gods depicted by Homer and Virgil were unscrupulous buffoons and they died because the ideas generated by their mythology were exhausted.


Supposition. Who knows why they died out, but it is equally likely that people grew too sophisticated for it. What this story tells me is that every major civilisation to date has been willing to construct mythology and superstition and call it religion. If we do not learn from our past we are doomed to repeat it.

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The implications of worshipping a God who came to Man as a vulnerable baby are quite literally inexhaustible

As the implications of worshipping the greek and roman gods probably seemed to the greeks and romans.

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teaches us the most valuable lesson a human being can learn, how to be humble, and how to love

That`s two lessons.

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But if these innocent expressions of Yuletide spirit were divorced from Christmas, if there were simply a secularized "Winterval" I should indeed revert to thinking of them boring to the point of nausea.
Worse than boring, positively offensive. For they would just be yet another example of big business conning a gullible public into spending money, while our politicians and spiritual leaders did what they are far too good at - desecrating and destroying our past.

So if there was no spiritual background to christmas this author would hate big business for desecrating it`s background. But because there is a spiritual element to it, he doesn`t mind? What in the wide-world-of-sports kinda logic is that.

I hate the "happy holidays" thing too - it`s Happy (or Merry) CHRISTMAS damnitt, lol! You don`t have to believe in it, but that`s what it is - fact.

...I think we should re-name Christmas "Jesus Day" - and see how they get round that, heh, heh... ;)

This item was edited on Saturday, 16th December 2006, 15:06