Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

[Incandenza]

From RightWingWatch.org:

Boss Creations, a new holiday decor company, has introduced the new "CHRIST-mas" Tree, featuring the unique trait of a trunk in the shape of a wooden cross. Company owner Marsha Boggs says the tree was specifically designed to counter the "war on Christmas."

"When I became a Christian a few years ago," says Boggs, "I was appalled by the secularization of the Christmas holiday. When retail stores started substituting 'Happy Holidays' for 'Merry Christmas,' and schools began calling their Christmas programs 'Winter Plays,' it all seemed ridiculous to me. That's why we have created products that remind people what the Christmas season is really all about - the birth of Christ."

Hendrik Hertzberg:

The problem with her product is that the cross is not a symbol of the birth of Christ. It’s a symbol of the death of Christ. The holiday with which the cross is logically associated is Good Friday, which is in no danger of being secularized, mainly because of its total lack of joyfulness. Good Friday has no appeal to non-Christians and not much to Christians either, for that matter.

[Cavalry Trouser Tips]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

Bill Hicks had it right about this:

"Do you think when Jesus comes back he's gonna want to see a cross?"

[Ginger Yellow]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

I don't know about you, but I when look at that I don't think of Christ, I think of the Klan. Also, calling that a "trunk" seems a bit of a stretch.

[San Bernardhinault]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

Ah. Yes. The War On Christmas! We must all take as strong a stand on that as we possibly can. Every year I think - oh, there are fewer christmas decorations. The christmas advertising is starting later. People are eating and drinking less. The holiday is getting shorter. Yes. Christmas is dying and I, for one, am going to take a stand.

Right now I'm throwing out my Winterval Shrub and putting in its place a crucifix with pine needles and little baby jesuses and nativity scenes hanging from my crucifix!

[Bruno]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

Can the upside down SATAN-mas tree be far behind?

[Guest]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

Wasn't Christ born in like March or something?

bring back Saturnalia trees with real viscera decorating them.

[George]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

September was the likeliest month according to those who it concerns.

I think there's something about Kings of Israel having to be born within a certain period of the year (late August through to early October).

[Gangster Octopus]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

So they'd be footballers?

[Anton Gramscescu]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

Of course, if Christ came back today and faced capital punishment in the United States, it would be by lethal injection. Which would mean everyone would have to genuflect in front of large syringes.

[Reed John]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

I'd never heard the thing about kings being born in a certain time.

The only bit of information about the time of year in the Gospel stories is that the shepherds were up in the hills grazing their sheep. My understanding is that it's too cold to do that in December in the area around Bethlehem. I don't know anything about raising sheep so I couldn't say for sure if that's true, but I read it somewhere reliable.

My understanding of the issue from my Medieval Christianity course in college is that Christmas comes when it does because the masses were set up to teach people about the Bible throughout the "Church Year" in the order of the narrative. Like a course syllabus. So it made sense to do the mass about Christ's birth around the beginning of the Church year. That happened to fall around the same time as a lot of non-Christian festivals centered on the shortest day of the year, the two got intertwined.

Then 1,000 years or so later, Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, the industrial revolution made it possible for people to take time off and to buy lots of useless crap to give as presents, TV was invented to help market that crap, then the exploitation of cheap labor in the Far East made plastic lights and decorations and all sorts of other tat really cheap for Wal-Mart to sell, and here we are.

Anyway, it was never set up to be "Jesus' Birthday." It was just supposed to be the time when that particular Bible story got told. That tradition survives in various, usually truncated forms. In the Church I grew up with, part of each service in the run-up to Christmas is devoted to lighting one of the four candles around the Advent Wreath and the sermon will usually riff on something derived from the story of Joseph and Mary. You know, Mary was a young girl but she stepped up big in the clutch. That sort of thing.

The War on Christmas people are idiots. It's no surprise that this guy is a recent convert to Christianity. They're usually the craziest and least-informed. No doubt he's an Evangelical Protestant and would not take kindly to a old-fashioned Catholic getting up in his face with a sticker stating "Put the MASS back in Christmas." But of course, that sticker would have to be in Latin, I guess.

[G-Man]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

Only if you reject Vatican II, Reed. But great post.

Lanterne, I think the "War on Christmas" crowd is not so much concerned about Christmas disappearing, but about it being divorced from its source: the celebration of Christ's birth.

Trouble is, "The War on Christmas" is about as effective as "The War on Terror". Red Foley demanded in his 1953 song — almost six decades ago — to "Put Christ Back Into Christmas". So the War on Christmas must have been going on for some time already. And it still hasn't been won.

[Reed John]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

The hypothetical conservative Catholic I have in mind rejects pretty much every new idea since 1800.

[EIM]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

There was a letter in the paper yesterday suggesting that people get rid of their Christmas trees this year and have a poppy tree instead. That way, while we're enjoying our festivities, we're also showing support for our boys in Afghanistan.

[pebblethefish]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

They say that EIM, but you try growing poppies for your own recreational use, you just don't get believed.

[San Bernardhinault]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

I was just yesterday thinking of the irony of being asked to wear a poppy to support Our Brave Boys In Afghanistan, when we're repeatedly told that they're trying to destroy poppies. I'm sure this point has already been made by lots of people over the last 6 years, but it's the first time it's occurred to me.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

I'll be celebrating in my own way.

[Kid A]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

To go off on a tangent - as a non-Christian, the thing I've never understood is why Christmas is a bigger event than Easter. Everyone's been born. Even I've managed it. Not many people have been resurrected though. Surely Christianity should be pushing that as Jesus' USP?

[Wyatt Earp]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

I think they do. It's just no-one listens.

[Mitch]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

Not really a coincidence, but I read an article about this this morning.

I never knew that "Easter" came from the Egyptian "Isis", via the Babylonian "Ishtar". And that Yule-logs are about as pagan a tradition as you can get.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

To be fair to the early gospel writers, faced with the conundrum of how to turn an apparently lowly carpenter from Nazareth (he had to be from Nazareth - Judges had prophesised the Messiah would be Nazarene) into a King of the Jews born in the City of David, the nativity story isn't a bad effort. It's more plausible than some Eastenders plotlines, for sure.

Unfortunately I just can't believe the bit about the Romans ordering everyone back to their place of birth for a census. Why would they? Surely the only point of any census is to find out where people live now , not where they were born. The Romans might have been a bit mental in some respects, but they weren't stupid.

The star in the sky guiding the magi is clearly cobblers, too; do you not think the appearance of a new star in the sky might have merited even the smallest mention among Roman astronomers of the time, let alone historians and poets?

The "virgin" birth is a curious one and can surely have only been tacked on by people struggling to come up with the "Son of God" bit (that wasn't actually implied by the old testament "messiah" at all, which simply meant a future ruler and saviour of Israel in the line of David). If Mary and Joseph were husband and wife, how can she have been a virgin? Even in those days, marriages were quickly annulled if the bride refused to put out.

Plus, if Joseph was - himself - the direct descendant of King David, is it likely that - in Bethlehem of all places - he would have been asked to sleep in a fucking stable with his pregnant wife? No matter how out of favour our Royal Family become, I'm pretty certain if Prince William ever needs a bed for the night in Windsor, he'd get one somewhere.

[orson]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

On the subject of Christmas trees:
the talles 'tree' in the world will be lit again tonight.

http://www.degrootstekerstboom.nl/cms/node/184

For more pictures from previous years check out 'poster' or 'fotogalerij' in the menu on the left.

[blameless]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

I was appalled by the secularization of the Christmas holiday

We heathens are simply reclaiming what was ours in the first place.

[G-Man]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

Well, the Christian appropriation of pagan feasts is not quite as clear-cut a case as it is made out to be. There are equally persuasive arguments that suggests that the overlap was coincidental.

[dddd]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

I thought Easter was derived from 'Eostre', the old spring festival? It's always seemed very pagan to me, given that it moves with the phases of the moon.

[Reed John]

Have you gotten your CHRIST-mas tree yet?

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote:

To be fair to the early gospel writers, faced with the conundrum of how to turn an apparently lowly carpenter from Nazareth (he had to be from Nazareth - Judges had prophesised the Messiah would be Nazarene) into a King of the Jews born in the City of David, the nativity story isn't a bad effort. It's more plausible than some Eastenders plotlines, for sure.

Unfortunately I just can't believe the bit about the Romans ordering everyone back to their place of birth for a census. Why would they? Surely the only point of any census is to find out where people live now , not where they were born. The Romans might have been a bit mental in some respects, but they weren't stupid.

This is all in my wheelhouse.

Well-spotted.
The only Gospel that says anything about the census is in Luke. And, as you suggest, it doesn't make historical sense. The Romans wouldn't have told everyone to go back to where they were born.

In Matthew, Jesus is just born in Bethlehem (apparently at home) and then the family later resettles in Nazareth after their flight to Egypt (which parallels the Hebrews flight to Egypt).

In Mark, Jesus is more or less "adopted" by God. John doesn't talk about his early life at all.

For the story to make sense to the intended audience, Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem, but he was to be called a Nazarene. Nazarenes are not only people from that area, but were also a group of religions/aesthete types. So its not clear where the tradition of him being a Nazarene got started, but either way, it's there.

To be sure, it's not fair to say the writers were just "making it up" or deliberately embellishing with tidbits they knew weren't true. For people in those days, prophesies and so forth were commonplace facts of life. So if they already had decided Jesus was the son of God, so they just took it as given that he was born in Bethlehem. The Gospels were written about 40 years after Jesus died, so the tradition that he was divine was well established by then, as were some of these stories about how that jives with him being a Nazarene.

The star in the sky guiding the magi is clearly cobblers, too; do you not think the appearance of a new star in the sky might have merited even the smallest mention among Roman astronomers of the time, let alone historians and poets?

It's only cobblers if you take it to mean a huge bright star like we see in the Christmas TV specials. In Matthew, it just says "Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”

So these guys were astrologers, so its not clear what "His star in the East" looked like. It was probably some planet or other and through the sort of convoluted calculation that astrologers do, they decided that was his star. So it was only noticeable to somebody who was trying to notice it. It wouldn't show up as spectacular in any history or records.

The "virgin" birth is a curious one and can surely have only been tacked on by people struggling to come up with the "Son of God" bit (that wasn't actually implied by the old testament "messiah" at all, which simply meant a future ruler and saviour of Israel in the line of David). If Mary and Joseph were husband and wife, how can she have been a virgin? Even in those days, marriages were quickly annulled if the bride refused to put out.

Matthew says "after His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit."

So they weren't married quite yet.

But yeah, the virgin birth was another one of these things the writers just assumed. Catholics often don't like to hear this, but there's nothing in the scriptures that suggests Mary's virginity is really all that important or, for that matter, that Mary is really that important. Paul never talks about her or her virginity at all and yet he was the main driver behind what became the early church and its ideas.

The origin of the "Cult of Mary," which later turns into all of the stuff in Catholicism about her purity and importance, is a bit mysterious, but probably she got mixed up with non-Christian stories about mother goddesses and so forth.

Plus, if Joseph was - himself - the direct descendant of King David, is it likely that - in Bethlehem of all places - he would have been asked to sleep in a fucking stable with his pregnant wife? No matter how out of favour our Royal Family become, I'm pretty certain if Prince William ever needs a bed for the night in Windsor, he'd get one somewhere.

But he was a really distant descendant and within Bethlehem, presumably, there were tons of Davids' descendants, so Joseph wouldn't have been considered all that special. According to the Bible, David had about a dozen wives and concubines and about 20 sons.

And, as you suggest, Jesus' lineage was no doubt tacked on by the authors anyway.

And it wasn't really a stable, apparently. My professor (expert on ancient Hebrew culture) explained that it would have been more like the inn's parking lot. And the inn was certainly a rat-infested shithole anyway. All inns back then were shitholes. Rich people in that time and place would travel with their own set of nice tents. Poor people stayed in iins.