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  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    Originally posted by diggedy derek View Post
    Back on the OP, I don't know how cricket batters do what they do in the time they have to do it. They have to make a judgement about where the ball will pitch and its direction, and decide and execute an appropriate shot, all in, what, half a second. I have no idea how they do that, what decisions could reasonably be made in that short space of time. Most sports I can see myself giving it a bash, but cricket at the top level just looks completely impossible.
    You should see batters in baseball hit pitches. They don't even get the benefit of the ground slowing the ball down.

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  • The Awesome Berbaslug!!!
    replied
    the christians have a big festival four days after the shortest day of the year Two days after the longest day of the year, the good christians of Rural Ireland, parts of England and france, people go out and celebrate St John, by, er, lighting big fucking bonfires, and when the bonfires die down, driving animals over the ashes for fertility, and young women who wanted to find a husband have a kid would jump over the fire. This actually still happens, I've seen it in Ireland, and I've seen it in France. Christians celebrate All souls right on the first day of the celtic month of the dead, the annual pilgrimage up Croke Patrick in mayo in July is literally still called Black Chrom's sunday *Domhnach Chrom Dubh" just in case anyone ever forgets that this was a pagan festival. Virtually every holy site in Ireland and every holy well has a pre-christian heritage.

    Pagans wouldn't have seen this as appropriation of their festivals, They had a transactional relationship with the gods, tthey would have seen it as a seemingly seamless blending of the two. We were still doing all sorts of mad obviously pagan stuff here, right up to the middle of the nineteenth century. we were super big on what mohammed would have called Shirk.

    I forgot how Imbolg became st Brigid's day, the first of may is still a big thing, with the month being given over to the virgin mary in catholicism.
    Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 11-02-2020, 17:11.

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  • Sporting
    replied
    Originally posted by diggedy derek View Post
    Back on the OP, I don't know how cricket batters do what they do in the time they have to do it. They have to make a judgement about where the ball will pitch and its direction, and decide and execute an appropriate shot, all in, what, half a second. I have no idea how they do that, what decisions could reasonably be made in that short space of time. Most sports I can see myself giving it a bash, but cricket at the top level just looks completely impossible.
    Agreed. I suppose a lot of the secrets here lie in learned responses developed over a number of years,

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  • diggedy derek
    replied
    Back on the OP, I don't know how cricket batters do what they do in the time they have to do it. They have to make a judgement about where the ball will pitch and its direction, and decide and execute an appropriate shot, all in, what, half a second. I have no idea how they do that, what decisions could reasonably be made in that short space of time. Most sports I can see myself giving it a bash, but cricket at the top level just looks completely impossible.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sporting
    replied
    Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post


    The 6 January was another god's birthday and may be why Jesus's birthday was situated there originally (and still is in the Orthodox world)

    And is still the main gift-giving day in Spain.

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  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
    No. That idea has largely been discredited, but it gets passed around by people who think we're all idiots, even though it really doesn't have anything to do with anything.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-surprise-you/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithra...belief_systems

    Another hypothesis is that it was widely believed/accepted that great figures were conceived on the same day they died. The story has Jesus dying around Passover, so if he was conceived then, he would be born in December or January.
    If you'd read that Wikipedia article, one person disputes that 25 December being Mithras's birthday. Mithras was identified with Sol Invictus so the 25 December was regarded as Mithras's birthday as it was also the sun's birthday. The WaPo article cites an early Christian writer claiming exactly that.

    Mithraism is really interesting - I just finished reading Manfred Clauss's* book about it (which is the university textbook on it).

    The 6 January was another god's birthday and may be why Jesus's birthday was situated there originally (and still is in the Orthodox world)


    * no relation to Santa

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    Originally posted by TonTon View Post
    Thanks.

    As far as I can see, that doesn't rule out the cultural explanation, or provide an alternative.
    Same here, though it does support a Scots verdict of Not Proven

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  • WOM
    replied
    Yeah, the 25th works for most people because they're already off school and work for Christmas break.

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  • DCI Harry Batt
    replied
    Thanks.

    As far as I can see, that doesn't rule out the cultural explanation, or provide an alternative.
    Last edited by DCI Harry Batt; 11-02-2020, 16:16.

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    Here you go (I subscribe)

    Christmas is on Dec. 25, but it wasn’t always.

    Dec. 25 is not the date mentioned in the Bible as the day of Jesus’s birth; the Bible is actually silent on the day or the time of year when Mary was said to have given birth to him in Bethlehem. The earliest Christians did not celebrate his birth.

    As a result, there are a number of different accounts as to how and when Dec. 25 became known as Jesus’s birthday.

    By most accounts, the birth was first thought — in around 200 A.D. — to have taken place on Jan. 6. Why? Nobody knows, but it may have been the result of “a calculation based on an assumed date of crucifixion of April 6 coupled with the ancient belief that prophets died on the same day as their conception,” according to religionfacts.com. By the mid-fourth century, the birthday celebration had been moved to Dec. 25. Who made the decision? Some accounts say it was the pope; others say it wasn’t.

    One of the prevalent theories on why Christmas is celebrated on Dec. 25 was spelled out in “The Golden Bough,” a highly influential 19th-century comparative study of religion and mythology written by the anthropologist James George Frazer and originally published in 1890. (The first edition was titled “The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion”; the second edition was called “The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion.” By the third printing, in the early 20th century, it was published in 12 volumes, though there are abridged one-volume versions.)

    Frazer approached the topic of religion from a cultural — not theological — perspective, and he linked the dating of Christmas to earlier pagan rituals. Here’s what the 1922 edition of the “The Golden Bough” says about the origins of Christmas, as published on Bartleby.com:

    An instructive relic of the long struggle is preserved in our festival of Christmas, which the Church seems to have borrowed directly from its heathen rival. In the Julian calendar the twenty-fifth of December was reckoned the winter solstice, and it was regarded as the Nativity of the Sun, because the day begins to lengthen and the power of the sun to increase from that turning-point of the year. The ritual of the nativity, as it appears to have been celebrated in Syria and Egypt, was remarkable. The celebrants retired into certain inner shrines, from which at midnight they issued with a loud cry, “The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!” The Egyptians even represented the new-born sun by the image of an infant which on his birthday, the winter solstice, they brought forth and exhibited to his worshippers. No doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess; in Semitic lands she was a form of Astarte. Now Mithra was regularly identified by his worshippers with the Sun, the Unconquered Sun, as they called him; hence his nativity also fell on the twenty-fifth of December. The Gospels say nothing as to the day of Christ’s birth, and accordingly the early Church did not celebrate it. In time, however, the Christians of Egypt came to regard the sixth of January as the date of the Nativity, and the custom of commemorating the birth of the Saviour on that day gradually spread until by the fourth century it was universally established in the East. But at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century the Western Church, which had never recognised the sixth of January as the day of the Nativity, adopted the twenty-fifth of December as the true date, and in time its decision was accepted also by the Eastern Church. At Antioch the change was not introduced till about the year 375 A.D.


    ​​​​​​What considerations led the ecclesiastical authorities to institute the festival of Christmas? The motives for the innovation are stated with great frankness by a Syrian writer, himself a Christian. “The reason,” he tells us, “why the fathers transferred the celebration of the sixth of January to the twenty-fifth of December was this. It was a custom of the heathen to celebrate on the same twenty-fifth of December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and festivities the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day and the festival of the Epiphany on the sixth of January. Accordingly, along with this custom, the practice has prevailed of kindling fires till the sixth.” The heathen origin of Christmas is plainly hinted at, if not tacitly admitted, by Augustine when he exhorts his Christian brethren not to celebrate that solemn day like the heathen on account of the sun, but on account of him who made the sun. In like manner Leo the Great rebuked the pestilent belief that Christmas was solemnised because of the birth of the new sun, as it was called, and not because of the nativity of Christ.
    Thus it appears that the Christian Church chose to celebrate the birthday of its Founder on the twenty-fifth of December in order to transfer the devotion of the heathen from the Sun to him who was called the Sun of Righteousness….
    Yet an account titled “How December 25 Became Christmas” on the Biblical Archaeology Society’s Web site takes some issue with this theory:

    Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods.

    Furthermore, it says, the first mentions of a date for Christmas, around 200 A.D., were made at a time when “Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character.” It was in the 12th century, it says, that the first link between the date of Jesus’s birth and pagan feasts was made.

    It says in part:

    Clearly there was great uncertainty, but also a considerable amount of interest, in dating Jesus’ birth in the late second century. By the fourth century, however, we find references to two dates that were widely recognized — and now also celebrated — as Jesus’ birthday: December 25 in the western Roman Empire and January 6 in the East (especially in Egypt and Asia Minor). The modern Armenian church continues to celebrate Christmas on January 6; for most Christians, however, December 25 would prevail, while January 6 eventually came to be known as the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem. The period between became the holiday season later known as the 12 days of Christmas.

    The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea … ” So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in mid-winter.”

    Bottom line: Nobody knows for sure why Dec. 25 is celebrated as Christmas.

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  • DCI Harry Batt
    replied
    Is everyone registered on WaPo, or is there some workaround I don't know about? I always click the link, and then close it when the wall appears.

    Leave a comment:


  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    I just linked a WaPo article that tries to explain it.

    Leave a comment:


  • DCI Harry Batt
    replied
    What is the reason for choosing 25 December for Christmas?

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
    You think the Roman midwinter festival and feasting of Saturnalia, and the later Germanic pagan traditions of feasting and bringing trees and holly into houses and decorating them with lights and gifts, present no evidence of a link to our Christmas festivities?

    I'll buy you a new Occam's razor next, er, "Christmas".
    All of those symbols didn't get attached to Christmas until fairly recently. The observance of Christmas predates Christianity moving into those northern European cultures.

    It's unlikely that Christmas would be such a big deal if it weren't in the middle of winter, but that doesn't mean that's why it is when it is.

    Leave a comment:


  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    No. That idea has largely been discredited, but it gets passed around by people who think we're all idiots, even though it really doesn't have anything to do with anything.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-surprise-you/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithra...belief_systems

    Another hypothesis is that it was widely believed/accepted that great figures were conceived on the same day they died. The story has Jesus dying around Passover, so if he was conceived then, he would be born in December or January.
    Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 11-02-2020, 14:59.

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  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    25 December was Mithras's birthday and the Christians definitely deliberately chose it as the date to celebrate Christ's birth.

    Leave a comment:


  • Rogin the Armchair fan
    replied
    You think the Roman midwinter festival and feasting of Saturnalia, and the later Germanic pagan traditions of feasting and bringing trees and holly into houses and decorating them with lights and gifts, present no evidence of a link to our Christmas festivities?

    I'll buy you a new Occam's razor next, er, "Christmas".

    Leave a comment:


  • Lang Spoon
    replied
    There's no real evidence about the old pagan festivals being rebadged.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/VoxHib. This guy is very good on how there's only very tenuous evidence of "pagan" ritual surviving in Christian form.
    Last edited by Lang Spoon; 11-02-2020, 23:15.

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  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    I'm reading a book about him at the moment. He saw himself as the saviour of humanity and establishing the church as the official religion was part of that.

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  • DCI Harry Batt
    replied
    Indeed. Hideous man.

    Leave a comment:


  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    Originally posted by TonTon View Post
    tbf, Constantine himself didn't get baptised until he was close to death, according to the stories.
    Well that was a sin dodge thing to get out of being good. He saw the potential of a global super religion allied to state power.

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  • Rogin the Armchair fan
    replied
    Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post

    That's actually been overstated. When Constantine ascended the throne less than 10% of the Empire were Christians and paganism survived for several subsequent "Christian Emperors".
    Yes, they were still nailing Christians to things as late as the 14th century in Lithuania, and many christian communities before the middle ages remained either in ghettos or in some of the most remote or hilltop parts of their regions. The conversion to Christianity in Western Europe was really a very gradual rebadging over centuries of the Empire's old pagan rituals and festivals like Saturnalia and Oestre into the ones we celebrate today, as the actual Empire became the Holy Roman Empire and became more Germanic than Latin after the fall of Rome. The Roman Gods themselves, of course, fell out of favour as Rome itself had fallen, and their emperors abandoned them so they were seen as having failed. Having only one new god to worship and, importantly, pay tribute to at the temple, was a much better money-generating wheeze for the people who owned the temples than the old one.
    Last edited by Rogin the Armchair fan; 11-02-2020, 12:55.

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  • DCI Harry Batt
    replied
    tbf, Constantine himself didn't get baptised until he was close to death, according to the stories.

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  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post

    The speed with which Christianity spread across Asia Minor and Europe is awesome given the slender evidence in its favour. Why not just keep believing the myths that were already in the culture?
    That's actually been overstated. When Constantine ascended the throne less than 10% of the Empire were Christians and paganism survived for several subsequent "Christian Emperors".

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  • Jah Womble
    replied
    Eleventh-brightest I believe - but I thought that Betelgeuse wasn't due to go supernova for another thousand centuries?

    But things tend to go a bit AWOL once you bring the solar system and beyond into the equation.

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