What Is Christmas?

[Coldicote]

Whatever one’s religious belief, most will know the symbolism of Christmas -the birth of Jesus Christ. It seems to me a travesty having religion mixed up with Santa Claus, reindeer and all the rest of the material jollifications. I would like to see the two separated, one being a religious occasion and the other a winter festivity at a different time. Am I alone with these thoughts?

[naomi24]

Coldicote, //cannot help feeling there is some kind of creative power. //

I understand that, and there may well be - but having studied the information available I can only conclude that it's not the God of Abraham. That is my bugbear with organised religion. It's a lie - the greatest lie ever told.

[Coldicote]

Naomi, I wonder why you sound so embittered about other people's religious beliefs. Many feel a deep need for the comfort it brings them. Just settle for being an atheist.

[mibn2cweus]

Many feel a deep need for the comfort of heroine. But like religion, one should avoid like the plague a disease however cleverly disguised as its own cure, seeking refuge from the very mind that told you something's wrong and in the bargain, abandoning the only thing that can make it right . . . a process of reason.

[naomi24]

Coldicote, //Just settle for being an atheist.//

You mean ‘shut up’.

Whilst I understand that //many feel a deep need for the comfort it [religion] brings them//, I fail to comprehend how those people can be so selfish as to ignore the effect that religion has on many of its adherents and on the world in general – and in telling me to ‘just settle for being an atheist’, that’s exactly what you’re doing - ignoring it. Despite the fact that religion is a blight on this planet, you have nothing to say about that, and like many others here you simply want to silence the dissenters who expose the glaring flaws in ‘faith’ and the more unsavoury aspects of religious dogma. The world is in turmoil because of religion - but people like you who live in their own safe little haven convinced that they will never die because their God thinks they’re special, are happy to ignore the plight of millions who do not enjoy similar luxury. If you can accept without protest children born with terrible diseases because the church forbids the use of birth control, or instilled with guilt from birth because they are ‘sinners’, or women forced to spend their whole lives shrouded and separated from society, or mutilated in the name of religion, or children married off to old men, or young people taught lies as fact, then perhaps you should search your own soul and think a little beyond yourself and its alleged eventual fate. Every rational person who considers that he is morally astute should object in no uncertain terms to all of those things – but the religious don’t. Because it’s religion, the ever blind eye is turned – regardless of the consequences to other people.

The bible contains only three words that are worth reading. ‘Love one another’ – but whilst religion dominates life and intellect, self-obsession will prevail and the world will continue to suffer. I’m not ‘embittered’ – I care.

[Coldicote]

As I’ve said previously - I don’t know what to believe, and I certainly don’t live in a ‘safe little haven’. If religion could be banned, would the world be any better for it? In my view more problems arise from the ever-increasing population rather than from religious dogma.

[naomi24]

Coldecote, //I certainly don’t live in a ‘safe little haven’.//

Intellectually that’s exactly what you live in. You don’t know what to believe, but unlike many, you have a choice. Consider yourself fortunate.

//In my view more problems arise from the ever-increasing population rather than from religious dogma.//

Really? Tell that to the victims of 9/11.

[boxtops]

since - according to some calculations - Jesus was born some time between April and June, it's more like His official birthday anyway, on the winter solstice week.

[Coldicote]

Happy Christmas everyone, whatever it means (or doesn’t mean) to you.
Good-bye.

[naomi24]

Coldicote, There you go! Whoosh! Straight over your head. I rest my case. Happy Christmas.