Celebrating Christmas
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Peace be upon you Zenje,
Apologies, I wrote that in haste. I was saying that I just found it strange how people go about it here, atleast from what I've seen. One person will buy a gift for friends and family... but at the same time, it's like a rule, that those same friends and family have to buy that person a gift. I think that's just a waste, most of the time, people end up getting gifts they never wanted anyway. Some people create "wish-lists" to avoid dissappoinments... I fail to see the purpose and point to it all.
Yes!! It is all so insane when you think logically about it.
People at work create these "Polyannas" where they have a spending limit of , lets say, $10. So everyone draws names out of a hat and buys that person a $10 gift. Why doesn't everyone just keep thier $10 dollars and buy thier own gift, so they will be sure it is someting they need. It is such a ridiculous show of false "giving", to be SEEN OF MEN.
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Peace be upon you Warda,
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I understand this all too well, my grandmother was "Mrs Chritmas", she would decorate her entire attic and all the kids in the neigborhood would come see it.You should see some streets here in Berlin!
I always marvel at the fact that we are all over the world coming together to study THAT which will change our behaviors to righteousness.
Some houses are in hard competition with their neighbours, who got more shiny sparkling windows and gardens! It gets more and more each year.
O yes! We have that here for sure!! With my Dearly respected Grandmother, I was stating that she even took it INSIDE her house, to her ATTIC. So she must have promoted this for people to be aware that her attic INSIDE was decorated to such an extent. I mean like a museum! D
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I understand all too well, but we have to ask, WHY is it so compulsory? Is it because we are PROGRAMMED starting as early as the day after "thanskgiving" with songs, lights, SALE SALE SALE? Do you realize that this time is accounts for 50% of most buisnesses? So they spend BILLIONS of dollars on commercials? BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, for what? Because it WORKS!Yes, Kyle somehow you`re right.
Oh Yes!! The wicked do not play with thier money, they spend those millions because they get back billions!! It is a SCIENCE!
If we would collect all this money and give it to the needing ones it would be much better than holding up high our capitalistic systems. But then again it is not only the Christmas-present-boom we ought to fight.
Exactly, christmas is not the only trick, but it is the biggest and we have to ask WHY? It is because this time of the year is teh MOST RECEPTIVE time of the year. It is teh HEIGHT of the YIN season. Please study the YIN and YANG. The YIN is the female principle, that which makes us go WITHIN ourselfs. The night before the christmas is thh MOST POWERFUL NIGHT for receptivity,it is the day before the YANG starts to manifset itself.
Please look at the following web page, scroll down to the diagram in the middle. Dec 24th is the last day of teh winter solstice. The dark portion represents the YIN. Look at the dot indicatiin summer colstice and see what I mean.
http//www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/yinyang.htm
It was just today when I went to one of the biggest cinemas in the inner city. I was speechless of all that monumentary waste of money. Everything was shining and glittering. Every tree had shiny chains, huge screens with movies were shown open air, a bowling place, bars, food, music, light-shows,...A big party going on. It was overwhelming. What a temple of consume!!!
As if the whole world would live in peace and happiness...So true!
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Birth of Jesus? Please show your evidence ofJesus being born on Dec 25th. In fact, give evidnece of ANY DATE.I knew this will come up.Of course I can
t show you any evidence, and Im quite aware of it. But I see this more symbolic - it doesn`t really matter it was this or the other day to remember just the fact that Prophet Jesus was born. The Prophet - and not the son of God!!Yes, but we cannot even celebrate a prophets birth, because if so, we must celebrate them ALL equally, or else we are differentiating. D
Oh, who is Macy?
Very large department store in New York that was the first to keep its doors open later on Christmas Eve.
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Peace be upon you IamsearchigforGod,
For myself, I am just not yet ready to give up a holiday that has meant so much to me for so many years. This is my first Christmas after coming to Islam and Christmas for me has always been such a happy time filled with family and love.
There is no compulsion. I am not sitting here telling you it is easy, nor am I telling you that I did it faster than the speed of light. Understand that the sun does not rise al at once, it rises gradually. Take your time, but do not ignore the evidnece that you have heard here or wil see with your eyes. Do not be blind to the truth, because that is what emotions do, blind you. Your above response clealry indicates that it is an emotional tie. This system was sent to us so we could figure out what emotions are enslaving us, so we can struggle(jihad) to get free from them and to make the emotions our SERVANTS, not our masters. I wish you peace ALL YEAR LONG and may the God give you the clarity to eventually see the truth of this matter and the Power to overcome these emotions.
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Peace be upon you Nafisa,
and I love the lights in the town centre, brings cheer to otherwise grim winter nights. They should keep them up until the end of January! This is how I "celebrate"
Do you wonder WHY there is such a display of LIGHT? It is because this time of the year is when the LIGHT of the world RETURNS, the SUN! It is not the worshipping of the sun, but the understanding that the God has not let the days to continue getting shorter, and the nights to grow longer, and the days to keep getting colder. If it was just about lights, there would be no problem. There is nothing wrong with lights. What we MUST confront is the CULTURE that all this is being made to represent.
Some people don't even have electric in thier neighborhoods!! How can man celebrate and waste so much electricity while others cant even see where they are going?
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Peace Idolfree, all,
how true all of this. How to oppose any of those statements.
I wonder what words you would have if the topic was the intellectual and economical effort put in the creation of weapons to destroy, injure and threaten.
If the key is Oneness, then I understand that the battle towards good is in all levels. -
Peace be upon you Elena,
I wonder what words you would have if the topic was the intellectual and economical effort put in the creation of weapons to destroy, injure and threaten.
If the key is Oneness, then I understand that the battle towards good is in all levels.Yes, Oneness answers all of the questions D Indeed Christmas IS a weapon of mass destruction! cry
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Peace,
People at work create these "Polyannas" where they have a spending limit of , lets say, $10. So everyone draws names out of a hat and buys that person a $10 gift. Why doesn't everyone just keep thier $10 dollars and buy thier own gift, so they will be sure it is someting they need. It is such a ridiculous show of false "giving", to be SEEN OF MEN.
Funny, I was going to give the same example, I have here at work. I think the only ones who deserve gifts are children and the (REAL) needy.Trees are what gives the human being oxygen to breathe, what kind of perverse holiday incorporates the KILLING of our breathing supply?
lol I never thought of it that way before. It's funny though, the things you see when you take a step back and look at the whole picture. -
Peace be upon you Zenje,
never thought of it that way before. It's funny though, the things you see when you take a step back and look at the whole picture.
Aw man, its amazing isnt it? I could go all day on this one. I have plenty of ammo this year
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Peace,
Does time run fast or what? Its been two days that Christmas is over and guess what...before you know it, 2005 will be here and before you know it 2006 will be here and so on...
Now is the time to do all that we have to do to serve God the best
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Peace be upon you,
It was a good time to work on maintaining your PEACE inthe face of adversity. I hope all those who were unsure about christmas or did celebrate it made some mind altering observations over this past weekend.
Hopefully it has made us all stronger to reject it next year.
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Peace be upon you,
Her's what the Pope had to say about the Tsunami that killed thousands of human beings;
Pope John Paul said the tragedy made for a sad Christmas.
http//cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0002/20041226/1426625965.htm&photoid=20041226XINT103
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Peace,
I saw the Pope's speech on the Chrismas day and I have to admit idol worship was definetly there.
People were pretty much bowing infront of the Pope and they had a little baby Jesus statue and a man carried it in his arms and everyone was taking blessings from it...and I was telling to myself, God, I hope they do know that its just a statue, not the real Christ and whatever happened to "Thou Shalt NOT worship any other gods besides me"?
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Hello everybody
back again from days of harmony first and trouble lateron...cryI made the proposal to my family to collect the money we would spend on presents and give it instead to Help-Organizations. Further I think that this was my last christmas this way ... ?
Salam
warda -
I don?t have the info with me but I will tell you what I remember. In the next couple of days I will get the rest to you.
Now keep in mind that this is when the majority of Americans/USA started celebrating this event. Around the world there are many earlier dates this was celebrated and many other false reasons. But I would say that?s a different subject because of the complexity of the info that goes with it. I believe the date is in the 1800's. St. Nicholas in his work would give gifts to people in need, this was part of the work he done as a saint. Here is where St. Nicholas AKA Santa Claus came from. When St. Nicholas died his mother burred him in there back yard. A few yrs later (not sure exactly how many) a pine tree grew over his grave. St. Nicholas mother, family and friends decorated the tree out of honor and in memory of his work. Dec. 25 was St. Nicholas birthday. This is how the Christmas tree came about. Some yrs later again I don?t have the dates with me but a group of the High priests in the catholic church decided to put all theses things together and celebrate this as the Birth of Jesus. This info is all I can remember for a fact and I don?t want to miss lead you. I have about 10 pages of info on this subject that I will get to you ASAP. But also this info can be found in encyclopedias written before 1960 and have not been revised. Also this can be found in the history of the Catholic Church and if I?m not mistaken in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.
http//www.locksley.com/6696/xmas.htm
Above is the web site where I just got this information. But as you will see when you read this the Roman Catholics are responsible for Christmas being celebrated in the US. You can also see have for centuries the church has falsely guided its people to believe that Jesus was born on Dec 25. You will also see that at first Americans rejected this idea but were again misguided by people that wanted to alter the truth to make such a thing as this. Many people have been misguided about the truth of Christmas for many years, and I am trying to show people this truth in order to Guide people to the whole truth that Jesus had laid for us to follow. The info I have provided is length so please be patient and read it all. And feel free to share this with whomever. Thanks for your time and desire to know the whole truth.The Christian holiday was not always celebrated on December 25th, however.
For the first three hundred years of the current era, there was no festivity of the birth of Jesus. Some churches celebrated Jesus' birthday in the spring time and some celebrated it on January 6 (Epiphany).
Early in the fourth century, the Roman church decreed that December 25 would henceforth be recognized as the birthday of Christ. The Eastern churches refused to accept Christmas until 375 C.E., and the churches in Jerusalem rejected the December 25 date until the seventh century.
There are still some Eastern Rite churches that continue to celebrate the Epiphany date.
The Pilgrims outlawed Christmas. They also refused to use the 1611 King James Bible!
The Winter Solistice was the season of a major celebration of fertility in ancient Rome called "Saturnalia," starting on December 17th. This honoured the "good old days" when the god Saturn ruled a supposed "Golden Age", and there were no masters and no slaves, and everything was easy. Thus, it became a reversal-holiday, when the masters served the slaves, and a slave was chosen to temporarily rule the household. The Romans were civilized enough to not kill him afterwards, as seems to be the custom with such holidays in more primitive cultures.
They also exchanged presents, were allowed to gamble in public, and in general had a good time. It was the greatest holiday of the year.
It should come as no surprise then that the Christian Church co-opted this seasonal holiday, celebrated by the city that ruled the world -and- celebrated by Christianity's major competitor (Mithraism). It was simply a very astute political move.
St. John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople at the end of the fourth century wrote "On this day also the Birthday of Christ was lately fixed at Rome in order that while the heathen were busy with their profane ceremonies, the Christians might perform their sacred rites undisturbed. They call this (December 25th), the Birthday of the Invincible One (Mithras); but who is so invincible as the Lord? They call it the Birthday of the Solar Disk, but Christ is the Sun of Righteousness."This custom of the "Feast of Fools" was continued in medieval Western Europe, with a "Lord of Misrule," mummers doing traditional plays, feasting with a boar's head, games, dancing and other such merriment. This could last for more than just Christmas Day, going on until at least Epiphany (January 6th) in many cases ..... these are our "Twelve Days of Christmas."
Christmas even started out controversially in North America. Reverend Rel Davis writes
The festival of Christmas has always been a controversial one in Christianity. The Puritans banned Christmas altogether and during the Cromwellian period in England, anyone celebrating Christmas was jailed for heresy. Probably the most hated of all Puritan laws was the one abolishing Christmas and probably led to popular acceptance of royalty (nb the Restoration) -- at least the King allowed the masses to celebrate Yule!
In America, Christmas was generally outlawed until the end of the last century. In Boston, up to 1870, anyone missing work on Christmas Day would be fired. Factory owners customarily required employees to come to work at 5 a.m. on Christmas -- to insure they wouldn't have time to go to church that day. And any student who failed to go to school on December 25 would be expelled. Only the arrival of large numbers of Irish and northern European immigrants brought acceptance of Christmas in this country.
Christmas did not even begin to be a legal holiday anywhere in the United States until very late in the nineteenth century CE, with Alabama being the first state to make it so.
Now let's look at some Christmas customs
The name "Yule" is not derived from Chaldaean, as some would have you believe, but rather from the Old Norse "Jol" or "Jul" thru Anglo-Saxon "Geol" to Middle English "Yule." It means "Winter Solistice," or "Christmas." It is found in the Germanic languages, but not in the Romance languages like French, Spanish and Italian, who have names for Christmas that mean closer to "The Birthday" than anything else. There is, of course, no connection linguistically between Chaldaean and the Germanic languages .... or with the Romance languages either, for that matter.
I have also heard some folks thundering against the use of the abbreviation "Xmas" as being "against Jesus." Frankly, nothing could be more absurd. This usage derives from a common medieval abbreviation for "Christ" using a Cross rather than the name. This was most common in signatures, and thus you would see a signature of "Xtoph" rather than "Kristoph." It is simply an abbreviation, and nothing more.
The name "Christmas" derives, of course, from Middle English "Cristes m?sse" or "Christ's Mass," that is, the Roman church's standard ritual celebration. This alone, being Roman Catholic, seems to render it suspect in the minds of many hard-core Protestants .... though they seem to forget that at the time Middle English was spoken, the Roman Catholic Church was pretty much the only game in town.
The night before, Christmas Eve, was called "Modranect" or "Modranecht" by the Germanic pagan peoples (this seems to be Old English / Anglo-Saxon, and apparently means "Mother's Night". This is obviously in honor of the Mother Goddess who bore the solar Child of Promise.
The Magi, or the Three Wise Men The "Magi" were, in antiquity, priests of Zoroastrianism ..... and reputed to be expert Magi-cians (see the derivation of the word there?) and astrologers. Mithraism is associated with Zoroastrianism much like Christianity stems from Judaism. The "Three Kings" bits are a later interpolation, and there may very well be a "Triple God" aspect slipping in here from folk-memory, too.
The Star of Bethlehem? Well, this page might give us some leads. It may have been a planetary conjunction noticed by the magician-astrologers. That theory at least explains why there are no other accounts of a miraculous star in historical records of the time.
I have heard several remarks over the years about how much the Wiccans must like Christmas, because they can buy so many nicely made pentagrams then. Not to worry, though, because as shown in the medieval poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and in Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur" the pentagram is very much a Christian symbol too.
The Yule Log is pretty obvious. Sympathetic magic, with its rule of "As in Heaven, so on Earth" (a re-stating of the more usual wording of 'As above, so below" means that to have a blazing fire on earth would encourage the sun to grow stronger. Therefore, the Winter Solistice is a "fire festival," with bonfires and Yule logs being lit to "help" the sun grow stronger between then and Midsummer. It also served a more practical purpose of warming up the home during a cold night in which many people stayed awake for much longer than they usually did.
Sincerely, Larry/Abuja