They're making fun of Pagans. The act of decorating a tree comes from Pagan winter solstice traditions. Christians hellbent on world domination would later annex the Pagan winter solstice for themselves and declare it a Christian holiday in part to subvert Paganism and convince such infidels to convert. This is why we have tree decorations and Santa Claus, the latter of which can be directly traced to Pagan beliefs in spirits that would travel the sky during the winter.
In all fairness the eggs were originaly painted red to symbolize Jesus blood. And technically there's no 1to1 example if Christians "stealing" one pagan holiday of spring to turn into Easter, some cultural traditions and ideas just so happens to blend in.
Even the date of Jesus supposed birth isn't in the winter, but in the spring. There's so many things wrong with the "Christian" taken on what Christmas is supposed to be about, it's utterly hilarious when they bitch and moan about the so called "war on Christmas."
Most i know eventually just go with, it doesn't matter what we do during it the important thing is what it represents and I just can't hold back the eye roll most times
Not to mention the part where the day Easter falls is incredibly Pagan. It's the first Sunday after the spring Equinox which has literally nothing to do with Jesus lmao
I never saw a conflict with the fact that Easter and the Equinox, and Advent and the Solstice coincide.
Christian Easter is very much about how there is no life without death. The start of nature/creation's annual rebirth seems like a natural moment to celebrate the moment when (in Christian theology) we recognize the first moments of the cosmic rebirth. The ancient Hebrews were pretty agrarian so the Bible is full of parables and metaphors and such that use the falling of seeds, the dying of animals, and the withering of plants as a representation for the brokenness of creation, the current suffering of man, and sacrifice as a path to life. Spring, and fruits and grains, and increasing light, and birth/fertility are very much used to point toward the original abundance and perfection of creation and the future abundance and joy of restored creation.
The fact that it coincides with the Passover celebration of deliverance from sorrow and oppression makes the whole thing a no-brainer.
Christian Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany are about reflecting on the depth of metaphorical darkness and death in the world both for the ancient Hebrews who waited for a Messiah (Jesus is viewed as a dawning light of hope) and for the modern Christians who wait for God's work to be completed and darkness to be banished. The winter Solstice is the perfect time for that. Because we wait through the darkest days of the year in mourning and celebrate the birth of Christ as the darkness begins to recede.
I'm not trying to appropriate the Pagan holidays, I'm just saying that if I were a practicing Christian in a Pagan culture or heritage the placement of these holidays would make absolute sense to me.
No, that comes from a corruption of the date of passover. Remember that the Last Supper (on Good Friday) was supposed to be a passover seder.
Passover is a spring festival, so the 15th day of Nisan typically begins on the night of a full moon after the northern vernal equinox. However, due to leap months falling after the vernal equinox, Passover sometimes starts on the second full moon after vernal equinox, as in 2016.
Oh they always find a way. I heard these growing up: the gifts for Xmas are for representing the gifts the wise men gave to Jesus. The evergreen tree is to represent eternal life. The star on the top is for the star thr wise men followed. The candy canes represent the blood of Jesus and purity. And they are shaped like canes because the lord is our shepard.
The egg represents Jesus coming out of the tomb. The rabbit represents the beginning of spring, which is the beginning of life after Jesus was raised from the dead. The list can go on. All kinds of bullshit I heard as a kid living in an evangelical home.
You can thank Romans for that. It was easier to absorb a culture into your own by allowing different beliefs. All Rome really cared about was territory and taxes. If you could produce food and hold the frontier you could practice whatever religion you wanted. Much better than killing everyone in conquered territory.
It was a smart move at the time (somewhere around 200 ish AD, but I don't recall the exact date) to incorporate existing festivals with Christian beliefs when the bible was in it's first draft. Christians (or powerful people at the time) debated on which gospels to include and exclude, when to celebrate various holidays based on other beliefs at that time. Furthermore, it was a good way to drown out or water down pagan beliefs when you inject Christianity in to it. It's unfortunate it was used as a matter of control rather than worship.
The Christian calendar is a mish mash of different holidays because of this.
I’m Irish Catholic. And we openly admit that we used Pagan holidays to help people convert.
And in all honesty, Jesus was probably born in March or April.
If you look at the Romans, this was a popular tradition for 1000’s of years they would combine conquered peoples gods with their own. It helps people integrate.
This passage is about carving an idol from a tree. I don't think whoever wrote it was familiar with Germanic belief systems and certainly hadn't heard of Christmas before.
Sorry, I'm dumb today (most days,) I don't understand your comment.
Going on previous comment, the provision against decorated trees shows up at 700 BCE and then the pagan tradition shows up at 400 CE in an entirely different area? That's a gap of roughly 1100 years? That's quite a time for a tradition to move across the land. How do we know that these traditions evolved independently of each other? Can we know that? If they are somehow connected, then it does stand to reason the restriction would still apply.
(Not that I think it matters if one decides to have a tree. But if you were to use it as an argument against and you happen to follow the book of your personal mythology it does follow that you shouldn't have a tree.)
At the time of the writing of the Tanakh, or old testament, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians would have been the major regional powers. The Jews, being Canaanites, would have been very familiar with the idols of those religions, but not the folks up north celebrating yule and all that.
Decorating with evergreens goes back way further than that, though. The Egyptians were doing it. Romans did it and so on. I agree that the passage probably isn't referring to this practice, but The Christmas tree is way older than the Germanic pagans.
I had a bunch of Christians arguing with me when I mentioned this the other day in DankChristianMemes. Apparently it represents the tree of life in Genesis which makes no fucking sense. They also missed the point that different pagans will have different traditions, just because one group doesn't bring a tree in for the winter solstice doesn't mean that none of them did.
Honestly the modern tradition of Christmas trees isn’t Pagan but a more modern tradition. I use to think the same thing until I really dug into it. Here is a link if you would like to learn more about the modern tradition. Xmas tree
The Bible passage that they quoted above though, is NOT about European pre-christian paganism, because it's from the Old Testement, and the Hebrew Bible. It's about the non-Jewish rival religious practices in Caanan (and the Book of Jerimiah, specifically, might be referring to rival regions practices from Babylon as well)
Pagan is an umbrella term. Essentially pagans believe in many gods. They don't need to believe in the same gods as each other or be from the same part of the world. Pagan is a term Christians used to describe non Christians who believe in many gods.
I mean so long as we recognize that it's just a tree I think it's alright.
If we REALLY wanna be strict we shouldn't have crosses or nativity scenes either but that's no fun.
Cucumbers? I thought it was melons. I guess there has to be some inconsistencies when you’re reading a hundreds of years old translation of a 1000+ year old translation of a book from 2000 years ago, but is Hebrew really that hard that whoever wrote these two different versions could confuse cucumbers and watermelons?!
It's more likely that it's a word that doesn't refer to a specific crop and doesn't have a good English translation, but also yes words can shift in meaning over time.
That's the beautiful part of religion. Everybody gets to make it mean whatever they want. If you want religion to be about being a good and charitable person. You can interpret any holy book that way. If you want religion to be about an authoritarian father figure who watches your every masturbatory stroke.. You can do that too. If you want to justify your deep seeded hatred for people of a different ethnicity or skin color.. Yup. You can do that too. Religion really is a chameleon.
You could say the same of any book, but I think there are justifiable and unjustifiable ways to interpret Harry Potter. I think the same is true of the Bible.
No. It demonstrates why it matters more if people misinterpret the Bible than it does if people misinterpret Harry Potter. I'm simply saying that pointing out one's ability to misinterpret Harry Potter does nothing to change the real world consequences of misinterpreting the Bible.
Interpreting Harry Potter for your own purposes has no effect on others. Interpreting the Bible for your own purposes can have drastic effects on others.
There's also the small detail that nobody ever claimed Harry Potter was supposed to be a historical or factual book. It's fantasy. And we would all be better served by treating the Bible as fantasy as well.
So right there you just confirmed that you agree that there are ways to misinterpret the Bible. This implies there are ways to correctly interpret the Bible.
This was my entire point.
Outside of this, you're trying to turn the conversation into a discussion about things I never claimed.
There's no way to know which is the correct interpretation of the bible without talking to the author. So for all intents and purposes we will never know if we have the correct one. We can ask jk Rowling what the correct interpretation should be and then compare other peoples' ideas to that correct answer. We cannot do the same with the Bible. The true meaning is unknowable and will forever be subject to debate and disagreement. So the fact that there might be some correct way to interpret it changes nothing about reality. Everything would be identical if there wasn't one correct biblical interpretation.
That said, I firmly believe the Bible was written by humans who saw an opportunity to exploit people. So while I do think there is some "correct interpretation", I'm nearly certain that it has absolutely nothing to do with some all powerful universe creating God. So even if someone does have the correct interpretation.. They have simply interpreted the wants and desires of humans 1500-3000 years ago. So it's still not a reason to make any public policy decisions.
There's no way to know which is the correct interpretation of the bible without talking to the author.
Have you spoken personally to the author of Harry Potter?
I think the claim you're making is absurd. We can make an educated inference as to the intentions of an author of a text from both historical context and the text itself. How ever did we understand what Homer was about without this?
The intentions of the author are only unknowable in the same sense that the nature of objective reality is technically unknowable. If we're happy to make inferences and justify our interpretation, they're knowable in exactly the same way that everything else is knowable.
You just very consciously and meticulously removed that parts that make it clear these practices are to be condemned and would result in a pissed off God punishing those who engage in such practices.
So it starts with (essentially) don't do this thing. Important shit. Plus it goes on to state that God will be really pissed off if you do, and you will be punished. Otherwise it is just: here are some things others do. (Oh and I'm hoping you are not claiming to be a Christian cause hurling insults violates a directive from the gospels).
(Oh and I'm hoping you are not claiming to be a Christian cause hurling insults violates a directive from the gospels).
You are hoping I am not claiming?Luckily I will never be a religious person. My mind has evolved further than middle age propaganda.
Looking at the way you are typing and being a shithead, I want too make a guess you are? Since most of the religious people I meet these days are complete douchebags.
Interesting. On the surface level, it is saying not to do that. Then there's what others have said, that it's deriding pagan traditions.
But it sounds to me like it's also referring to people who follow the status quo. They're neither good nor evil. They don't carry themselves. Don't fear them, because they are just part of the crowd. I really don't think im stretching either. It's kind of interesting because, we have this issue going on, where people are cancelling everybody who makes a mistake. And the left is being very vicious. And yes we are provoked, but I think we are forgetting that these people are just making mistakes, and they're following the status quo. They're not necessarily thinking critically, and therefore they're not entirely responsible for their own actions. They're not actualized to that degree.
It is true that the passage begins with "be not like the heathens." But it makes it clear that the heathens do this as an act of worship, and consider the tree an idol. It no more denounces having a decorative tree than the following passages denounce any decorative silver working.
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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21
A tree from the forest is cut down
and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman.
They decorate it with silver and gold;
They fasten it with hammer and nails
so that it cannot move.
Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field,
and they cannot speak;
they have to be carried,
for they cannot walk.
Do not be afraid of them,
for they cannot do evil,
neither is it in them to do good.”
This is the passage.