Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday. Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/51928?lang=bi

[–] Not_mikey@slrpnk.net 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

That analogy seems a better fit for a lot of Jewish holidays then Christmas. Passover is about the mass death of innocent Egyptian children. Chanukah is about a revolt against Greek rule where:

The Maccabees destroyed Greek altars in the villages, forcibly circumcised boys, burnt villages, and drove Hellenized Jews off their land.

Christmas is just about some baby being born ( on probably a different day)

[–] kata1yst@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The "real meaning" of Christmas was getting the pagans on board with Christianity, don't let anyone lie to you otherwise lol.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yep the birth of Christ just coincidentally coincides with the end of Brumalia, which of course noone noticed when the emperor suddenly insisted everyone become Christian and had the bible written by committee. And it's of course a coincidence that that was (back in the day) exactly the winter solstice. And it's also just a coincidence that Jesus' life story has quite some parallels to that of earlier sun gods from the general area.

Most current Christmas traditions are more Germanic in nature, though, e.g. the Christmas tree. While in the current form a quite recent invention, decorating the house with evergreen stuff was common through the ages -- branches, wreaths, not whole-ass trees. The needles btw are fine smudging material don't just sweep them away.

[–] matj1@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Which earlier sun gods does Jesus's life story have parallels with?

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sol Invictus, in particular it's also where the halo in depictions comes from... which isn't really "other sun gods", it's in particular the Roman sun god. Misremembered the resurrection part, that's Osiris who isn't a sun god and the Horus parallels have been shown to be bunk, aside from getting nursed by Mary depictions being inspired by Horus getting nursed by Isis.

[–] matj1@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I read something about them (mainly in Wikipedia), and I see some parallels in artistic style or symbolism, but I don't see a substantial parallel in their stories, although I didn't find much about the story of Sol Invictus. I don't see that someone was nursed as a significant parallel because almost every human was nursed.

I focused on parallels in their stories because I don't see parallels in the style of art depicting them as problematic to Christianity. But most of your previous comment was about artistic depictions, so, if you think that they are problematic, please, explain that more in details.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago

I'm not even Christian what would I care about depictions or inspiration being "problematically Pagan".

What I can say is that it's unlikely that much of the parallels (like the Osiris thing) existed before Rome became Christian as over in staunchly monotheist Palestine people wouldn't have taken inspiration like that, while turning multiple gods into one sounds quite reasonable for a people going from polytheism to monotheism.

For modern Christian, I think, the question is "How much did the Romans change". That is, how different was early, pre-Roman, Christianity to what's now considered authoritative, like the Bible, which wasn't brought down from a mountain by Jesus.

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago

I read pagers for a sec and was confused... then again, god is the biggest mass murderer of all time.

[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

VSCode doesn't commemorate Passover or Chanukah, though.