The ancient Roman Pagan festival of Saturnalia has not had a good run in the last 2 millenia. What was initially a celebration of lawlessness, a week where the Roman courts were closed, leading to anything from eating human-shaped biscuits to human sacrifice, going from house to house singing (naked, it is said),sexual orgies, rape and intoxication, was subsequently first appropriated by the Christians as birthday of their messiah, and then it was instrumentalised by capitalism.
The Christians have no clue when Jesus is supposed to have been born, the Bible does not mention his year of birth, let alone the day. And yet every time this time of the year comes around, I see clueless Christians bemoaning the loss of the “true Christmas spirit”™.Like this idiot on Christian Today :
Sadly, Christmas has become an occasion to spend a lot of money on material gifts. Jesus taught us to focus on what is eternal, but instead we are focusing more on what is temporal on Christmas day than any other day of the year. Many people also over-indulge in food and recreation.[] Then how do we navigate ourselves and our loved ones to find the true focus of Christmas? Firstly we need to remember the true spirit of Christmas, which is giving. God gave us the ultimate gift to all humanity in the form of Jesus. A fellow comment writer Alison Barkley recently wrote in our church paper: “If God could give us Jesus, what can we give? Firstly, we have to give ourselves to Jesus. Next, we need to give to others. And I’m not just talking about shiny red things. We need to share Jesus. We need to give Jesus to other people through talking about Him and living a true Christian example.”
The true spirit of Christmas is to get wasted, have lots of sex and eat too much. That’s what the Romans did. All the other garblewarble is just a fantasy by clueless idiots who believe that a dead carpenter is the son of an invisible man in the sky who died 2000 years ago for you or me masturbating.
It’s a time of the year when the true nature of “spirits” comes to the fore. In light of Christopher Hitchens recent shuffling off this mortal coil, might I suggest a tumbler of Johnnie Walker red?
All the other garblewarble is just a fantasy by clueless idiots who believe that a dead carpenter is the son of an invisible man in the sky who died 2000 years ago for you or me masturbating.
Considering how utterly stupid and incoherent the entire concept of Jesus is, you’d think Christians would be quietly downplaying the whole business in the hope that people would forget about it and just focus on eating, drinking and buying each other stuff.
But no, they’re that clueless. So we have to hear dimwitted blather about the ‘sacrifice’ (which makes no sense whatsoever; ‘temporary inconvenience’ is a far more accurate description) that the supposed Jesus allegedly made.
Just wanted to say what a pleasure and relief it is to find your blog. I have been amusing myself trawling the web, arguing with religious nutjobs who (no matter how loudly I type) refuse to see sense. Just when it was really starting to get me down, I stumbled in here. You’ve restored my faith (so to speak). Thankyou!
Thank you, much appreciated !
@Richard
Seconded, This is one of my favorite blogs. For one thing, It let me know that my country (UK) is not the only one with such dimbulb politicians running it. We are the only country in the world, apart from Iran, that has unelected Holy Men in government by right though.