Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays 3394

It never HAD any religious significance. Just about everything to do with the way Christmas is celebrated got its start going back CENTURIES before "Christ" is alleged to have been born. Before the late-December festivities were called "Christmas", the Christians wanted nothing to do with the holiday. In fact, it was banned in certain areas as the religious objected to the merriment. Eventually, it was realized that the winter holiday could not be stopped, so the religious TRIED TO TAKE OVER THE HOLIDAY by declaring (in spite of good evidence to the contrary, as written in their own "Bible") that the Christ child was born on December 25th. So all the various non-religious festivities of that time of year were rolled into a new celebration called "Christ's Mbutt", which later became of course Christmas. So Christ has very little to do with what HAS ALWAYS BEEN the holiday which is celebrated around December 25th. But the religious insisted on shoe-horning "Christ" into the whole mess and calling it "Christmas", and the name stuck. So at best (or worst), the Christmas celebration when it was first CALLED "Christmas" was only about 1% religious. AT MOST. It had very little religious significance then.

But relating this to the U.S. Christmas celebrations in particular, things get really interesting . . .

The puritans hopped the pond to establish colonies in North America (which later became the U.S.) as they wanted NOTHING to do with Christmas. One of the main reasons they came over here is that they objected to someone telling them that they had to celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25th. This was almost sacrilegious to the puritans, as it was in no way related to any teachings in compliance with the canon of the time. Even then, it was well documented that Christ was born sometime in Spring, if you believed in Him. So the winter celebration was outlawed in the early colonies, partly to show that the colonies were independent of outside rule. (to put it bluntly, the puritans were saying f*** YOU . . . we don't WANT to celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25th, so we're going to OUTLAW the late-December holiday)

Eventually, when the colonies were more well-established and feeling more independent, atbreastudes against the late-December merriment relaxed a bit and the residents of the early U.S. started their own form of "Christmas" celebration. But again, when Christmas started up in the U.S., it had almost nothing at all to do with the birth of Christ. For whatever reason, the rather non-religious "Christmas" festivities in the early U.S. caught on in a HUGE way and more or less standardized the way the rest of the world celebrated a holiday at this time of year. But the MAJOR components of the celebration have nothing at all to do with "Christ".

In short, "Christ" only gave a name to (an ancient holiday which pre-dated Christ) . . . "Christmas" has almost nothing to do with "Christ", and never has. What has very recently (in historical terms) been called "Christmas" has been reinvented several times throughout history, but it has NEVER had a religious significance to speak of. In fact, the holiday was almost destroyed when the religious insisted on injecting "Christ" into it. -Dave