since when is christmass a religions event?

[Vamantha]

I think everyone has their own views on what Christmas means to them. For me it's a time to get together with friends, eat, laugh, and give presents if you desire. Other people see it as religious holiday, time for family or just another day with less people.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

It's only called Christmas because the christians renamed it.
Turns out completely taking away peoples' celebrations doesn't help your new religion gain followers.

 

[Eccentric_Jon]

Christmas is the Christian name for the holiday.
The Romans called it Winter Solstice, Pagans celebrate Yule, & the Jewish equivalent is Hannukah, to name just a couple of other Religions.

I personally celebrate Xmas - The present giving holiday.

 

[Cain_Zeros]

I am not a christian but celebrate christmas.

Because I am from Sweden and we celebrated christmas (Jul) long before the christians came here. Its not a christian event, the christians just needed to come up with something to replace the heathen festivities.

Pretty much, yeah. Non-Christians who celebrate Christmas are just doing the same thing the Christians did to other winter celebrations way back when. If they're allowed to steal it, why isn't the rest of the world?

 

[Smooth Operator]

Since Christianity made a big army and slaughtered anyone who said otherwise.
But yes the celebration is actually a sum of all the different cultures that celebrated life around that time of year.

 

[SinisterGehe]

Well in Finland Christmas is a pagan holiday and been like that since the damn folklore of Finns started, that is why we our name doesn't have religious link to it, we just call it "joulu".

In Traditional Finnish folklore "Christmas" was a time of a year when a evil man dressed in skins and gray clothing went around and gave a present to children that were good, but stole and ate those who were bad.

But when the Christianity landed on Finland (Or to the area that is called Finland now days, western Turku's areas) , around 11th century they started to integrate our pagan traditional holidays with the the important Christian events... Now we basically do not have a single holiday expect midsummer that hasn't been tied to Christianity. Thanks Christians for destroying 5000 years worth of culture, traditions and folklore. I am very proud of the fact that I know jack shit of the real Finnish traditions since you spent almost thousand years of literal eradication of our past traditions. (I am Atheist in case you care...)

 

[PureChaos]

i heard Jesus was actually born in the summer but the date was moved to coincide with the winter solstace

 

[MattRooney06]

hopefully won't get slammed for this :S

I'll have to disagree with you on this one, Christmas (for me anyway) is a a religious event, I sometimes attend the church service and have a proper prayer on that day (it sounds stupid I know)

but I will say that I also think that Christmas is something that can be celebrated by everyone, the Christmas that we know today (trees, stockings, presents and that wicked stuff)was invented in the Victorian era (I don't know the date or who first came up with any of the ideas)It's a great excuse to see the family and you will be hard pressed to find anybody who is upset on Christmas.....so i suppose i both Agree and Disagree?

 

[AndyFromMonday]

Christmas is a religious holiday? Last time I checked it was stolen by the Christians from the pagans and by the major corporations from the Christians. It's a commercial holiday just like Thanksgiving and nothing else.

 

[TTYTYTTYYTTYTTTY]

I guess it was and still is to some, but now it is a Capitalist holiday.

 

[Kyle 2175]

At the end of the day, Christmas is either a religious celebration, or a celebration of disposable income. I'm pretty sure it's based on a Pagan holiday, but most Paganism is also religious. I'm pretty sure most people nowadays celebrate their disposable income more than anything. Quite frankly, I think that celebrating Christmas without it being a religious event for you, is just giving in the rampant consumerism that plagues our culture.

 

[alandavidson]

Okay, wow. Before posting could you please do a little bit of research and not just try to flame an entire religion? Threads like this are getting pretty old.

On to the real issue.

now I dont actually know if chrstmases origins were christian Im a VERY sure it actually wansnt, I know baby jesus didnt have his birthday on the 25th of decenmber..and I think christians "stole" the date to compete with another festival

Christmas is a Christian Holiday. You are correct that Jesus probably didn't have his birthday on the 25th of December (more on that particular date in just a bit). But first we need to talk about the "Three Kings".

There is very little known about them, other than they came from the "East" and are called "wise men", meaning that they were probably sorcerers or soothsayers of some kind, and they followed a star to find Jesus.

Records show that around the time we believe Jesus to be born, there was an alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, that would have appeared to be a bright star in the sky. The alignment of these two planets also signified to astrologers the coming of a new king (which was believed to be the newborn Jesus). According to records, the planetary alignment happened around mid-January. With that, we can safely assume that Jesus was born sometime in January or February.

On to the date of December 25th.

Once again, you are correct that this date is stolen from another religion. That religion is Druidism, which was very prevalent in what is now modern-day France, Germany, and the UK. The church, eager to spread out to new converts in the still-expanding Roman Empire under Constantine took the Druid mid-winter festival, and made it a celebration of Christ.

last time I checked jesus hardly had anything to do with it aside from the nativity plays we somtimes has...thats it, mostly it was about santa

Globally, we celebrate Christmas because of the missionary efforts of the church, which was spawned because of Jesus. So, since its beginnings, Christmas has been a religious event.

And yes, I will grant you that it has been bastardized into something totally and completely commercial.

But you know what? I don't care.

Christmas, to me, is about giving gifts and making people happy, and getting to see my family and playing video games with my cousin. I love the carols, I love the cheesy decorations. Yes, it's commercial, yes I spend more money than I should, but I still don't care. Christmas is what you make of it. And I make it out to be a great big spectacle that makes people happy and cheerful, and I like that.

So go ahead, be a grinch. I'll take my formerly religious holiday and have fun.

 

[Joccaren]

Since when? Since ALWAYS. Like some other people said. CHRISTmas.

So, you have it backwards. You should be asking, since when is CHRISTmas, NOT a religious event.

People who "celebrate Christmas" but aren't christian are piggybacking on everything the holiday brings with it, but removing the religion from it. I.E. Those billboards.... "Jesus is the reason for the season". Because its an unfortunate trend, people want all the good things in life, but none of the work or responsibility.

So when you say "not just Christians celebrate Christmas" and "Christmas has become a secular holiday" You are wrong. Well over 50% of the US is christian.

I am sorry, but you are wrong.

Christmas wasn't always called Christmas, and it was not originally Christian. It was originally a pagan holiday, and from what I've been taught when ancient Rome was conquered by barbarians, her priests started taking the conqueror's holidays, including 'Christmas', and connecting them to events that supposedly happened in Christianity (Or the early Roman version of it) to try and win across the conquerors to follow Christianity. I'm not sure how true that is, but Christmas was NOT originally, and has not "ALWAYS" been a Christian Holiday.

And no, people who celebrate Christmas are not piggybacking - with the exception of the Christmas mass stories, on a Christian ceremony, they piggybacking on a Pagan one - The same Pagan ceremony the Christians are piggy backing off.

And Christmas is becoming a secular holiday. Do remember the US is not the world, you are not an island floating in the middle of an endless ocean, there are other countries and cultures out there that celebrate Christmas whilst largely not being Christian. Here in Australia, pretty much everyone celebrates Christmas, regardless of whether or not they are Christian, except in some schools, at least around my part of Australia, where Muslims have petitioned to have schools stop celebrating 'Christmas' as it is not their religion, and from recent censuses they are a growing majority of Australian religion, with fewer people putting down 'Christian' and more putting down 'Flying Spaghetti Monster', 'Jedi', and 'Sith', which led to some interesting statements when the census came round to my area requesting that people do not put so called 'nonsense religions' like Jedi, Sith and Flying Spaghetti Monster as they were not counted as real religions, whether or not people actually treat them as such (Some do treat them as real religions and I see no reason for them not to be treated as such).

So No, Christmas is not actually a Christian holiday, except in name. It is an old Pagan festival that the Christians piggybacked off, and now claim is theirs.

 

[Zyxzy]

No, it's still quite the religious holiday. If it wasn't, you couldn't offend Jewish people with it, could you?

Because that's what you renamed it after you stole it from the pagans.

Woah woah woah, calm down there buddy I never meant to provoke any hostility.

Also, "you"? I hardly care about religion, I can't even remember the last time I went to church or prayed. And what proof do you have that I am Christian? Or did you just take a wild guess?

Educated guess based on the fact that you used the argument of "Christmas".
Religious people are generally the only ones to use such vacuous arguments.

You can't possibly be serious.

 

[Section Crow]

Christmas is a market holiday, you can celebrate it religiously if you want but honestly ever since Santa Claus became the face of christmas it has been as such.

except people get snippy about it because it derives from another religious holiday that was 'stolen' and converted into a marketing holiday

 

[John the Gamer]

Christmas used to be the celebration of the midwinter solstice and giving thanks for the year and hoping for a good harvest and such. It was commonly one of the the biggest celebrations in the year(lasting several weeks), together with the midsummer solstice, to celebrate a good harvest and such. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice

However the church did not think it was such a good idea to let the barbarian hords keep their own dance-around-a-tree religion, and introduced christmass(christian mass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_(liturgy) ) and easter, to speed up the christianization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization of barbarian Europe.

The whole present-giving thing is purely American consumerism, also know as Xmass.

So what I'm trying to say here is that the church is like the borg, assimilating all who stand in their way.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It was originally a celebration that signified the days growing longer since back in ye olden days winter was still something to be feared. And passing the 21st of December (or whatever was used mark days bc.) meant shorter nights = longer days = less cold = less death.

Christmass today is seen is mostly a Christian holiday, but anyone can celebrate Christmass for whatever reason they want, that's what makes it such a swell holiday.

 

[Vortigar]

Yes, Christmas is in fact a Christian holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Ever wondered why it's called "Christmas"?

Giving presents to each other is just something that has developed over time.

It's also called Christmas because it was a mass. Like at a church.
(edit: ninja'd two posts up.)


Apart from that, OP: see the rest of the posts above. It's various things to various people and its been that way for a long time. The name's Christian, the tree (and the burning of it) Germanic/Nordic pagan, the gifts and the second day are American commercialism. Wrapping gifts is originally an Arabic tradition I believe, not sure there.