Bad opinions • Page 274

Christmas is a religious holiday but a lot of the decorations people use, including the trees, are based on "pagan" traditions, so all that stuff is not necessarily religious (or rather Christian) or requires religion to enjoy imo. I do understand what you mean though.

 

Oh fuck me

 

You don't say? I'm very aware of these two facts, so I guess I'm not sure what you're getting at. My original point was that the months of November and December (traditionally Thanksgiving through Christmas) are good times to celebrate your family, food, alcohol, or whatever the hell you want. Any other time of the year is a good time to do that too.

I don't celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Instead I take that time and focus on how thankful I am for my family, for my three little boys, for my wife. The year is slowing down and its a really good six weeks to just focus on renewing yourself and the love you have for the life around you, regardless of what you believe in.

 

yeah but the decorations have become embedded within the religious holiday over time, if you ask most religious christians about the trees and wreaths and stuff there's no way that they consider the pagan aspect, haha

 

i mean yeah, i agree completely. i wasn't calling "you" out. i'm just saying that christmas is the one religious holiday that malls, workplaces, radio stations, and basically everywhere doesn't consider others.

 

I guess I don't think of most Christmas music as religious but I do agree that having an unofficial state religion seems unfair especially as it's also not my religion

 

it'd be different if we saw even representation of holidays in these places, but that's nowhere near close to the truth

 

Everyone here didn't mention the greatest Christmas album ever. You should all be ashamed.

 

I hear ya. But hey, religion isn't that embedded in our culture. Christians are under attack, remember.

 

this is a topic that's been very heavily on my mind the last month, and i've never really thought about it before this year. interesting because it's also making me sort of reconsider my own jewish heritage and how i want to continue on with it in the future and how i want to raise my future family, etc. just a sidebar but yeah, been a very interesting thought process for me lately.

 

I mean a lot of Christian Europeans consider pretty much everything about the way Americans celebrate Christmas as borderline pagan haha, it's much more subdued here, or at least used to be until a few years ago

 

You mean OUR future family

 

i thought you were marrying audrey???

 

What does an ideal Christmas season look like to you? Does people celebrating the same way but replacing "Christmas" for "holiday season" or "winter" and not using the direct religious decorations help at all? Or is it something that should just be less prominent overall?

 

holiday season seems fine! i just feel uncomfortable that decorations/traditions/songs/etc that are directly related with a religious holiday are literally everywhere in our society during the winter season

 

That sucks.

You seem to be having a struggle with the issue of identity, perhaps the loss of cultural tradition?

 

Shhhhhh

 

ehhhhh i'm not really sure. i definitely don't care about any of the spiritual stuff of religion, but i do like some of the tradition things (lighting candles on hannukah, special meals for passover and rosh hashanah, having a bar mitzvah, etc) but there are also really important things of the religion i don't do and don't really want to do, such as go to services. weirdly enough my parents always did a "christmas" thing where we put out cookies for santa and did presents and stuff, but looking back those things seem weird and something i am not really interested in doing in my family (unless of course i start a family with a person who that is important to, but we'll get there when that comes up)

 

but yeah, a lot of this is why i was sort of legitimately hurt when jason pretty much shut down my discussion without even taking a second thought to it. really disappointed after a lot of the positive changes in acceptance that have been pushed on chorus

 

Did this happen in this thread? I missed it. He's been real shitty to you lately huh

 

I'm sorry if what I said sounded like downplaying your feelings

 

oh no! i don't see that at all! this is good discussion.

The First Holidays With Chorus

 

Do you feel margianalized by this? Or do you feel like it's just not representative of the majority and thus not as commercially marketable? Like probably all countries/cultures have similar phenomenon when it comes to this sort of stuff. Is it margianilization? I'm not the one to say.

 

I understand to some degree. I have a somewhat similar upbringing in which Christianity and going to Church and attending Church functions was a big part of my cultural upbringing growing up in my own ethnic diaspora. Though I have no desire to go to church and disagree with Christianity I can't help but feel culturally at home when I am in a church surrounded by folks of the same background. If I ever have kids I'd like them to have the same upbringing, though without church or religion which kinda feels impossible.

 

the interesting thing is that this is something i never cared about, and i'm not even really "that" jewish, like at all. like i'm not really "hurt" by all of these things (the hurt up there was more speaking about being shut down in a legitimate discussion rather than feeling marginalized). i just think it's really odd that public, secular places are taking in religion at these specific times of year, and not realizing that some people are left out.