Posts by PioneerSchmioneer

68

Are Atheists Hypocritical in Celebrating Christmas?

by Sea Breeze in

jw
friends

richard dawkins revealed that he celebrates christmas on radio four's today programme.. here is is quoted as saying: .

'i am perfectly happy on christmas day to say merry christmas to everybody,' dawkins said.

'i might sing christmas carols - once i was privileged to be invited to kings college, cambridge, for their christmas carols and loved it.

PioneerSchmioneer

Christmas is not actually the "birthday" of God or Jesus Christ. That is not what the feast or solemnity is on the calendar of the church or Christianity.

As Heidi Russell, Loyola University professor explained in teaching litrugical theology:

Christmas is the feast of the incarnation. In Christmas we do celebrate the nativity or birth of Christ, but what we are celebrating is not simply Jesus’ “birthday,” the way we celebrate our own birthdays. We are celebrating the mystery of Emmanuel, God-with-us, God revealed in time and space....St. Athanasius, one of the great fathers and theologians of the Church, tells us: "The Son of God became human so that we might become God." Obviously we do not become God in the way that God is God, but we become God-like, we are divinized...We partake in the divine nature. St. Irenaeus puts it another way: "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God."

It is centered around the theology of Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23 and 2 Peter 1:4 where the texts tell us that God comes to be with us and we become partakers of the divine nature.

The early church did not teach the Jesus was born on this date necessarily. And it is not celebrated as a 24-hour day (except perhaps by Fundamentalists). Even by Protestants the date is observed as Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox Christians do, for 8 days, beginning at sundown on the 24th of December until sundown on January 1st.

A birthday does not last 8 days. An octave is a liturgical observance based on Jewish festivals which included a week surrounded by two Sabbaths, one on each end, like Passover which begins with a Sabbath, has six days in between, and then ends with another Sabbath.

In Christianity, birthdays are not celebrated. Instead martyrs and saints are given memorials, usually on the day of their death or burial because that is considered the day they enter their eternal reward in Heaven. There are no birthdays on the Christian calendar, including for Jesus of Nazareth.

Interestingly, his death is celebrated. It is called "Good Friday."

Christianity uses the Divine Office (the Liturgy of the Hours) or the Book of Common Prayer to count the days of the year, placing holy days like Easter and Christmas, etc. in their place, including many memorials of saints. For Christmas the first day is considered a Christian Sabbath, which requires that all Christians attend Church services, and the 8th day, January 1st is also a holy day of obligation, another Christian Sabbath, regardless of what day of the week either day these land on.

I would say it is no more hypocritical for an atheist to play with cultural holiday traditions anymore than it is for people who claim to be Christian to not know how the Nativity of the Lord is actually observed--and that it is not really a "birthday."

68

Are Atheists Hypocritical in Celebrating Christmas?

by Sea Breeze in

jw
friends

richard dawkins revealed that he celebrates christmas on radio four's today programme.. here is is quoted as saying: .

'i am perfectly happy on christmas day to say merry christmas to everybody,' dawkins said.

'i might sing christmas carols - once i was privileged to be invited to kings college, cambridge, for their christmas carols and loved it.

PioneerSchmioneer

I remember a funny incident when I was a JW and visiting a JW friend back in the late 1980s. He became upset because his younger brother started watching a holiday special when it came on television.

The exchange went like this:

FRIEND: Dad, Tommy is watching Frosty the Snowman on television!

DAD: Tommy, you know we don't watch those kind of programs.

TOMMY: C'mon, Dad! It's not like because I watch this program I gonna run out and build a snowman or something!

68

Are Atheists Hypocritical in Celebrating Christmas?

by Sea Breeze in

jw
friends

richard dawkins revealed that he celebrates christmas on radio four's today programme.. here is is quoted as saying: .

'i am perfectly happy on christmas day to say merry christmas to everybody,' dawkins said.

'i might sing christmas carols - once i was privileged to be invited to kings college, cambridge, for their christmas carols and loved it.

PioneerSchmioneer

People used to give to the poor on the Feast on St Stephen, the 26th of December.

This became commercialized in the US to the "getting gifts" from "Santa," especially after both the Macy corporation made its Thanksgiving parade in the early 20th century a regular part of Americana via radio, and around the same time Coca-Cola and the Saturday Evening Post published similar depictions of "Santa Claus" that became the America standard in many advertising minds.

None of this originated with Christianity or even Rome. Americans, unfortunately, tend to believe that if they celebrate Christmas "like this, then everbody else does too." Watchtower, being an American religion, merely ran with this shortsightedness and taught its followers that "Babylon the Great" celebrates Christmas this way too.

In the end, the point is that there is nothing wrong with an atheist who celebrates a "Victorian Christmas" because he or she is not going to a church to worship. The customs don't come from the liturgy (meaning the church). They come from non-church or secular sources.

68

Are Atheists Hypocritical in Celebrating Christmas?

by Sea Breeze in

jw
friends

richard dawkins revealed that he celebrates christmas on radio four's today programme.. here is is quoted as saying: .

'i am perfectly happy on christmas day to say merry christmas to everybody,' dawkins said.

'i might sing christmas carols - once i was privileged to be invited to kings college, cambridge, for their christmas carols and loved it.

PioneerSchmioneer

enoughisenough:

That is odd to me because when I went to church as a kid, the church had their xmas program complete with a Santa giving gift filled stockings and candy and there was a decorated trees.

It sounds as if you may have been attending a non-liturgical church or non-liturgical church service. Fundamentalists, for instance, don't observe the "Nativity of the Lord." The only observe the 25th of December as "Christmas" and some call it "Jesus' birthday." Then they drop everything on the 26th.

With these groups it is common for them to absorb the trappings common to whatever is secular around them. "Santa" for instance is telling to where in the world you were. There in no "Santa Claus" outside of America for the most part, as that is not a universal Christian symbol. Where "St. Nicholaus" or Father Christmas is concerned, he often visits on his feast day, and children in some parts of the world get visits from him (or leave their shoes out for him to fill) on the 6th of December when this famous bishop is remembered on the Church calendar, not on Christmas.

Boxing Day, when presents are opened, is most often done "the day after" Christmas, the 26th, since Christians are meant to spent the 25th at Mass or in worship, not receiving or exchanging gifts. The 26th is also the Feast of St. Stephen, when this is most often allowed.

All these types of things are different from what happens in worship at a church, which is called "liturgical." Fundamentalist groups and groups like the Witnesses don't use liturgy.

Liturgy often escapes the minds of JWs and exJWs because they have never heard of it. So they tend to mesh the two together. But Santa Claus and Christmas trees are not a universal phenomenon to Christmas. Not even gift exchanges are done on the same day of Christmas or done at all as Jehovah's Witnesses believe.

68

Are Atheists Hypocritical in Celebrating Christmas?

by Sea Breeze in

jw
friends

richard dawkins revealed that he celebrates christmas on radio four's today programme.. here is is quoted as saying: .

'i am perfectly happy on christmas day to say merry christmas to everybody,' dawkins said.

'i might sing christmas carols - once i was privileged to be invited to kings college, cambridge, for their christmas carols and loved it.

PioneerSchmioneer

While Jehovah's Witnesses obsess over Christmas decor and customs such as trees and mistletoe and giftgiving, etc., none of these things are actually part of "Christmas" itself. Those are mainly secular traditions that differ depending on where you live in the world (and greatly on the hemisphere).

The most startling fact about Christmas is that it is a worship-driven observance which lasts on 16 to 22 days on the Christian calendar (known as the "liturgical calendar") and not 1 day. It is filled with special prayers in the Church marked from the Book of the prophet Isaiah and lasts from the evening of December 24 through Feast of Baptism of Christ, which lands in January either on a Sunday or a weekday, depending on a formula that changes with when Christmas lands.

The only universal custom is Epiphany, marked 12 days from Christmas, the holy day in the church which marks the visit of the magi and lands on January 6th on which homes are usually blessed. This is where the so-called "Twelve Days of Christmas" comes from.

The Christmas tree became popular from Queen Victoria who fell in love with the German custom and introduced it to the public via a Christmas party. She hung the trees upside from the ceiling as decorations.

The introduction of Christmas as a "family" celebration came about through the novella A Christmas Carol written by Charles Dickens who rode on the coatails of the Victorian revival of Christmas in England. Before this the Puritans had banished it due to a hatred for all things they considered Catholic, so when they did pick it back up they instead adopted the Germanic Lutheran customs because they felt "safer" with these.

The Roman Catholic customs were at that time not so much built around Christmas trees as to build a small crèche, a custom introduced by Francis of Assisi to Catholics in 1233. These had become quite ornate by the time the "Victorian Christmas" had been introduced into American society. There were celebrations, but these had moved mostly to Epiphany onward and would become the "Carnival" period leading up to Lent (the "Mardi Gras" once this would become introduced to America).

It is this type of Christmas (the "Victorian") that has become most associated with the 25th of December, commercialized and practiced. It is really not what is religiously celebrated by the Christians in the actual Church. In Spanish countries, fireworks and pinatas are used as Christmas trappings. In Guatamala, they burn a wooden devil in a bonfire on Christmas Eve. And in Italy, instead of Santa delivering presents on Christmas Eve, they have a witch, Befana, who delivers presents on Epiphany Eve, January 5th.

The local customs have nothing to do with the religious observance. They are localized and differ according to place and situation and the comprehension of the people who use the symbols. They are secular trappings and have little or nothing to do with the Nativity of Christ. Anyone can engage in their people's local customs whether they go to a church or mass or not. The religious observances in honor of the Nativity have totally different practices, none of which include Christmas trees, gift giving, parties, etc.

7

How Saturnalia became Christmas

by BoogerMan in

jw
friends

the transition from ancient to present and pagan to christian: .

4th century ce, after which a new winter holiday began to be celebrated in rome: christmas.

but how was the pagan festival of saturnalia celebrated, and how did it influence and morph into the christmas celebrations that we know and love?.

PioneerSchmioneer

While it was late to hit the Bible Students’ theology, it was popular among the Second Great Awakening movements to reject Christmas. For a time it was even fashionable among the Mormons, though they eventually adopted it along with Easter (perhaps to make them appear more mainstream). There appear to be two main reasons for this among the NRMs that sprung from this American phenomenon, namely the claim that each of these groups were the restoration of the true Church and thus like the primitive Christians did not celebrate this feast, and a rejection for all things Roman Catholic due to the fact that anti-Catholic sentiment was popular at that time in America.

By the time it was adopted by the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1928, there were already significant problems with what was understood to be the “Puritan” rejection of Christmas. It obviously did not matter, as the reasons the Bible Students and of course all Jehovah’s Witnesses seem to adopt new and novel ideas is simply to set themselves apart from others so that they might feel different and important, enlightened by an awareness that the world at large does not have, and somehow only they are saved by putting it into practice.

The significant problems the Watchtower never discloses are as follows, starting with the date: December 17th was the date for the Roman celebration for Saturnalia, not December 25th. If the Church was trying to “pin the tail on the donkey” for Saturnalia, it missed the mark.

Another technicality lies in the fact that Christmas begins on December 24th and not the 25th. Most Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t realize this because they think Christmas is what they see from a secular viewpoint. It is merely marked on secular calendars as the 25th because one cannot mark the way the Church marks time. It is exactly the way the Jews do it--like when you see the date for Passover or Hanukkah, which is usually confusing because Jews will tell you it is the “day before” what you see on a secular calendar. Religions follow a liturgical calendar, not a secular one. To be exact, Christmas begins with “Vespers,” or Evening Prayer of the Divine Office that marks the first sign of visible nightfall on December 24th. That is how the Church has counted time for generations, before clocks--and they still do.

Did the Church try to stamp out the “Sol Invictus” with Christmas? The celebration of “Sol Invictus” was a relatively new one when it was introduced to the Romans, created by the emperor Aurelian in 274 CE, after Christianity had already become a very large influence throughout the Roman Empire to be instituted on December 25, extending Saturnalia from the 17th. A spurious record attributed to Pope Julian I claims that “Christmas” was assigned the same date to counter the emperor, to make it appear that the feast was formalized in 350. But in reality, it appears the liturgy of Christianity had it set to use the darkness of the season to counter Easter’s brightness for some time before the Julian document, and it may not have originated from Rome. So what we have is a new Roman celebration but no real evidence that the Church, which had been around now for almost 250 years, might have been holding a Eucharist observance on the same date in honor of the Nativity on the same day. Which came first? While likely Christmas was formalized afterward, it may have been celebrated before it was formalized and before Sol Invictus was created in 274.

“Christmas” is not the name of the celebration, by the way. Nor is it an actual party or one day “celebration.” It is the “Nativity,” and it is not a “birthday,” as Jehovah’s Witnesses claim. It marks the miracle of the Incarnation, of God becoming Man in the Person of Jesus Christ. It is what is known as an Octave, and the days are counted in time by the Christians liturgically, like Jews, from sunset to sunset. This is why they talk about “Christmas Eve,” because Christmas actually begins on the sundown before the 25th, on December 24th. It lasts for 8 days, until January 1.

There are no customs assigned to the Octave, per se, such as a demand for Christmas trees, hanging holly, Yule logs, etc. Those are secular customs that happen outside of the Church that differ from country to country, territory to territory, hemisphere to hemisphere, and none are universal to the Nativity nor are they demanded--not even gift giving. Some Christians don’t do anything special besides go to church. Others have many customs that Jehovah’s Witnesses would never recognize as Christmas customs.

To be very technical, the date for the Nativity was not assigned by the “Roman Catholic Church” because the Roman Catholic Church did not come into existence until 1054 when the Great Schism occurred. That is when the Church in the West became the “Roman” Catholic Church and the Church in the East and the “Greek” Orthodox Church.

The Roman customs of Saturnalia that have come down to us in bits and pieces today (and for the most part are commercialized and secularized as “Christmas”) actually disappeared for a time in America, due mainly to austerity in Christian practice, namely among Protestants who wanted to avoid any connection to “popery.” It was illegal in some parts of the New World to even take the day off from labor. But it was not only Charles Dickens whose writing A Christmas Carol eventually changed the minds and hearts of many, others minds called for altering and transporting customs from Europe to make them more “family oriented” and “acceptable” by comparison for the Puritan spirit which still remained among the mostly Protestant American society.

Loathing Catholicism, lack of scholarship led to open hatred in the publishing and distribution of the book The Two Babylons or The Papal Worship: Romanism and Its Origins by Rev. Alexander Hislop, one of the only non-Watchtower publications to be widely distributed by Jehovah’s Witnesses until about 1985. Published in 1858 by the Presbyterian Free Church of Scotland, the book is filled with fabrications, conspiracy theories, misconceptions and downright nonsense, but you find Jehovah’s Witnesses (and sometimes even exJWs) citing some of the very claims it makes as facts to this very day--such as Christmas, like all other things Catholic, is of pagan origin.

Today it is very hard to distinguish or separate Christmas from its trappings. There is even a Christmas tree at the Vatican, something that one would not in the past find in Roman Catholic homes for some time due to its German/Lutheran origins. One therefore cannot always directly blame some for the confused picture of what the Nativity or Noel is or should be.

15

Are Jw's God's Organization?

by wantingtruth in

here i will quote a post written by "littleone" on another forum:.

when that original congregation apostasized, it formed the roman catholic church.

was it that the roman catholic church was jehovah's organization?

PioneerSchmioneer

This is one of those silly JW questions made by someone who has never been exposed to the "outside light of their Watchtower cave" so to speak.

It's all based only on the way JWs think and on their religious thought but not on actual history or considering that other religions don't have such beliefs like their mistaken views

For instance the Roman Catholic Church did not come into existence until the Great Schism of 1054 when Christianity divided into West and East, the East becoming know as the Greek Orthodox Church.

The term "catholic" was not first used by the Church Fathers until circa AD 110 by St. Ignatius in his "Letter to the Smyrnaeans." It became the definitive word to define the faith against the threat of the Marcionists in the 2nd century because the word means "universal" or "all inclusive" and Marcion of Sinope taught salvation to the select who gained "gnosis" from Scripture only, a Gnostic threat.

Early Christians did not go about considering themselves "anointed" as termed by the New World Translation or even had many who could personally read. The 27 books of the New Testament would not be canoninzed until the 4th century, and it was Marcion who created the first (albeit false Gnostic) canon. The Church Fathers would have nothing to do with him or his ideas.

JWs believe the early Christians were running around with Scripture scrolls and knocking on people's doors preaching. (There's a laughable Watchtower illustration demonstating this.) But this was not true. Read the Church Fathers (you won't like it if you are a JW purist). There was no canon of Scripture, no Roman Catholic Church, no discussion of being "annointed" to the heavenly hope (as if there was another to compare it to).

This post might as well be the musings of a blind person desribing the various colors of a sunset that they never saw

33

Museum Pic

by peacefulpete in

a lot of ink has been spilled on the topic of the cross.

the wt felt it had uncovered some deep conspiracy when they found a number of words were used to describe how jesus was understood to have been killed.

there was an extensive thread many years ago that in short strongly supports the conclusion that at least some nt writers envisioned a cross, while others had a tree in mind.

PioneerSchmioneer

Peacefulpete is merely describing what we learned in our Catholic catechism and what you find in Protestant study Bibles and commentaries

Watchtower teaches Biblical literalism. That what you read is historically true at face value.

Yet the Bible writers used different genres to preserve and pass on their truths. They often employed motifs familiar to the ancient reader. This meant borrowing from popular types and formats of ancient storytelling

While they were sharing "truths," they wrote these using these ancient genres: mythology (origin stories), legend (popular tales), and folklore (oral history of peoples and cultures). We don't use any of these to tell true stories today, but they did in the past

Like the Moses story, where as a babe, he is preserved from pharaoh by being placed in a reed basket and sent down the Nile only to be discovered by Pharaoh's daughter. This is likely not history but a borrowed mythological motif which ancient readers would have immediately recognized as a common theme or indicator used in stories about people chosen by the gods for an important destiny.

The same thing happens in the story of the Sumerian king Sargon I and the tale of Romulus and Remus. The author of Exodus is likely using this same mythological motif, not because they are lying but because they are trying to tell a truth that in reality cannot be put in common words. If you don't know the mythology, you miss the truth the writer is saying which isn't what you read at first blush

In reality how does one describe being chosen and destined by God with all that that truly means? How do you explain Jesus if he really did die and rise from the dead? The Bible writers did not rely on literal forms of expression because the ancients were more complicated in their processes with preserving what they believed were truths. Can you really just say that someone merely died and his body was not there when you looked for it later? That doesn't tell or teach me anything, especially if my eternal life is at stake

We cannot say they were literal facts as measured by today's standards. But they were not asking us to. They wanted us to use their standards. And often that means using and appreciating myths, legends, and folklore

33

Museum Pic

by peacefulpete in

a lot of ink has been spilled on the topic of the cross.

the wt felt it had uncovered some deep conspiracy when they found a number of words were used to describe how jesus was understood to have been killed.

there was an extensive thread many years ago that in short strongly supports the conclusion that at least some nt writers envisioned a cross, while others had a tree in mind.

PioneerSchmioneer

This is one I know from Catechism school back in Catholic school days. But make of it what you will (and my memory might be foggy--I am old).

The confusion about the words for some comes from people thinking that Koine Greek was the spoken language of the day in which the New Testament events took place.

They were not. The events you are reading about took place in three other languages: Aramaic, Latin, and only rarely Liturgical Hebrew. (The Jews did not speak Hebrew in the Second Temple period. Note when Jesus prayed Psalm 22 in Litugical Hebrew from the cross and Jewish people don't know what he is saying because they speak Aramaic as recorded at Mark 13:34-35.)

Koine Greek, in which the Christian texts are written in, is the lingua franca of the day (much like Latin is to us). Rome was the ruiling power back then, but Greece had previously conquered the world and Hellenized much of the culture before. Because of this, forms of the Greek language, especially Classical Greek, were commonly read and understood by the most learned around the civilized world.

But to get something out to the most common folk--and since people spoke so many different tongues at the time--which Latin was becoming the most spoken due to Rome's influence--a "common" or vernacular form of Greek was used as the lingua franca to communicate with everyone who could read or understand Greek. Koine Greek was created to do this.

But there were new inventions that the Greek language could not explain. The "cross," for example, was one of them, as it had not been invented during the time of Alexander the Great when the Greek language was spread throughout the world. The cross was a torture device created by the Roman army--and that was to come later down the road after Alexander.

While the Greeks under Alexander did indeed impale victims, the Romans found the practice too quick of a punishment. They wanted to torture those they punished to warn the people under their rule not to break Roman laws. By means of experiment, the Romans learned that by merely adding a small platform for the feet to stand on and a bar to stretch out the arms to expand the lungs, one could cause the victim to slowly asphyxiate over a period of several days instead of die in a few short hours. They would tie or nail their victims in place, totally nude, forcing them to have to urinate and release their bowels in public as they slowly died before friends, family, and their neighbors, with a sign posted above listing their crime. Their lungs would slowly fill with fluid over the course of this period, and they would literally drown because they could not support the weight on the tiny platform under their feet. If it took too long for them to die, they would break the victims legs, causing them to drown even quicker in the collected lung fluid. The invention was a Roman "improvement" on the single pale of the Greeks.

But when translating the Latin word "crux" into Greek, there was no exact word for it. So they used "stauros" (pale) and sometimes "xylon" (tree/wood). But there may be a reason why they used "xylon" if you note when the word begins to appear in the New Testament and you match it with the writings of the Church Fathers.

According to the Fathers, the Cross of Jesus was, theologically speaking, the Tree of Life because Jesus was the "Second Adam." (1 Co 15:45-58) When the soldiers pierced him and "blood and water" flowed forth, this was symbolic of life-giving rivers in the Garden of Eden. (John 19:33-34; compare John chapter 4 and Genesis 2:10-14) Mary being present was the "woman" spoken of in Genesis 3:15, and unlike Eve who in a sense said "no" to God by partaking of the wrong tree, Mary said "yes" by doing God's will and being the faithful Mother and disciple of Jesus, even to the point of being at the cross when others left his side, in a sense replacing Eve. So a dead tree becomes a Tree that supplies the world Life--according to what the Church Fathers write (and there's a lot of this, so you will likely spend a lot of time looking up these texts, so have fun).

Anyway, after Jesus dies and is resurrected, you will note in the New Testament, the word used for the cross by Peter (and the author of Luke who previously employed "stauros") is "xylon." In fact, Peter uses it exclusively afterwards in the Bible after the crucifixion and resurrection.--Acts 5:30, 10:39, 1 Pe 2:24.

And it seems to be theological, as Luke, who is the writer of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, switches from "starous" to "xylon" after the resurrection, putting the word "tree" also in Paul's mouth in his discourse to the Jews.--Acts 13:29.

The Church Fathers mention that the ties here are not only with the "Tree of Life" theology of the early Church, but that the theology comes from the symbolism it drew from readings of the Alexandrine Septuagint, which it viewed as the official Old Testament in those days. Not only did the texts of hanging a dead criminal upon a "tree" stand out clearly as symbol of Christ to them, but so did the many texts of a "tree" being life-giving and a home for God's creations. The symbolism was not lost on the author of the Book of Revelation.-- Re 2:7; 22:2, 14, 19.

Of course, this may be considered just hogwash, but I thought it was interesting because there is a pattern, and the Church Fathers did come before the canon of New Testament texts became, well before it was settled.

And it is true that people tend to think that people were talking in Greek, when in reality the Jews were talking in Aramaic and the Romans in Latin. They were not nailing people to anything that called a "stauros" or a "xylon" because they were not "talking" in Koine Greek.

45

Isaiah 40:29-31 and Being Gay

by IWant2Know in

i'm new here and i have perhaps an unusual question.

it's just something that i would like to know from ex's or formers rather than from other jehovah's witnesses.

but i would like to know what your experience and your struggle was for former jws who were gay when they were jws.

PioneerSchmioneer

iwant2know-- I have talked @ length to this Caleb guy. While he is of Jewish heritage, you are aware that is merely due to birth and upbringing/education. He is a Christian who taught religion after leaving the Borg.

He makes it a practices of not writing down what he personally believes in his answers. Just academic answers.