The month of December is a time for many cultures and religions to celebrate their various traditions.
Here's a list of the different cultures and religions that enjoy their holidays at this time of year:
See also: Winter solstice#Observances
- Advent: four weeks prior to Christmas (Western Christianity).
- Chalica: A holiday created in 2005, in the first full week in December, celebrated by some Unitarian Universalists.[4]
- Saint Nicholas' Day: 6 December
- Bodhi Day: 8 December - Day of Enlightenment, celebrating the day that the historical Buddha (Shakyamuni or Siddhartha Gautama) experienced enlightenment (also known as Bodhi).
- Our Lady of Guadalupe: 12 December - An important honor of Mexico's Patron Saint before Christmas officially begins on December 16th[5]
- Las Posadas: 16 December -24 December - procession to various family lodgings for celebration & prayer and to re-enact Mary & Joseph's journey to Bethlehem [6]
- Saint Lucia's Day: 13 December - Church Feast Day. Saint Lucia comes as a young woman with lights and sweets.
- Winter Solstice: 21 December-22 December - midwinter
- Dongzhi Festival - a celebration of Winter
- Soyal: 21 December - Zuni and Hopi
- Yalda: 21 December - The turning point, Winter Solstice. As the longest night of the year and the beginning of the lengthening of days, Shabe Yaldā or Shabe Chelle is an Iranian festival celebrating the victory of light and goodness over darkness and evil. Shabe yalda means 'birthday eve.' According to Persian mythology, Mithra was born at dawn on the 22nd of December to avirgin mother. He symbolizes light, truth, goodness, strength, and friendship. Herodotus reports that this was the most important holiday of the year for contemporary Persians. In modern times Persians celebrate Yalda by staying up late or all night, a practice known as Shab Chera meaning 'night gazing'. Fruits and nuts are eaten, especially pomegranates and watermelons, whose red color invokes the crimson hues of dawn and symbolize Mithra.
- Mōdraniht: or Mothers' Night, the Saxon winter solstice festival.
- Saturnalia: the Roman winter solstice festival
- Pancha Ganapati: Five-day festival in honor of Lord Ganesha. December 21–25.
- Festivus 23 December
- Christmas Eve: 24 December
- Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (Day of the birth of the Unconquered Sun): late Roman Empire - 25 December
- Christmas: 25 December
- Twelve Days of Christmas: 25 December through 6 January
- Yule: Pagan winter festival that was celebrated by the historical Germanic people from late December to early January.
- Anastasia of Sirmium Feast Day: 25 December
- Malkh: 25 December
- Boxing Day: 26 December - Gift-giving day after Christmas.
- Kwanzaa: 26 December - 1 January - Pan-African festival celebrated in North America
- Saint Stephen's Day: 26 December
- Saint John the Evangelist's Day: 27 December
- Holy Innocents' Day: 28 December
- Saint Sylvester's Day: 31 December
- Watch Night: 31 December
- New Year's Eve: 31 December - Last day of the Gregorian year
- Hogmanay: Night of 31 December - Before dawn of 1 January - Scottish New Year's Eve celebration
- Hanukkah: A Jewish festival celebrating the miracle of oil.
We learn from the above that the birth of the Christian god*** isn't the only reason for the season. There are dozens of reasons to enjoy December.
Happy Holidays and celebrations to everyone!
***Biblical Evidence Shows Jesus Christ Wasn't Born on Dec. 25
Is it even possible that December 25 could be the day of Christ's birth?
History convincingly shows that Dec. 25 was popularized as the date for Christmas, not because Christ was born on that day but because it was already popular in pagan religious celebrations as the birthday of the sun.
But is it possible that December 25 could be the day of Christ's birth?
"Lacking any scriptural pointers to Jesus's birthday, early Christian teachers suggested dates all over the calendar.
Clement. . . picked November 18.
Hippolytus . . . figured Christ must have been born on a Wednesday . . .
An anonymous document[,] believed to have been written in North Africa around A.D. 243, placed Jesus's birth on March 28" (Jeffery Sheler, U.S. News & World Report, "In Search of Christmas," Dec. 23, 1996, p. 58).
A careful analysis of Scripture, however, clearly indicates that Dec. 25 is an unlikely date for Christ's birth.
15 comments:
pfffft...EVERYone knows Jesus was born on July 12th outside a Motel 6 in a Winnebago Trailer, Peoria,Il. Joe&Mary were in town for the annual blessin g of the Sweet Corn.
My favorite holiday is still the Feswtival of Egg Nog
The Festival of Egg Nog is a very worthy holiday. May all your eggs be in one basket and none cracked.
This post is not meant to take anything away from people who celebrate Jesus's birthday on Dec. 25. I posted it to remind people who otherwise are unaware, that Jesus isn't the ONLY reason for the season.
In fact, the first Christians appropriated the pagan celebration of the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (Day of the birth of the Unconquered Sun): late Roman Empire - 25 December, and celebrated as Jesus's birthday. Jesus was not born on December 25, but since people have been using that date as a birth date for a very long time, most folks just take it for granted that it's the true date.
In fact, December 25 was celebrated for the day of the birth of the unconquered SUN!
Shaw...ok ok...but I still root for Peoria. I guess there is a shed outside of town that has an oil stain on the floor that looks just like Baby Jesus.
....and, truly, YOU must break a few eggs to make decent egg nog!... or just skip the nog and head right to the Brandy.
b good... and remember to leave some cookies out for your Christmas/Solstice Trrolls!
A college atheist group has set up a Flying Spaghetti Monster display at the Wisconsin State Capitol to make a point about religious expression on public property.
The Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics group at the University of Wisconsin set up the satirical religious display alongside a “Festivus” pole and a “Winter Solstice Nativity” scene featuring Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Mark Twain that was set up by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
“The rotunda is getting very cluttered,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. “But if a devotional nativity display is allowed, then there must be ‘room at the inn’ for all points of view, including irreverency and free thought.”
According to Jean-Luc Godard in "Hail Mary" he was born in France around 1985.
Details. As Shaw says, we can all put away the gloves and just enjoy the season.
Christ was born, he lived, he had a philosophy just like other philosophers (although he didn't, or couldn't write, his philosophy of altruism (as written by those who knew him not) influenced and changed the world, he died adwas immortalized.
Moving on now...
Love it when you atheists celebrate religious holidays.
Reverent post on Thanksgiving. Looking forward to your "Merry Christmas" post.
Actually, Anon@8:51, the Xtians celebrated Christ's "birthday" on a pagan holiday. And they still do.
Christ was not born on Dec. 25. That was a pagan holiday.
You've got it all wrong.
It's interesting how people who are religious get so upset when facts interfere with their received wisdom.
Nonbelievers celebrate the winter solstice and enjoy all the aspects of this winter holiday.
"When you gather around the Christmas tree or stuff goodies into a stocking, you're taking part in traditions that stretch back thousands of years — long before Christianity entered the mix.
Pagan, or non-Christian, traditions show up in this beloved winter holiday, a consequence of early church leaders melding Jesus' nativity celebration with pre-existing midwinter festivals. Since then, Christmas traditions have warped over time, arriving at their current state a little more than a century ago."
So really, in fact, Anon, it is the religionists that took a pagan holiday and made it into a religious one.
That's perfectly fine with me and many others. There's enough good will all around to celebrate whatever you want to at this time of year.
But you should at least give credit to the pagans for many Christmas traditions:
arly Christians wanted to convert pagans, Shaw said, but they were also fascinated by their traditions.
"Christians of that period are quite interested in paganism," he said. "It's obviously something they think is a bad thing, but it's also something they think is worth remembering. It's what their ancestors did." [In Photos: Early Christian Rome]
"...pagan traditions remained even as Christianity took hold. The Christmas tree is a 17th-century German invention, University of Bristol's Hutton told LiveScience, but it clearly derives from the pagan practice of bringing greenery indoors to decorate in midwinter.
The modern Santa Claus is a direct descendent of England's Father Christmas, who was not originally a gift-giver. However, Father Christmas and his other European variations are modern incarnations of old pagan ideas about spirits who traveled the sky in midwinter, Hutton said."
Here's more from Live Science to show that what we now celebrate as Xmas traditions were mostly borrowed from pagans.
This takes nothing away from the Christmas traditions now celebrated all over the Xtian world, but it does clarify where they came from.
They came from a non-religious tradition.
So Anon@8:51, what are you talking about?
The "Shaw" referenced above is this "Shaw," not I.
Philip Shaw, who researches early Germanic languages and Old English at Leicester University in the U.K.
Here's the Live Science link.
Typical atheist, take a religious holiday and show it is not. We don't live centuries ago, we live today and today is not your pagan pagan empire. Nice try, but all it shows is your dishonesty, or maybe it's just your delusion. Either way, you are wrong and living in a different century.
Anon, this post obviously made you uncomfortable because it made you think.
This post did nothing more than point out the fact that Jesus was not born on December 25, as Biblical scholars have stated themselves.
This post is about sharing this time of year with the various other cultures and religions.
That is all.
You're the one with the gigantic chip on your shoulder and who apparently doesn't like factual information interfering with you illusions.
I posted facts. And you call that dishonest?
As I said, you're the one who's uncomfortable with reality, otherwise you'd have read the post and you'd have become enlightened instead of angry.
Happy Holidays!
I had to copy and paste to read that, Shaw. The holiday/etc titles were invisible on the white background :(
Anon said: "... nice try..."
Oh. Radical Redneck. You again...
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