Posted on 12/12/2011 10:30:43 AM PST by Notwithstanding
More Americans than ever say they celebrate the upcoming holiday of Christmas as a religious one.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 88% of American Adults say they celebrate Christmas, and 81% of this group celebrate it as a religious holiday. Just 16% of those celebrants regard it as a secular holiday.
who dat? and whut’s duh issue?
"Glory to God in the highest: and on earth peace to men of good will."
>>But if someone wants to get out the Bible and show me where it says to celebrate December 25 as a holy day, then....
Christmas is the day we celebrate the birth of our Savior. It doesn’t matter what day of the year that happens. The only important thing is that it does happen and that Christians everywhere celebrate the EVENT, not the DAY, together.
Anyone check out the Blaze today? WOW! And I though we had problems in America with what we have done with the Holiday. It is nothing compared to the pagan celebration in the old world.
“Christmas Cartoon Featuring Santa‘s Demonic ’Helper’ Yanked From Travel Channel”
The Church of Christ...Not the United Church of Christ...did not used to celebrate it as a holy day because the exact date can not be determined.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the 29% are Democrats.
Your comment is not pertinent to this thread.
This thread is about a poll that confirms that a vast majority of Americans celebrate Christmas as a holy day (a religious holiday).
That a small fraction of prideful people who claim to be Christians don’t wish to commemorate the birth of the Savior is shameful, especially in these times of militant atheism.
Since the earliest days of the Christian Church, March 25 was commemorated as the date that Jesus Christ was conceived (the Feast of the Annunciation). March 25 was the date of the original Good Friday, and thus of Christ’s (terrestrial) death, and tradition held that the great Jewish prophets died on the date of either their birth or their conception, which helps explain why the early Church picked that date. Add 9 months to March 25 and you get December 25, which is why the date has been celebrated as Christ’s birthday since the early Church (as noted by St. John Chrysostom, a patriarch of Constantinople who died in 407 A.D.)
But there’s also a Biblical basis for the March 25 date of Christ’s conception. As St. John Chrysostom explained, Luke 1 says Zechariah was performing priestly duty in the Temple when an angel told his wife Elizabeth she would bear John the Baptist. During the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Mary learned about her conception of Jesus and visited Elizabeth “with haste.” The 24 classes of Jewish priests served one week in the Temple, and Zechariah was in the eighth class. Rabbinical tradition fixed the class on duty when the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70 and, calculating backward from that, Zechariah’s class would have been serving Oct. 2-9 in 5 B.C. So Mary’s conception visit six months later might have occurred the following March and Jesus’ birth nine months afterward. http://www.ancient-future.net/christmasdate.html
While pagans such as Emperor Aurelian later tried to co-opt the incresing popularity of Christmas by moving the pagan “feast of the unconquered Sun” (Sol Invictus) from December 21 to December 25, Christians had already been celebrating Christmas on December 25 for years prior.
Christmas is not as holy a day as Easter, but it is certainly a holy day, and it should be celebrated on December 25.
No, no, no.
You don’t get it: “Its just me and my bible (and/or the pope of my choosing) and none of the organized ancient liturgical Christianity crap is gonna dictate anything to me!”
As I said (post 9) “get out the Bible and show me where it says to celebrate December 25 as a holy day”
What you’ve done was to quote Catholic dogma. But God’s word is silent on the matter of December 25.
71% of Americans celebrate Christmas as a holy day.
You don’t.
Shame on you.
The Catholic Church does not have any dogma that declares the actual date of Christ’s birth. The Church makes no statement of fact about the actual date.
The Church set the annual commemoration date of Christ’s birth as December 25 over 1500 years ago, basing that on the best calculation based on the knowledge of the day.
The Orthodox use the eve of January 6 to celebrate Christmas (they call it the Nativity of the Lord), a date that Catholics also celebrate but as Epiphany (the revelation of God the Son as a human being in Jesus Christ, specifically the visitation of the Biblical Magi to the Baby Jesus, and thus Jesus’ physical manifestation to the Gentiles).
While most people who love Jesus will be celebrating the fact that he was born sometime between December 25 and January 6, I wish you all the best on your dull ordinary December 25th, if you insist. May your heart be warmed by the satisfaction that you won’t play by anybody else’s rules.
The Catholic Church does not have any dogma that declares the actual date of Christ’s birth. The Church makes no statement of fact about the actual date.
The Church set the annual commemoration date of Christ’s birth as December 25 over 1500 years ago, basing that on the best calculation based on the knowledge of the day.
The Orthodox use the eve of January 6 to celebrate Christmas (they call it the Nativity of the Lord), a date that Catholics also celebrate but as Epiphany (the revelation of God the Son as a human being in Jesus Christ, specifically the visitation of the Biblical Magi to the Baby Jesus, and thus Jesus’ physical manifestation to the Gentiles).
While most people who love Jesus will be celebrating sometime between December 25 and January 6 the fact that He was born, I wish you all the best on your dull ordinary December 25th, if you insist. May your heart be warmed by the satisfaction that you won’t play by anybody else’s rules.
I assume that you don’t celebrate Easter either, since its (movable) date was established by the First Council of Nicaea in 325 based on Christian traditions (much like December 25 was established as Christmas in the first few centuries of the Church), and the Bible doesn’t actually say “in 2012, it will be held on April 8.”
While, in theory, one could celebrate the birth of Christ and His Resurrection every day if one is so afraid of celebrating them on the wrong date, I assume that such celebrations would necessarily be quite subdued, and I think that it must suck not to be able to celebrate Christmas or Easter with great joy and merriment because of fear that the selection of such dates was tainted by the incipient papism of 4th century Christians.
“No. No. No.
Eff Christmas.
Christ don’t need no stinkin’ birthday celebration.
Eff the papists who gave us the stupid idea to celebrate Christ’s birth. Unless the bible says “celebrate event X on date Y in manner Z” we don’t celebrate it. So we never celebrate nothing. Not even family birthdays. Its not in the damn Book - so we don’t do it!”
“I assume that you don’t celebrate Easter either...”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As a Christian, I celebrate Easter every Sunday. In partaking of communion.
Again, I ask you Catholics to show IN THE BIBLE direct commandments or even examples of why we should celebrate Holy Days.
Also. Look at Romans Chapter 14 about sacred days and ask yourself “why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.”
You (paraphrased, of course):
“Eff the papists who gave us the stupid idea to celebrate Christ’s birth. Unless the bible says ‘celebrate event X on date Y in manner Z’ we don’t celebrate it. So we never celebrate nothing. Not even family birthdays. Its not in the damn Book - so we don’t do it!”
Me:
No wonder your faith tradition is so novel, so short-lived and so close to dying out.
How sad that the few men in history who have had the misfortune to belong to it are denied the jubilation of uniting each year with the world at large to focus on the Gospel narrative of Christ’s conception, birth and early life, knowing the entire time that those events are all a very beautiful and crucial part of the profound reality stated so succinctly in John 3:16.
Such hearts are warmed, no doubt, by the joy of knowing they are independent.
You are correct of course that nothing in the Bible commands Christians to annually celebrate the birth of Christ. We are supposed to live that everyday.
Christmas is a nice thing to do of course.
Good point. This doesn't apply to leftists. lol.
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