Posted on 12/11/2012 6:45:49 AM PST by Kaslin
Bill O'Reilly asked this question on his Fox News program last week: "Why do I have to be the leader defending Christmas against its attackers?" O'Reilly was criticizing Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee's renaming his state's Christmas tree a "holiday tree."
Good question. It's time for Christians to realize that their religion is under attack, and they had better start fighting to win the war for religious liberty in public opinion, in the courts and in the schools.
The war against Christianity has been waged by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and similar groups. Their tactics use the threat of litigation, with the hope that supremacist judges will accept their reinterpretation of the First Amendment, as Americans have understood it for over two centuries.
The re-election of Barack Obama has made this issue even more pressing. Throughout his first term, he waged a persistent campaign to secularize America, to push all religion behind church doors and to ban all mention of religion from every public place, park, building, military facility, school and speech.
The public schools have become the front line in this battle to banish Christmas from celebrations, songs and events, and anti-Christmas public school rulings have been accelerating. Here are a few examples.
Pennsylvania fourth-graders were prohibited from handing out religious Christmas cards to classmates, Massachusetts ninth-graders were told they could not create Christmas cards that depict a nativity scene, a Georgia school board deleted the word "Christmas" from the school calendar, Minnesota middle school kids were disciplined for wearing red and green scarves in a Christmas skit and for ending the skit with wishing all a Merry Christmas, and dozens of schools banned Christmas carols, in favor of songs such as "Frosty the Snowman" and "Winter Wonderland".
A New Jersey second-grader was prohibited from singing the pop song "Awesome God" at an evening talent show, and a Colorado school counselor changed the words of the Pledge of Allegiance on the public-address system from "one nation under God" to "one nation under your belief system" (that was, fortunately, overturned). A Massachusetts elementary school censored God from Lee Greenwood's famous song, changing the line "God bless the U.S.A." to "We love the U.S.A."
A first-grade girl in North Carolina wrote a poem for her school's Veterans Day assembly honoring her two grandfathers who had served in the Vietnam War that included the sentences, "He prayed to God for peace. He prayed to God for strength." The school censored the word God out of the poem before the kid read it. A Texas high school ordered the football coach not to bow his head or kneel when the team said a prayer before a game.
Cranston High School West in Rhode Island banned a prayer banner that had hung on the auditorium wall for 38 years without complaint. The banner read in part: "Our Heavenly Father, Grant us each day the desire to do our best ... Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship. Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High West. Amen."
A Plano, Tex. school banned an eight-year-old from handing out candy canes with Jesus' name on them to classmates at a school holiday party, confiscated a girl's pencils because they mentioned "God" and banned an entire classroom from writing "Merry Christmas" on cards to be sent to our troops serving in the Middle East. Litigation followed the action of a Texas high school that tried to forbid cheerleaders from displaying a banner at a football game with the Bible verse: "And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us."
President Obama is a major part of the campaign to secularize America. For the fourth straight year, Obama again deleted God from his Thanksgiving Day address as he personally read it from the teleprompter into a camera.
Of course, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires this anti-Christmas nonsense. The purpose of all these actions is to mandate a religion of secularism, which is completely contrary to American history, heritage and constitutional law.
Christians had better wake up and realize the threat of the secularists to the First Amendment. Our answer to the ACLU and atheist lawyers who are trying to change America should be the favorite words of Scrooge in Charles Dickens' story, "A Christmas Carol": "Bah, humbug!"\
Christmas is very ‘religious,’ (pagan) just not anything to do with Christ.
The Son of YHVH was not born on the pagan’s day.
The "Mattress Mac" ad-screamer down the road who thinks Christmas was invented so he could move more bedroom suites is just as much a Christmas secularizer as the ACLU lawyers and prune-faced atheist complainers they rep for.
Or,"אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה"
‘God’s’ name is YHVH. (I was-I am-I shall be)
And I would not dis you for saying that. But I am Orthodox and Orthodox Jews are forbidden to say or write the Tetragrammaton in full. It is usually replaced by Adonai when reading/reciting Torah out loud. So why would someone who claims to have been IN Israel dis me for respecting my own religious tradition?
This is directly from Hebrew Holy Scripture. Please note the spelling of G-d. First words in the whole Bible.
BERESHIT
(Book of Genesis)
Chapter 1
1
IN THE beginning G-d created the heaven and the earth.
2
Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of G-d hovered over the face of the waters.
O’Reilly is stuck in the pagan past; it is the Christians that are done with the christmas myth. December 25 was the birthdate of Tammuz, Jupiter, Mythra, Osiris, and Constantine.
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From what I remember of my seminary education, the December 25 Christmas date was originally instituted because of the (admittedly Greek) belief that great people were born/conceived and died on the same day. The traditional understanding was that Jesus was crucified on March 25, so the idea came up that he must have been conceived that day too. Thus, 9 months later, December 25.
Not exactly accurate, but it wasn’t syncretism, and it wasn’t bowing to pagan festivals. The early Christians wanted to celebrate the Incarnation of our Lord, and this was the best ‘guess’ that they had.
I don’t think it really matters where the Earth was in its orbit around the sun. What matters is that the ancient Church chose this time to celebrate God becoming man for our salvation and eternal life. If you want to choose another day, all power to you, but I’m going to hang onto Christmas, if for no other reason than it’s the best time of year to deliver the Gospel, because people are just a bit more receptive, in my experience.
I believe it’s OK to type out the word God. Nobody here will be insulted. No need to block out any letter of that word.
What is important is the worship and joy associated with His birth and the thankfulness for what Christ has done for mankind. The day doesn't matter. Focus on WHY Christmas is celebrated, rather than on the date which is in essence form over substance.
It isn’t what you believe that is important. It’s what I believe. But thanks for the comment anyway. Wouldn’t want to insult anyone in retaliation for bring insulted, now, would I?
Wasn’t my intention to insult you by stating that you can spell out the word God. If you took it that way then I owe you an apology. I’ve seen a few who post here use the G-d spelling because they feel they might get censored for saying God. It’s not like FR is a liberal forum where one would be booted for saying positive things about God.
Well the band played “Good King Wenceslas”, one of the orchestras and another band played “Dreidel” twice, and one of them played a “Kwanzaa Carol”.
Jingle Bells,was on the program, of course.
Since this was a middle school presentation we had three orchestras, three bands and a combined chorus.
Piquey, piquey, piquey.
Not necessarily. ;-)
I completely agree with you. Every atheist I know is actually pouting, and they all celebrate Christmas.
Atheism is immaturity cloaked with the pretense of intellectual superiority.
God says the day does matter.
The word of God gives us a celebration for his son’s birth, the day he came to Tabernacle with us. It was the 15th day of the Biblical month Tishri, which places his birth in September by our calendar.
YHVH doesn’t tell us things that don’t matter. If we ignore the rehearsals that YHVH prescribed, we will not be ready when it isn’t a rehearsal any more. Sukkot is when he will return, but which Sukkot? This is what the parable of the virgins is all about; those that ignore Sukkot, and pretend that he was born on Tammuz’s birthday are the foolish virgins. Do you wish to be one of them?
> “Atheism is immaturity cloaked with the pretense of intellectual superiority.” <<
They deserve an Oscar for that role.
Where do you get the spelling?
In Torah it is spelled out completely, YHVH, and changing Torah is forbidden.
In Judaism, the Tetragrammaton is the ineffable name of God, and is not pronounced. In reading aloud of the scripture or in prayer, it is replaced with "Adonai" ("my Lord").
The term tetragrammaton (from Greek τετραγράμματον, meaning "four letters") refers to the Hebrew theonym (Hebrew: יהוה) transliterated to the Latin letters YHWH. It is derived from a verb that means "to be", and is considered in Judaism to be a proper name of the God of Israel used in the Hebrew Bible.
The most widely accepted pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) is Yahweh, though Jehovah is used in many Bibles, but in few modern ones. The Samaritans understood the pronunciation for the Tetragrammaton to be Iabe. Some patristic sources give evidence to a Greek pronunciation Iao.
As Jews are forbidden to say or write the Tetragrammaton in full, when reading the Torah they use the term Adonai. Christians do not have any prohibitions on vocalizing the Tetragrammaton; in most Christian translations of the Bible, "LORD" is used in place of the Tetragrammaton after the Hebrew Adonai, and is written with small capitals (or in all caps) to distinguish it from other words translated "Lord".
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The original Torah scrolls were not written in Greek. They were translated into Greek by Egyptians. We have so lost sight of who we are and our heritage. And it is so sad.
Ah, Kwanzaa -- of course. My favorite criminal-inspired totally-derivative, racist/rejectionist/separatist holiday. Don't get me started.
Of course, if I were really misanthropic, I'd be out promoting and popularizing Kwanzaa in Norway, and sending back 6 x 15' posters of smiling, happy, platinum-blonde Norwegians celebrating Kwanzaa by lighting their particolored candlesticks. * * * * * * * * * * The two ACLU lawyers must have been alerted about that one carol by some busybody pot-stirrer who, eagle-eyed, spotted the title on the program. Used to be only Baptist Ministers showing up for a debate about Creationism wore black power-suits. Oh, well.
Greeks couldn't transcribe the w and intervocalic or terminal h. In Classical Greek and New Testament Greek, the characters were lacking and the h sound was lacking except at the beginning of a word (spiritus asper, "rough breathing", denoted by a diacritic mark in Byzantine and later Greek), or in conjunction with the Greek r.
Generally speaking, w and intervocalic or terminal -h => *. Even intervocalic s's tended to disappear in Greek; there's epigraphic evidence from one of the Greek dialects of the name of Poseidon being written Poheidwn, with an "h" character being borrowed from some other language/alphabet.
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