[Izzy Dunne]

There's always someone who wants to come along and take all the joy out of things.

Why, exactly, does reading about how the celebration WASN'T invented by Christ or Christians "take all the joy out of things" for you ???

[Junior]

Because it's always the first step. Next'll come the claim that those who celebrate Christmas are pagans. You've seen the influence these folks have had on Halloween. When I was a kid growing up in the South, we went trick-or-treating every year, as did all the other kids in the neighborhood. Now the fundamentalist preachers rale against Halloween as a "pagan holiday" and hardly anyone around here trick-or-treats any more; a number of parents of my acquaintance refuse to allow their kids to dress up "in honor of a pagan diety."

Christmas is the one season of the year I feel like a kid again. I love the lights and the music and the feeling of peace and joy which permeate the world. With the publication of this article I can see the handwriting on the wall for the season. There are folks out there who will not be happy until everyone is as miserable as they are.

[onedoug]

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"--from Dickens

[DallasMike]

Why, exactly, does reading about how the celebration WASN'T invented by Christ or Christians "take all the joy out of things" for you ???

Consider them conquered territory. They used to be pagan days of celebration; now they're Christian days of celebration.

We have the freedom in Christ to celebrate Christmas if we choose. If you choose not to take advantage of that freedom and stay enslaved to the past, then that's your loss.