As we get close upon "Christmas", we will get people whining about the "reason for the season".
Got news for you--it ain't got nothing to do with the Bible or Christianity.
And the holiday doesn't make as much sense in the Southern Hemisphere as it does in the Northern.
Well, Jesus Christ Pooch, don't tell that to the Australians.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/australia.shtml
Here's a little Mark Twain sagacity for your poor, pitiful brain:
"Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason."
"Laws are sand, customs are rock"
"Custom is custom: it is built of brass, boiler-iron, granite; facts, reasonings, arguments have no more effect upon it than the idle winds have upon Gibraltar."
"Often the less there is to justify a traditional custom the harder it is to get rid it."
It's the reason for the season.
orlin sellers
Wrong again, Orlon fluff-for-brains. You are such an ignorant dolt.
DeleteWith all due respect to Mark Twain, it is laws that are rock, and customs more like sand -- they change continuously, far more so than laws do.
The reality is that Christianity, as a variant of Judaism in the early years of the church, tried to horn in on as many pagan holidays as possible, and then conformed bogus history around it.
The original 'birth of the messiah' was in spring, along with the equinox.
But thanks for proving Laci's point for him, fool.
And the Australians and Christians around the world celebrate Christmas in Dec. because it's a law? Man, that is just plain stupid.
Deleteorlin sellers
Laci's new obsession with trying to upset Christians is almost as adorable as his last obsession with how charming minstrel shows are when done in Europe rather than America.
ReplyDeleteWrong, anony-mush-for-brains.
DeleteHe is - as always - completely factual.
Christianity conformed itself to the astronomy, and to the usurpation of pre-existing holidays.
The original Christmas was celebrated in the spring, around the vernal equinox.
Gosh, I'm sorry you're so feeble and fragile that a few science facts upsets you so much.
Dog gone,
DeleteI wasn't upset by it in the least. I'm aware of the replacement of Saturnalia, it just doesn't bother me. All I did was note that your doggie buddy seems to have an obsession with being a gadfly--currently to people who he assumes will react with irrational hatred against his posts. Funnily enough, you seem to share this assumption so strongly that you thought I was upset by this post...and Orlin too, who is, best I can recall from his past posts, pretty much a secularist.
Of course, it's all part of your knee jerk reaction against anybody who doesn't lap up every word you or Laci write. Orlin posted a quote to the effect that the Christmas season is based on baseless tradition and which could be interpreted to mean that the rock of a winter solstice celebration is what endured the millennia even as the reasoning and arguments for it changed. But you're so used to arguing against anything he says and insulting him that you somehow turned it into opposition to Laci's point and showed your ass.
As an encore, you projected your own rage on me for needling the Black Pete fan and made a bunch of wrong assumptions about me being upset, offended, shaken up by the video, etc. In reality, none of these things were true--I actually found the video interesting.
Thanks for playing though, and for showing that you apparently can't converse on any topic without incorrectly ascribing motivations and projecting your own anger onto people who have opposed you on other unrelated topics.
Ok, I take back my comment about the video being interesting, and I'm going to have to say that you should be ashamed of your comments that Laci's video he posted was completely factual and your statement about it having science facts in it.
DeleteI thought it would be interesting to try to double check this guy's science--always a good thing when you see one of these videos trying to draw a bunch of things together. Turns out, when you look at a map of the night sky, the ecliptic comes nowhere near the southern cross during the winter solstice. I knew the orientation had to be wrong in the video as the southern cross should have been south of the sun--that is, closer to or below the horizon, and with the top of it nearer the sun rather than the bottom of it, but it turns out that it is actually south of Virgo, putting it out of alignment with the Sun and the southern celestial pole, being westward of this line in addition to being many degrees to the south of the Sun's position--far from the conjunction the video's maker would have us believe occurs.
Add to this the fact that when, Crux was visible from the Mediterranean a couple of centuries B.C. its stars were merely lumped in with the rest of Centaurus and the "factuality" of this video is falling apart. Unfortunately, it looks like this guy has about as much grounding in science as some of the conservatives dog gone likes to find and pick apart, and yet she and Laci, our scientific betters and the king and queen of research, fell for it. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
https://sites.google.com/site/astrologicalstarofbethlehem/
DeleteMore in support of Laci:
Deletehttp://www.stellastarwoman.com/files/Sun%20on%20the%20Southern%20Cross.pdf
http://www.space.com/3304-earth-closest-sun-dead-winter.html
http://www.space.com/19006-winter-solstice-sun-altitude-explained.html
http://www.archaeoastronomy.com/seasons.html
Congrats on finding all those links dog gone. Most of them deal with issues I didn't have a problem with. The only one that dealt with the sun "hanging on the southern cross" only cited this video as its proof. Congratulations on circular proof and not looking at a star chart to see that this is, indeed, wrong.
DeleteI found the video to be extremely interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting, until you look under the surface and find that one of its "revelations" is false--the sun is nowhere near the southern Cross at the solstice, much less appearing to hang on it. This is like conspiracy theory videos; lots of interesting connections that fall apart if you dig deeper.
Delete