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Summing Up Christmas

Entry 661, on 2007-12-26 at 21:17:36 (Rating 2, Comments)

What sums up Christmas for most people today? A poll in one of New Zealand's leading newspapers asked this question and the results were about what I expected. The top reason was listed as family. Next was commercialism, and Christianity was only listed third, closely followed by holiday.

Of course, the exact meaning of these words and the self-selecting sample don't necessarily make the results scientifically valid, but I think this is a realistic indicator. No one I know speaks of Christmas as a religious celebration. They talk about a break from work, a time to spend with their family, and a time to get cool gifts. So that covers the holiday, family and commercialism aspects fairly well.

It seems to me that spending time with family has got to be a good thing. I don't like commercialism much but I like religion even less, so I suppose the reasons are reasonable to me. As I have said before, Christmas was a celebration of mid winter long before it was hijacked by the Christians, so I think its reasonable to celebrate Christmas while ignoring the religious interpretation.

So I'll finish this blog entry now and continue to celebrate mid winter (mid summer in New Zealand) with my family.

Comment 17 (1398) by SBFL on 2008-04-13 at 23:09:47: (view earlier comments)

No, quite incorrect, the Pope is not God's spokesman in my view. He is seen by Catholics as the head of God's Church, but I don't think many see him as a spokesman for God per se. Muslims believe God spoke directly to Mohammad and that the Koran is the literal word of God. But Catholics don't see the Pope as being in this capacity and most Christians don't see the Bible as the literal word of God. This should answer the 'repercussions' query.

Comment 18 (1405) by OJB on 2008-04-14 at 22:30:18:

Well it sounds like he effectively is: "In Catholic theology, papal infallibility is the dogma that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error..." [Wikipedia, Papal infallibility]

Comment 19 (1410) by SBFL on 2008-04-16 at 00:27:25:

Papal infallibility is certainly a controversial subject, but I understand it refers to specific teachings of the Pope, rather than the more generic sense you referred to in your earlier comment.

To explain better I quote from your Wikipedia link "According to The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Catholicism: "In reality, the pope seldom uses his power of infallibility......rather than being some mystical power of the pope, infallibility means the church allows the office of the pope to be the ruling agent in deciding what will be accepted as formal beliefs in the church." Since the 1870 solemn declaration of Papal Infallibility by Vatican I, this power has been used only once: in 1950 when Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary as being an article of faith for Roman Catholics."

Comment 20 (1417) by OJB on 2008-04-16 at 14:25:53:

The problem with religion is that everything is open to subjective opinion and varying interpretation. There's a good reason for this: the whole thing is fiction. If there is no reality involved in a subject then you can't establish what's true. Maybe that's why there are tens of thousands of different Christian sects around all believing slightly different things. When the whole belief system is nonsense its easy to change the story around to whatever suits your purposes.

Comment 21 (1425) by SBFL on 2008-04-17 at 23:29:14:

Bit of a generalistic digression, but if you want to take that approach, then I'll leave it with you.

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