What is the Christian Conservatives Problem with the term 'Holiday Tree'?

It doesn't have anything to do with liberals being beat down. Issues like the pledge and prayer in pubic schools go back to the 80s or even earlier. Pat Robertson and other groups were complaining about things like this in the 80s. Robertson referred to it as the rise of 'secular humanism'. People on the other side don't like the idea of the government putting 'God' into the pledge, on coins, etc, most of which was implemented in the 50s which was a conservative era. They also don't like the idea of religious groups trying to sneak creationism into the science classroom.

I think people on both sides have gotten way too touchy on the issue. I know someone at a private religious high school who got fired for working on the school premises while being employed by the federal govt because of the separation of the church and state issue. She ended up working in a bus parked on a public street next to the school. It's legal for her to work with the students as long as she is not on the property of the school.

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http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/siteinfo/newsround/0Xmas.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=367341&in_page_id=1770

We are not quite as bonkers ..but are possibly heading that way.

 

Political groups tend to get a little too cocky when they've had reign for a while. Most people on this board don't remember when liberals dominated American politics. Most of the young people on this board would be liberals if this were the 60s or 70s, but many are conservative simply because they grew up in the 80s and 90s. Some liberals got a little arrogant too in the 70s. Right now, conservatives are riding high in the U.S. and some have gotten a little too cocky, but nothing lasts forever.

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Thank you Dennis Hastert for calling a christmas tree a christmas tree


House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has told federal officials that the lighted, decorated tree on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol -- known in recent years as the "Holiday Tree" -- should be renamed the "Capitol Christmas Tree," as it was called until the late 1990s.


http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20051129-120703-5977r.htm

 

I frankly don't give a shit whether they call it a holiday tree or christmas tree, I just posted this to show how crazy people get because of things like that, so ya know what everybody just shut the fuck up.

 

Hastert didn't talk to the president, I guess...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/07/politics/main1103160.shtml

 

I find it ridiculous to call it a "Holiday Tree" simply because it ahs always been a Christmas tree. But I don't see whats wrong with the greeting, "Happy Holidays".

The "christian right" says that to say "Happy Holidays" is taking this time of year away from Jesus, when Christ was probally born in Spring or Summer and the date we celebrate his birth is just based on the winter solstice

 

Yeah, but sadly there are a majority of those out there that still hold on the belief that a God exists and that Jesus is that God's son. So they go out of their way to be offended by something that is so unimportant in their religion, that they make it a big deal.

Just today at my job, somebody was singing, "Oh Christmas Tree!" and afterwards they said, "But in Boston, they call it a holiday tree, and that is blasphemy, and God damn anybody who tries to change it."

So you see why I for one have become disenchanted by the Catholic Church. But strangely I still like to celebrate Christmas, as hopefully a way to create some sort of peace in the turmoil that exists at the present time.

Seriously though, the whole idea of organized religion is something that is not needed in today's world. Religion is a limiting force, that speaks out against basic human nature. Religion was a concept that was invented for 2 reasons; 1. For the higher-up's to keep the common folk in-line, so as not to rebel & 2. to help a newly smart humanity try to understand where it came from.

But now that we are very progressed technologically, mentally, and physically, and we have tons of scientific evidence that plainly states that we evolved from Apes and came out of a primordial soup, let's let the religions die out, because humanity doesn't need them anymore.

 

exactly megara. you actually changed my mind on this... i went into this thread thinking "what a load of crap!- the christians wanna bitch and moan about the naming of a tree!"

but you made me think... its their religion. im not a christian but my family is and i dunno... i think we should leave people's religions alone.

no matter what that religion is!

but you hit it on the nose there... people wanna celebrate christmas because they get presents. fine celebrate it. i do... and im not a christian but then dont bitch about what it is.

 

speaking of all this... i wanna just stop celebrating christmas and celebrate the solstice. haha my family though...

but it's something to think about.... i dont like being a hypocrite.

 

But the problem is that it ISN'T their religion!

Jesus was NOT born on Dec. 25th. The tree is a PAGAN symbol, not a Christian one. Same for the reindeer, holly, mistletoe, and just about everything else, INCLUDING the concept of a "virgin birth"!

People were celebrating at this time of the year for millenia before Jesus was born. Before it was co-opted into the "Birth of the Son (of God)", it was the REBIRTH OF THE SUN, where the days started to get longer again. The SOLSTICE is the reason for the season!

Now if Christians want to celebrate along with those of Pagan faiths, then more power to them. But they shouldn't be trying to dictate the meaning of the celebrations to EVERYBODY ELSE.

Why not? At least it is historically correct and in tune with natural cycles...

Blessed Solstice, everyone!

 

And Festivus to the rest of us!!!

 

I dare say those pagan religions have died out.

Any proof that any of their existence is still around?

And i stand by the notion that languages/cultures/religions adopt things from other religions. I doubt anyone can point to a major religion that has in no way been shaped by another. It has been a christmas symbol for like 400+ years. Everyone recognizes it as that. Well those without hostile intentions towards it.

 

the thing that gets me is I hate to see anyone take an argument that's based purely on sentiment and try to pass it off as rational.


Not saying there's anything wrong with sentiment, but when you start presenting your's as "this is how it should be" instead of "this is what I'd prefer" you're crossing a line. Especially in any matters that are even quasi-politcal.

I think it's selfish and immature.

 

http://paganwiccan.about.com/
http://www.paganpride.org/
http://www.paganfed.org/
http://www.witchvox.com/
http://www.religioustolerance.org/neo_paga.htm
http://www.bloomington.in.us/~pen/

and a couple thousand others that you can find with just a bit of looking....

 

I would love to nail some christians to their beloved tree and make them hang there until the next eclipse of the sun, after which they pass out and I lock them up behind a heavy stone. When they regain consciousness and manage to open the crypt I shoot them with a shotgun! In the face!

 

yeah, and i'm a hierophant in the eleusinian mysteries.

please, direct lineage.

and i'll post this again

"
The Christmas tree is often explained as a Christianization of the ancient pagan idea that the evergreen tree represents a celebration of the renewal of life. In Roman mosaics from what is today Tunisia, showing the mythic triumphant return from India of the Greek god of wine and male fertility, Dionysus (dubbed by some modern scholars as a life-death-rebirth deity), the god carries a tapering coniferous tree. Medieval legends, nevertheless, tended to concentrate more on the miraculous "flowering" of trees at Christmastime. A branch of flowering Glastonbury thorn is still sent annually for the Queen's Christmas table in the United Kingdom.




Among early Germanic tribes the Yule tradition was celebrated by sacrificing male animals, and slaves, by suspending them on the branches of trees. According to Adam of Bremen, in Scandinavia the pagan kings sacrificed nine males of each species at the sacred groves every ninth year. According to one legend, Saint Boniface attempted to introduce the idea of trinity to the pagan tribes using the cone-shaped evergreen trees because of their triangular appearance.

The modern custom, however, cannot be proved to be descended from pagan tradition directly. It can be traced to 16th century Germany: Ingeborg Weber-Keller (Marburg professor of European ethnology) identified as the earliest reference a Bremen guild chronicle of 1570 which reports how a small fir was decorated with apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers, and erected in the guild-house, for the benefit of the guild members' children, who collected the dainties on Christmas day. Another early reference is from Basel, where the taylor apprentices carried around town a tree decorated with apples and cheese in 1597. The city of Riga, Latvia claims to be home of the first holiday tree, an octagonal plaque in the town square reads "The First New Years Tree in Riga in 1510", in eight different languages. During the 17th century, the custom entered family homes. One Strasbourg priest, Johann Konrad Dannerhauer, complains about the custom as distracting from the word of God. By the early 18th century, the custom had become common in towns of the upper Rhineland, but it had not yet spread to rural areas. Wax candles are attested from the late 18th century. The Christmas tree remained confined to the upper Rhineland for a relatively long time. It was regarded as a Protestant custom by the Catholic majority along the lower Rhine, and was spread there only by Prussian officials who were moved there in the wake of the Congress of Vienna in 1815. In the early 19th century, the custom became popular among the nobility and spread to royal courts as far as Russia. Princess Henrietta von Nassau-Weilburg introduced the Christmas tree to Vienna in 1816, and the custom spread across Austria in the following years. In France, the first Christmas tree was introduced in 1840 by the duchess of Orleans."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_tree


so, unless we start sacrificing male animals and hanging them from the trees, please dont tell me they aren't christmas trees.

 

Actually these days I know more practising pagans than I do christians, but then I live in Santa cruz, ca. Not what you'd call a typical mainstream town.

Most people here make a much bigger deal out of Halloween than christmas.

 

i guess it depends how you define practicing. If you mean going to church, that wouldnt surprise me.

Most people in America are religious around the holidays and when they get in trouble.

 

I just don't see the big deal. If christians see nothing wring with Roman Catholics adopting a pagan symbol for their celebration, they what's the problem with the people of Boston adopting a christian symbol for their community celebration?

I don't see a thing wrong with trying to include all people in the celebration rather than just christians....isn't that kinda how christians adopted the christmas and the christmas tree in the first place? To include and entice pagans into their celebration? So now the symbol is beginning to evolve once again, to include all winter holiday celebrations. Seems like natural social evolution to me. And it's how the christians got their christmas in the first place. They aren't the only, or the first belief that has winter celebrations or had a tree for a symbol.