“Keep Christ in Christmas” reads the sign outside this and many other churches at this festive time of the year. These signs are highly significant. They are a clear indication of religion’s crumbling support in society. As recent as 30 years ago signs like these outside churches would have been unthinkable! The delicious irony is though that "Christ” should never have been part of this festival we celebrate on December 25!
On this one particular issue SMART society is happy to take its lead from the Roman Catholic Encyclopaedia (www.newadvent.org/cathen). To summarize the many pages of text on this subject, the Catholic Church has no idea when Jesus Christ was born! (SMART society would argue if he was born!) The website speculates that a December birth date was unlikely for several reasons one of which was that 2000 years ago in Palestine shepherds did not “tend their flocks” outside on winter nights.
The true origin of Christmas was a pagan festival marking the passing of the winter solstice. The Catholic Church cannot bring itself to openly acknowledge this fact but on its website it does say,
“The well-known solar feast… of Natalis Invicti, celebrated on 25 December, has a strong claim on the responsibility for our December date.”
Yes, you bet it does! So let us continue celebrating the passing of the winter solstice. Let us continue with our traditions of Santa Claus, gift giving, decorated fir trees, holiday music*, and pretty coloured lights, and let us continue to remove “Christ” and all religion out of this otherwise wonderful time of year. Towards this end, there is now a movement to rename this festival, "Krismas"
(www.krismas.org). By doing this we keep the same sounding name we're all familiar with and we remove all reference to religion. What a great idea!
Merry Krismas to everyone!
* Re the songs with religious lyrics surely it is not beyond our ingenuity to come up with more appropriate non religious words!
