Happy Roman Sun God Celebration

The nuttier wing of the Jesus crowd are pissed that "christ" is being taken out of Christmas. Apparently, many businesses have started to wish their customers a "happy holiday" instead of "merry Christmas", and this has got some people riled. Some of the sane, informed quotes by the nutties:

- "Our position is: If they want the gold, frankincense and myrrh, they should acknowledge the birth of the child," said Wooden, pastor of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ."

We here at the Lower Closet Library of Common Knowledge learned years ago that "Christmas" is celebrated because the early Christians stole the various non-Christian days of celebration to ease the transition of a "heathen" population into a new faith. Hence, the birth of Christ was fixed by the Roman Church at Dec 25, the date of the celebration of the old Roman sun festival, "Sol Invictus", which predated Christianity by centuries. If Jesus was born at a time when shepherds could be found in the fields, it was probably in late spring. It's not that I would put any weight on what the gospels tell us, I just thought maybe a pastor would.


- "It's not so much an attack on us. It's an attack on Christ."

If Christ exists, he's more than 2,000 years old now. That means he's old enough to fend for himself, unless he's a Euro-wuss.


- "There's one group of people who get bullied all the time, and that's Christians," he said. "I know what it is like to be bullied. It is apartheid in reverse — the majority is being bullied by the minority."

A just turn of events, if only it were true. Personally, I'd welcome back the lions.