The True Meaning of Christmas
As we all know, there are four holidays celebrated this time of year: Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Xmas and Christmas.
First is Hanukkah, the “Festival of Lights” which celebrates the rededication of the Second Temple rebuilt in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt. For those of you who do not have the Book of Maccabees in your version of the Bible after the death of Alexander the Great, Israel fell under the rule of Antiochus of the Seleucids, and he adopted a vigorous policies of Hellenization of the Jews, bitterly persecuting their folk ways, rites, and customs, and trying to make them conform to the practices of the Greeks. The Sons of Mattathias led a successful revolt against the Seleucid and for the survival of the Jewish state and faith. Tradition says that when the temple was cleansed and rededicated, only one small jar of oil could be found, enough to light the Menorah for one day, but miraculously the oil was multiplied and lasted eight days. However, in the United States, Hanukkah is celebrated at Christmastime in order to make Jewish children not feel excluded.
Hanukkah -- a Day to Conserve Oil
Second is Kwanzaa, invented by Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga, a professor of Black Studies at California State University. Those of you are a little unclear about what it stands for, this is deliberate: Kwanzaa stands for a socialist black-supremacist and separatist movement, and it would be politically incorrect to make note of this, so no one does. Even to talk about the topic at all is to risk being branded a racist, which, like being accused of witchcraft by Puritans, is an accusation to which there is no defense. Although said to be a Zulu harvest festival, not only have Zulus never heard of it, it is the wrong time of year for harvest. In the United States, Kwanzaa is celebrated at Christmastime in order to make Jewish children feel excluded.
I'm Confused About It's Meaning, But I Know It When They 'Dis It
Third is Xmas, a holiday celebrated by shopkeepers and consumers everywhere. The Xmas season, or “shopping season” starts in November right after Halloween, and it involves ignoring Thanksgiving, buying presents, decorating houses and trees, and general well-wishing in a nondenominational sort of way. The Xmas season ends precisely on the stroke of midnight December 25th, when the advertising season for New Years or Valentine’s Day begins.
Xmas! Only 365 Shopping Days Left !
The Xmas season is celebrated by the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, by “Black Friday” and by “Free Shipping Day.” Many companies and businesses also have “Holiday parties” carefully not noticing what holiday is to be celebrated. The favorite seasonal greetings of Xmas is for Leftists to wish people a “Happy Holiday” and for irate Christians to wish people a “Merry Christmas” whereupon, according to tradition, the Leftists force Christians to remove nativity scenes from public schools and town squares.
The traditional entertainments of Xmas are animated shorts, including ones by Rankin and Bass telling about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus comin’ to town. These stories involve elves becoming dentists and young Santa Claus running and hiding from toy-hating Prussians. Best loved is Dr. Seuss’ HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, because there is no mention of Christ at all, and Christmas is some sort of holiday involved with being non-commercial. Oddly enough, the creatures in Who-ville turn out in the sequel to live on a speck of dust on a clover on the nose of an elephant named Horton.
Christmas has something to do with not enjoying store-bought presents. I think.
There is also a Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon, but this is less favored by the Xmasers, since it actually mentions the true meaning of Christmas in a scene where Linus quotes from the Book of Luke.
The fourth and least important holiday for this time of year is Christmas, as celebrated by a small and obscure sect known as “Galileans” named after some horrid criminal punished by the judicial and religious authorities for some sort of hate speech crimes. No one is very clear on the details, but we can all agree the Galileans are totally at fault.
Like everything else in their religion, their practices are pagan survivals from earlier religions, which are more ecologically sensitive and affirming of the Sacred Feminine than Christianity. The details of the Christian religion are basically unknown to the civilized world, but it involves hypocrisy and hate speech. Even their name “Christians” is a pagan survival from the name of the Christmas holiday. They totally ripped off their religion from the Jews.
Christmas celebrates some kid being born in a stable, which was the most crowded barn in the Middle East, since there were praying animals and visionary shepherds there too, magicians and kings from the East, a gigantic star, a Christmas tree, two saints, the Second Person of the Trinity, Caesar Augustus collecting taxes, King Herod seeking the boy’s life, a magical Nutcracker, the Virgin, the Archangel Gabriel, and the little drummer boy.
No one Important is Ever Born in a Stable!
Why they let the drummer boy in their to bang his drum and wake the sleeping baby, I don’t know. Anyway, their holiday has something to do with Hotel Reform, and making sure there is more room in the Inns.
Hey! Stop that Banging! You'll Wake the Baby!
Christians celebrate this overcrowding in the stable by singing carols and also by complaining that Christmas trees are not a pagan survival from an earlier religion.
Traditionally, starting with the fourth Sunday before Christmas, Christians fast during Advent, doing penance or giving up some small pleasure in preparation for the coming of their Lord.
Unlike the civilized world, the Christians start their holidays after Christmas, celebrating twelve feast days named after an old song about the Partridge family or something.
Some of the highlights of the Twelve Days include:
December 26 is the Feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr. This feast dates back to the carol about Good King Wenceslas, a traditional song whose words no one can remember about a Polish saint whose name no one can pronounce, so sing “Deck the Halls” instead, because even I can sing “Fa la la la la.” (Actually, Wenceslas is not Polish, but Czechtslvbohemian, but I cannot spell that either, so he’s a Pole for now.) I think the Feast of Stephen has to do with giving your leftovers and half-eaten Christmas goose to the poor, which strikes me as unsanitary.
Mark my Footsteps, My Good Page! Tread thou in them Boldly -- Or, nevermind. Just nip back and get your coat.
This is one more example of Christians being total copycats of the more ancient and authentic religion of Xmas, because on this day all the Xmas shoppers get their receipts and turn unwanted Xmas gifts to the store for store credit.
December 27 is the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, the only apostle who did not die a martyr. According to Christian tradition, the federal authorities are to this day engaged in a manhunt for St. John, because he is the only member of the original “gang” still at large.
Like Fu Manchu, unless you see the body, you cannot be sure he is dead.
On December 28, Christians celebrate the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the children murdered by King Herod.
By coincidence, this is same day selected to be “Right to Choose Day” by that advocate of women’s equality and freedom, Asmoday, or Asmodai. He is a Great King, Strong, and Powerful. He appeareth with Three Heads, whereof the first is like a Bull, the second like a Man, and the third like a Ram; he hath also the tail of a Serpent, and from his mouth issue Flames of Fire. His Feet are webbed like those of a Goose. He sitteth upon an Infernal Dragon, and beareth in his hand a Lance with a Banner. He giveth the Ring of Virtues; he teacheth the Arts of Arithmetic, Astronomy, Geometry. He maketh one to pass invisible. He showeth the place where Treasures lie. He ruleth 72 legions of lesser spirits.
Celebrate your Right to Choose!
January 1 is the Feast of Fools which is a celebration of the topsy-turvy and the unruly. A “Lord of Misrule” was often elected at Christmas and ruled the festivities until Epiphany. A schoolboy was traditionally chosen as bishop on December 6 (the Feast of St. Nicholas) and filled all the functions of bishop until Holy Innocents’ Day. This day is also set aside to celebrate the circumcision of the Christ Child, which just goes to show (if any evidence were needed) that Christians are really odd people, and not suited in any way to get along with this world and its leaders and opinion makers (by which I mean Asmoday, mentioned above).
The Feast of Fools. Why were folk in the Middle Ages so Medieval about everything?
We must pause to mention that Christians believe there actually is a real St. Nicholas, who is such a total ripoff from the Santa Claus invented by Clement Clarke Moore and the Coca Cola bottling company, and made popular by the singing cowboy Gene Autry’s song ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.”
Nicholas of Bari, Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor during the Third Century, secretly threw purses of gold into the window (some say down the chimney) of a poor man whose three daughters would otherwise have been sold into prostitution, which shows that Christians are really hung up about sex and opposed to female equality of opportunity in the workplace as sex workers.
St. Nicholas also performed miracles, but we modern people don’t believe in nonsense like miracles, even though we do believe in Keyesian economics, which says you can get out of debt by going deeper in debt.
He (Nicholas, not Keynes) was imprisoned and tortured during the persecution of Diocletian, led through the streets and beaten until his white robes were stained vermilion with his blood.
St. Nicholas is best known for his stance during the Arian Controversy, which turned out to be a boxer’s stance, because during the General Council of Nicaea, with the Emperor Constantine looking on, he punched out the heresiarch bishop Arius.
The Arian position was the Second Person of the Trinity was a lesser and created being, something like an archangel, or a lesser god, but not co-extant and co-eternal with God: the Nicene Council rejected this doctrine and embodied the same in the wording of the Nicene Creed. “God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Punch Arius in the Face!” The last clause was added by St. Nicholas, but later removed by Pope Joan in the Eleventeenth Century, and most Catholics don’t know about the controversial “face-punching” clause in the Creed, because they are not allowed to read the Bible, which is kept locked up in the Vatican, and it is written in some foreign language anyway.
This type of enmity between theologians is known as ‘Odium Theologicum’ which is a Latin phrase meaning, “Theologians Sure Stink.” Latin is a lot like English, except their word end with “-um” or “-us.” Your money is written in Latin, as are most legal phrases, and you can impress your friends with your Latin scholarship by telling them that “E Pluribus Unum” means “E is the Most Common Letter in the Alphabet.” Also, “Arma virumque cano” means, “that man has very big armpits.” NOTA BENE: no real people use Latin these days except pomposterous folk trying to show off, et cetera, and ad nauseam, and even they tend to use Latin in an ad hoc fashion, or make up words that don’t mean anything.
January 6 is the Feast of the Epiphany, also called Twelfth Night, which traditionally involved a masquerade or other tomfoolery. The cross-dressing disguise which is central to the plot of the Shakespeare play of that same name is an example of such masquerades. Traditionally, the Epiphany was the celebration of the adoration of the Magi, but also of the Baptism of Christ, and the end of the Christmas Feast Days.
Wait. Is that guy kissing the baby's foot?
Epiphany is also the day when Christians have good ideas and sudden insights, and they walk the snowy streets shouting ‘Eureka!’ and ‘What a Good Idea!’, hence the traditional name of the feast.
At the end of the Twelfth Day Christmas, also called “Beltane”, traditional Christians put away their Yule logs sacred to Bel, burn their old evergreen Trees sacred to Saturnus, take down their wreathes of holly sacred to the Orobouros, bow to statues of St. Mary the “Great Mother.” They put away their nativity scenes with their statues of Isis and baby Horus, they genuflect to the three Zoroastrian Magi, the world’s first monotheists, and use a golden sickle to remove the sacred mistletoe that slew the god Baldir.
Traditional Christians spend the day after Epiphany looking for other pagan ideas to steal and use in their copycat religion while at the same time writing furious articles on the Internet proving that the Christmas tree comes from the Eighth Century mission of St. Boniface, who chopped down the sacred Oak trees where slaves were sacrificed to Odin, and used the evergreen, the tree that never dies during the winter of the world, in its stead as a symbol of everlasting life. However, Islam is completely and totally original and did not steal any ideas whatsoever from the Christians or the Jews. So there.
Fortunately, the Puritans put a stop to all Christmas celebrations during the reign of Cromwell, and pinning scarlet letters to everyone or something and making them wear buckles on their hats, but Charles Dickens made Christmas popular again by writing a ghost story with not a single mention of Christ in it.
That is why modern celebrations mention only the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come and Clarence the comedy relief angel from Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.
The angels in the Bible, of course, we so terrifying that anyone glimpsing one thought he was sure to die, so the first words out of their mouth was FEAR NOT. Angels in movies are usually a little more … um … unimpressive.
Old fashioned Bible Angles looked like freaky wheels within wheels or living creatures with eyes on their wings, or earthquakes or something from the cover art of your heavy metal rock album.
Rock On, Angel Dude!
Oh, and, by the way, I think the Christmas Feast has something to do with rescuing the world from sin, despair, death and damnation, and celebrating the first appearance of our King and Messiah and Savior, the one small light in a world of darkness. It is not just a miracle that He is Risen and that our Savior lives, it is also a miracle that He was ever born as man at all.
And the season has something to do with Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.
When I get to Heaven, Can I hold the Baby Jesus?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
