Origins of Christmas?.. Egypt!

What does ancient Egypt have to do with Christmas? Everything!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately; I’ve been pre-occupied buying gifts for the holidays. Now, having just got done with “Christmas dinner” with my super-ultra conservative family, I thought it would be fitting to make a post on the origins of Christmas.

I think most people outside of religious circles do, however, realize that Christmas is a holiday stolen from various pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. Many within the religious community also acknowledge this, but this idea is rarely promoted. Below is an excerpt from an article describing the origins of Christmas.

The Ancient Egyptian neter (god), Ausar’s (Osiris’) life, being a symbol of the moon, is associated with a cycle of 28 days (4 weeks). This was echoed later in the Christian Advent, which in Latin is ad-venio, meaning to come to. The Catholic Encyclopedia admits that: “Advent is a period embracing 4 Sundays. The first Sunday may be as early as 27 November, and then Advent has 28 days.”
…
Due to the absolute lack of historical and archeological evidence to support the biblical accounts of Jesus, the church fathers turned to Egypt to pick some dates from a list that was attributed to Clement of Alexandria. The list places several dates: 25 Pachon (20 May), 24 or 25 Pharmuthi (19 or 20 April). Clement however indicated that Epiphany, and with it probably the Nativity, was celebrated on 15 or 11 of Tobi (10 or 6 January). 6 January is proven to be the date adopted for his “birthday” throughout the various churches in the Mediterranean Basin. 25 December came later and was based on the Julian calendar, which is 13 days behind 6 January. [See explanation of the 13-day difference in Appendix E of Egyptian Mystics: Seekers of the Way, by same author.]

SOURCE.

Happy celebrations of the winter solstice, everyone!

Christopher Hitchens has a problem with Christmas in the White House

And I have to agree; the White House and our government in general need not promote any sort of religious holiday. Christopher Hitchens writes:

A reported scheme for a “nonreligious” celebration of Christmas in the Obama White House was over before it began, long before it could become part of that old seasonal favorite, “the war on Christmas.” I never believed the original reports anyway: The president has no need to incite those who already think that he is a closet Communist or stealth Muslim. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing to argue about. The White House is, as some recent interlopers have again proved, public property. And its East Room is one of the parts of it that are not reserved for the First Family’s private life. So the constitutional question — should taxpayer-funded space be used for the affirmation of any faith? — is as real there, if not indeed more so, as it is anywhere else.

He goes on to talk about the origins of Christmas:

I never cease to be amazed by how little the Bible-believing Protestants, who constitute most of the soldiery in the Christmas wars, know about their own tradition. Under the rule of the Puritan Revolution in England, the celebration of Christmas was banned outright. This was for three reasons: The December fiesta was actually the honoring of paganism in disguise, and a descendant of the old rites of the winter solstice. Then, it was also a manifestation of popery and superstition (the “Christ-Mass”). Finally, it was an excuse for the riff-raff to get drunk and disorderly. Only the last part seems to have survived.

Source.

Bill O’Reilly: “Atheists are jealous!”

Yes, that’s it, Bill! Atheists are jealous of Christians celebrating the holidays! Man, if only I were born with such natural logic and had divine reasoning skills that of O’Reilly.. Then again, I’m only human!