• PureTryOut
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    602 months ago

    Christmas is religion yes, but Santa doesn’t really have anything to do with religion other than being on Christmas right?

    • @BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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      432 months ago

      Yea, Santa is the more secular icon. There are even Christians that take issue with the Santa character (which is a combination of “Pagan” and Christian mythos). I put Pagan in quotes, as that’s a Christian term for certain non-Christian beliefs.

    • @TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
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      2 months ago

      Besides both being fairy tales, I would say it’s even anti religious, since religious Christmas clashes with it, yet he doesn’t bring gifts to baby Jesus. He brings commercial toys to all the other children.

        • @Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Now I’m curious, you know those gift spots where you can drop them off at like grocery stores and stuff to give to families in need? I wonder if the majority of those are labelled as from Santa, or from the parents? It’d be interesting to do a little survey.

          • Nougat
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            12 months ago

            I would think that in that kind of “unstructured” gift donation that parents/guardians would be able to come in and pick appropriate gifts for their kids, along with some wrapping paper, then wrap and tag them themselves.

            • @Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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              12 months ago

              Right, that’s probably what they do, but I’m wondering how they tag it after they select one. Apologies for the confusion

    • Riskable
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      182 months ago

      Santa is a stand-in for Jesus… for children. They’re both magical beings that can perform miracles and have similar methods: Both Santa and Jesus have naughty lists and forms of punishment that come later; much later (both are equivalent lengths of time to a child though 🤣). Both bring “gifts”. Both have traditional appearances. Both have followers that wear silly hats and strange clothes. But most importantly…

      Both are imaginary.

      If you believe in Santa as an adult you’re ridiculed. If you believe in Jesus as an adult you’re just labeled, “Christian”. Yet the fact that nearly every child eventually finds out Santa isn’t real is quite disturbing to a lot of Christians. After all, if they could stop believing in Santa–who is so similar to Jesus in every way–then they could stop believing in Jesus.

      • @Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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        32 months ago

        After all, if they could stop believing in Santa–who is so similar to Jesus in every way–then they could stop believing in Jesus.

        This is a laughably bad faith interpretation of the issue. Please, please leave this r/atheism exaggerated strawman rhetoric out of this website. I’m pretty sure most people on Lemmy are already atheist anyways.

      • @P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br
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        42 months ago

        You might not believe about what the Bible says about Jesus, but historically, there was at some point a person named Jesus. Whether or not he was like the Bible describes is another story. /lh

        • Riskable
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          32 months ago

          Historically, there were probably tens of thousands of people named, “Jesus” around that time. There were also loads and LOADS of people crucified by the Romans. If you were to make up a story and try to make it believable wouldn’t you pick a likely starting point?

        • Scary le Poo
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          12 months ago

          There were probably thousands of others named Jesus as well. What is this supposed to prove?

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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        262 months ago

        You have to start off believing the little lies like the Hogfather before you can believe in the big lies like justice

      • @ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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        142 months ago

        “Based on” and what people associate with now are vastly different. Most people don’t even know if Saint Nick is based on a real person.

      • Aatube
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        122 months ago

        The modern depiction of Santa is based on Coca-Cola.

        • @Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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          32 months ago

          They popularized it, but didn’t truly invent the classic depiction. Related fun fact, Santa used to commonly be green, and he looks pretty cool that way too!

  • @josefo@leminal.space
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    862 months ago

    What religious symbol? Saint Nicholas had nothing to do with the fat guy dressed in red that coca cola made up. The hat is fine goddammit

  • @Imacat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    92 months ago

    The article they share in the issue to explain why Christmas is so offensive is absolutely wild. To quote:

    Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday. Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.

    https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/51928?lang=bi

      • @kata1yst@sh.itjust.works
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        182 months ago

        The “real meaning” of Christmas was getting the pagans on board with Christianity, don’t let anyone lie to you otherwise lol.

        • @0x0@programming.dev
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          12 months ago

          I read pagers for a sec and was confused… then again, god is the biggest mass murderer of all time.

        • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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          42 months ago

          Yep the birth of Christ just coincidentally coincides with the end of Brumalia, which of course noone noticed when the emperor suddenly insisted everyone become Christian and had the bible written by committee. And it’s of course a coincidence that that was (back in the day) exactly the winter solstice. And it’s also just a coincidence that Jesus’ life story has quite some parallels to that of earlier sun gods from the general area.

          Most current Christmas traditions are more Germanic in nature, though, e.g. the Christmas tree. While in the current form a quite recent invention, decorating the house with evergreen stuff was common through the ages – branches, wreaths, not whole-ass trees. The needles btw are fine smudging material don’t just sweep them away.

          • Matěȷ
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            129 days ago

            Which earlier sun gods does Jesus’s life story have parallels with?

            • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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              129 days ago

              Sol Invictus, in particular it’s also where the halo in depictions comes from… which isn’t really “other sun gods”, it’s in particular the Roman sun god. Misremembered the resurrection part, that’s Osiris who isn’t a sun god and the Horus parallels have been shown to be bunk, aside from getting nursed by Mary depictions being inspired by Horus getting nursed by Isis.

              • Matěȷ
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                128 days ago

                I read something about them (mainly in Wikipedia), and I see some parallels in artistic style or symbolism, but I don’t see a substantial parallel in their stories, although I didn’t find much about the story of Sol Invictus. I don’t see that someone was nursed as a significant parallel because almost every human was nursed.

                I focused on parallels in their stories because I don’t see parallels in the style of art depicting them as problematic to Christianity. But most of your previous comment was about artistic depictions, so, if you think that they are problematic, please, explain that more in details.

                • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  128 days ago

                  I’m not even Christian what would I care about depictions or inspiration being “problematically Pagan”.

                  What I can say is that it’s unlikely that much of the parallels (like the Osiris thing) existed before Rome became Christian as over in staunchly monotheist Palestine people wouldn’t have taken inspiration like that, while turning multiple gods into one sounds quite reasonable for a people going from polytheism to monotheism.

                  For modern Christian, I think, the question is “How much did the Romans change”. That is, how different was early, pre-Roman, Christianity to what’s now considered authoritative, like the Bible, which wasn’t brought down from a mountain by Jesus.

    • @nialv7@lemmy.world
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      32 months ago

      not supporting the complainer but it is kinda scary how much control western culture has over tech…

      there are so many holidays over the world. why christmas but not, say, Songkran or Chinese New Year?

    • @BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Wait, did I read that correctly and they replaced the hat with a snowflake?? Hahahaha

      And yes, people often forget that generally offense is taken. When it’s intentionally given, it’s pretty clear.

    • @MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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      112 months ago

      Nice. Honestly, pretty well corralled, I would say.

      Incidentally, I’m amused that one of the more popular responses includes the classic phrase

      “Why can’t we all just get along”

      Which I tend to notice after having had it explained well to me once by someone with more empathy than my own.

      I won’t belabor it, but they pointed out to me that being tempted to say “Why can’t we all just get along” is usually a sign that we haven’t actually listened effectively.

      So now when I hear or read “Why can’t we all just get along”, I see that [X] and hear the buzz from “Family Feud”, and hear one of the Family Feud host kindly say “No points. Let’s try again.”

      • @Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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        32 months ago

        Yeah, that’s basically saying “Can’t we just ignore the issue?”, which is easy if you’re the one who the issue isn’t affecting.

    • @LePoisson@lemmy.world
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      382 months ago

      Jesus Christ what is wrong with people… Microsoft giving in to a clear troll, surprised they didn’t just lock and ignore that shit and move on.

      • @BangersAndMash@lemmy.world
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        302 months ago

        Jesus Christ is not my Lord and saviour. I demand you delete this post immediately and apologise. This is as insulting to me as pineapple on a pizza

        • @Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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          62 months ago

          Pineapples are an affront to my deity since they are neither pine nor apples. Please delete your account immediately

    • @Ansis100@lemmy.world
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      212 months ago

      Love the fact that this spawned new issues complaining about the debugger icon promoting violence against insects.

      • @timestatic@feddit.org
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        22 months ago

        What, the gear or the snowflake? I mean I know they are trolling but how do they make a connection to insects with that? That insects die in winter from cold temperatures?

        • @Ansis100@lemmy.world
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          72 months ago

          I meant the debugger button, not the settings button. In the issue it showed up as an bug with a line going through it, as if saying “no insects allowed”.

  • @LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    As an atheist I really think getting upset over Xmas is about as stupid as thinking Santa Claus is communist for wearing red. It’s a social holiday! Enjoy it! Go to parties, put up lights, exchange presents. Think of Santa as a red Winnie the Pooh and chill TF out.