h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What I wanna know is why do we have such a pointless holiday, that costs us all a fortune and leaves most of us broke, and several pounds heavier?

Many people would say something about the birth of some Saviour, Jesus I think his name was, but I think it's just a conspiracy involving a collaboration of major world governments.
silversolstice

I tend to agree with you there.

It also just happens to be conveniently close to the winter solstice for the rest of to celebrate.

Is spending loads of money and eating yourself stupid a bad thing? No one told me...

The birth of Jesus is of course the reason behind having the holiday, and here in Britain, we live in a country whose national church believes in Jesus, so the whole country has the holiday. Pretty good if you don't happen to be a Christian!

As for spending money and eating lots, that's entirely up to you. Nobody is forcing you to give Christmas presents or eat Christmas dinner, or go to Christmas parties...(you get the idea)

Am I the only person here that find X-mas nice? I actually like holidays, shopping gifts, good food, happy people. It's all lightening up some of the days in these dark winterdays.
But maybe I'm just weird.
I'm not religious, though.. so I find it very good that X-mas is placed so close the day when the sun is turning..

I find Christmas nice as well, and I am a Christian so it also has religous significance for me as well. I was merely pointing out that in this country we are not forced to follow any particular way of living, such as following the traditional customs of Christmas. We are all given a holiday at Christmas, but that's only because this county's named religion is Christianity.

Christmas is generally used as an excuse to be nice to people for a change. Which is probably a good thing.
We don't even celebrate Christmas at the right time of year. Apparantly he was born in April or something. Harrods seem to be the only people that know this however as they are the only people I know who start selling Christmas related things at the aforementioned time of year...

I heard he was born around September\August. Anyway, the reason we celebrate X-mas in December is probably because some of the older religions all had some kinds of rituals around this time, and to make them convert to christianity, they had to replace that with something else..
At least I've heard that's what happened here; the vikings were having this sacrifice and rituals around the winter soltice, and to make them convert to Christianity, they put another religious happening in to replace it

A very similar thing happened with Halloween and the Druids, I think...but anyway, I was just going to say that I love Christmas too. I think it's great fun, and each year around this time I ring the bell for the Salvation Army. I was just being sarcastic up there because I like being sarcastic occasionally.
silversolstice

Well, from my reading, I've found that early Christian missionaries basically said "Hey, these here Druids have a big festival right around the solstice, to celebrate the coming of the sun...Son...Christ...Hey! Easy correlations!" and thus was the December Christmas born. I find this terribly convenient as my birthday is the *real* Winter Solstice; this gets two rather burdensome holidays over at once. I do like Christmas, mind. It's terribly fun to go about buying people things and watching them open their presents. But that whole bit of actually opening one's own presents doesn't always agree with me.

About Halloween...
what exactly are we\you "celebrating" then? All I know about Halloween is kids dressing up and going "trick or treat", but I never knew why..
We don't usually celebrate Halloween here, you see..

Halloween is a "celebration" of all things evil. Which is strange because we're all inherantly good people aren't we?
Aren't we?
Ah well.
Only nine days until Christmas now.
I really should start thinking about buying people presents...

Actually I belive in the original sin. This means we're are all evil, well just a little, we're all quasi-evil, we're all the diet coke of evil just to rip off mike myers' Austin Powers 2. Oh and don't leave it till christmas eve to buy presents. Christmas is good I get extra hours at work, but it is still as I said before an excuse for the indulgence of greed and we all end up several pounds heavier and in some cases unable to leave the house without enlarging the door. Not me!!!

Watch out... watch out... there's a Greebo about... ~grin~

And Me just adores crimbo... ~huge crimbo grin~

I read a book called "Jesus Christ: Our Promised Seed". It seems you are closer by saying september/august (at least according to that book).

The best gift to give or receive is bottled love. It's free and totally exchangeable. Here are several cases for you to pass on to those you love, even to those you hate.