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

Hey everybody!

I do not believe in a god, i am not a christian or any other religion but I do beliieve in Jesus. Hmmm sounds a bit strange huh? Well basically I just believe he existed and he was just this really nice guy who was amazing intelligent and good at medicine. He healed loads of people and they thought it was a miricle but nowadays things like that are everyday tasks.

Anyway, because I believe in Jesus I can still celebrate all the Christian holidays, being British this is important because most of our school and work holidays are based on religion. I can celebrate Christmas, Easter etc even though I think the god story is a lot of dingos kidneys.

Thanks for reading
_Slarty

The Christians 'borrowed' their holidays from the Pagans or Romans anyway. Chistmas is just a midwinter festival, and Easter, with all the rabbits and eggs, is a pagan spring fertility celebration.

Absolutely. The early Christians wanted to wipe the Pagans from the face of the earth, so they assimilated all their festivals into their own, in the hope people would forget where they came from in the first place. That was them being nice. The other side of it, of course, was kneecapping anyone who didn't convert to the new faith...

Or am I being unduly harsh here?...

To be truley fair about it, it was the Pagans trying to wipe the early Christians from the face of the earth. Doing horrible things like throwing rocks at them until they died, having lions attack them, and a better example of 'burning times' than any wiccan can claim: dipping the Christian's in pitch and lighting them on fire to light their banquets.

Christianity was around for quite a while before Constantine instituted it as a state religion, and then they extinguished competing Christian Sects before turning an eye upon the Pagans.

So using the Pagan calender to schedule their festivals came during the time of Christians being persecuted so as not to draw undue attention to themselves and hopefully escape the rocks, lions, and pitch that awaited them.

There are great examples of Christianity assimilating local Pagan festivals when you look at the history of Ireland. Ireland changed the church far more than the church ever changed Ireland. It is worthy of note that Ireland is the only reigion in the world that was converted to Christianity without bloodshed. There were no Irish "red martyrs" so they had to invent other kinds of martyrdom. The "green martyrs" were hermits, and the "white martyrs" were missionaries who left Ireland forever to spread the gospel.

I agree, Christianity sure got ugly after a while aggressivley trying to be the one sole religion on the planet (still have quite a ways to go, there are more non-Christians on this globe than Christians if you can beleive it!). But Christians didn't do anything to the Pagans that the Pagans didn't do to them first.

Just as you can't blame all Christians for the crusades, you can hardly blame all non-Christians for the acts of psychotic Roman emperors.

One thing that always puzzled me was why Christmas is celebrated on a day based on the main (solar) calendar, whereas Easter is the Nth full moon after epiphany,(or similar). Is that some kind of hangover from Pagan days as well, or is there some lunar component in the church calendar?

Odd that the early state-registered church should have felt so threatened by fellow believers. I guess the church (well, the church leaders at least) had already got past the peace, love and tolerance phase to the point where the religion was more a matter of power politics than personal spirituality.
Given the current number of Christian variations, it would seem the tendency for division didn't get stamped out entirely, or is somehow inherent in the religion itself.

Y'know, I was thinking of claiming to be Jewish to get those extra few days off a year as well as the Xtian ones too. And if any really good concerts come up around Ramadam.....

Can't profess a belief that a guy named 'Jesus" exists though...I'd recommend the book "The Christ Conspiracy" by Achraya S. If I ever get around to finishing it, I'll post a review....

Christmas is dated to include the Celic winter holiday (from which we get Christmas trees, holly, mistletoe, etc.), which is on the winter solstice, December 22. It also incorporates the holiday of the cult of Mithras, Mithras having been born on December 25th, in a manger, to a virgin. In fact, most biblical scholars (xtian and secular) agree that Jesus would have had to have been born sometime around April. Thus Christmas is a sham, and I am pleased to celebrate the birth of Mithras.

I don't know about Easter, though. People have said it is also based on a Celtic festival, but all their holidays were sun based, happening on equinoxes and solstices. I don't know of any single religion that had a holiday to coincide... does anyone else?

Hmm. Where to start.

Romans weren't pagans, by my understanding of the word. I thought pagan == wiccan... but I could be wrong - definitions, anyone?
"throwing rocks at them until they died" is stoning. Which, reading through the old testament, is an important part of christianity too. (Or at least, an important part of those versions of christianity which actually read and obeyed the old testament - thank god they're thin on the ground).

In any case, we have records of early persecution, at least, that suggests it was very mild. The procedure ran as follows...
1) Wait for an accusation by a citizen. The state did no investigation of it's own - it had better ways of spending it's time.
2) Say to suspected Christian "do you believe in Christ?"
3) Say to suspected Christian "do you believe in Christ? If you do you will be killed"
4) Say to suspected Christian "Are you really sure you believe in Christ? This is your last chance to save your skin"
5) If they denied it at any of these requests, they could perform a quick sacrifice to Ceasar, and walk away. Statue and milk was provided.
6) Otherwise they were criminals, and killed in exactly the same way as all the other criminals were killed. Which was fairly ruthlessly, by any accounts - the Romans were firm believers in the deterrent effect of public executions, as well as their croud-pleasing ability.
These rules were apparently instigated to satisfy the populace, rather than out of any will on high to persecute christians. Rome had a fairly good record of religious tolerance, prior to that. Oh, and about half of the christians let common sense get the better of them, and repented. Of course - it may well have gotten out of hand later on, but I do wonder whether the "burn christians to light the streets" theory was edited into the textbooks in the standard manner. Seems kinda stupid - it'd ruin the place to have burning flesh around, not to mention having to talk over the screams. I always saw the Romans as more practical than that.

MyRedDice (all quotes manufactured).

OK First Celtic Holidays:

I'll tackle this from the point of view of the pre-christian Irish since that is my expertise and what my own belief system is based upon.

There are four major Fire Festivals in the Celtic Calender They are (with approximate modern dates):

Samhain (pr. SOW-in) Nov. 1
Imbolc (pr. IM-bolk or ohm-lic (but I have trouble with that one)) Feb. 1
Beltaine (pr. BEL-tuh-nuh) May 1
Lughnasa (pr. LOO-na-sa) August 1

As you can see these do not fall on Solstices or Equinoxen (what is the plural of equinox?). Some pagans refer to these as "the cross-quarters".

There are structures in Ireland and other former Celtic reigons that are solstice or equinox oriented, but these structures pre-date the Celts (sorry folks but Druids did NOT build stonehenge). There is evidence however that they were used by Celtic peoples, so who really knows? The above 4 were the big cultural holidays, which still survive to this day, and Samhain and Imbolc as Christian holidays!

Samhain was the Celtic New Year, and a 3 day festival honoring past heroes, ancestors and the dead. Begining on sundown of (approximatly) Oct 31 (the Celtic day begins at sundown). and continuing until the 3rd of November. Today this survives as Holloween or hallow's eve (Oct. 31) All Saint's Day (Nov. 1) where we remember and honor Christian saints, and All Soul's Day (Nov. 2) where we remember all Christians who have died (usually though you concetrate on dear departed loved ones and family). Pretty much unchanged in spirit if you ask me.

Imbolc honored the Goddess Brigid. Feb 1 is now the feast day of SAINT Brigid. Amazing, ain't it?

Now I want to make this clear: pagan != wiccan but wiccan == pagan.
(!= means "does not equal" for those none-coders out there) If "pagan" was an object, "wiccan" would be a class of pagan, but there could be other classes as well such as "Asatru", "Senistrognata", "Voudou" and many others. So all wiccans are pagans, but not all pagans are wiccans.

I will definatly be writing "The pratical definition of Pagan" this week!

In the context of my earlier post I was using "Pagan" to mean non-Christian religions. I will write up the entry defining Paganism and put a link here as well as the current business thread.

OK First Celtic Holidays:

I'll tackle this from the point of view of the pre-christian Irish since that is my expertise and what my own belief system is based upon.

There are four major Fire Festivals in the Celtic Calender They are (with approximate modern dates):

Samhain (pr. SOW-in) Nov. 1
Imbolc (pr. IM-bolk or ohm-lic (but I have trouble with that one)) Feb. 1
Beltaine (pr. BEL-tuh-nuh) May 1
Lughnasa (pr. LOO-na-sa) August 1

As you can see these do not fall on Solstices or Equinoxen (what is the plural of equinox?). Some pagans refer to these as "the cross-quarters".

There are structures in Ireland and other former Celtic reigons that are solstice or equinox oriented, but these structures pre-date the Celts (sorry folks but Druids did NOT build stonehenge). There is evidence however that they were used by Celtic peoples, so who really knows? The above 4 were the big cultural holidays, which still survive to this day, and Samhain and Imbolc as Christian holidays!

Samhain was the Celtic New Year, and a 3 day festival honoring past heroes, ancestors and the dead. Begining on sundown of (approximatly) Oct 31 (the Celtic day begins at sundown). and continuing until the 3rd of November. Today this survives as Holloween or hallow's eve (Oct. 31) All Saint's Day (Nov. 1) where we remember and honor Christian saints, and All Soul's Day (Nov. 2) where we remember all Christians who have died (usually though you concetrate on dear departed loved ones and family). Pretty much unchanged in spirit if you ask me.

Imbolc honored the Goddess Brigid. Feb 1 is now the feast day of SAINT Brigid. Amazing, ain't it?

Now I want to make this clear: pagan != wiccan but wiccan == pagan.
(!= means "does not equal" for those none-coders out there) If "pagan" was an object, "wiccan" would be a class of pagan, but there could be other classes as well such as "Asatru", "Senistrognata", "Voudou" and many others. So all wiccans are pagans, but not all pagans are wiccans.

I will definatly be writing "The pratical definition of Pagan" this week!

In the context of my earlier post I was using "Pagan" to mean non-Christian religions. I will write up the entry defining Paganism and put a link here as well as the current business thread.

The word "pagan" comes from Hebrew, I believe, and was their word to demean any religion but their own. Under this definitiion, even the xtians are pagans.

Sorry. But actually it comes from the greek Paganus, which means "country dweller". The connotation being unsophisticated and ignorant. I will defintly be wrting that entry this week.

On the topic of Pagans and Christians killing each other...

The Christians have Definately over-reacted. It would be like me killing you for slapping me. And then, the Christians would go on to kill their own innocent people for being suspected of Pagan beliefs. Christians would turn Pagans to hunt their own former people as in the case of King Olaf of Norway.

The number of Christians killed by Pagans could only be a few thousand, maybe a million. The Christians could kill 10,000,000+ in one round of inquisitions that could last 6 generations!

And don't even get me started on Christians drinking blood every week!

p.s. Since Jesus was Jewish, shoudn't we be?

Ah, yes. Nothing like good christian morals. Ritual cannibalism. Substitutive sacrifice. Purification by pain. Where would mankind be without christianity? Several centuries further evolved in the sciences and arts, I expect.

Earlier, someone mentioned that Romans may (or may not) have burned Christians to light their world. This is at least better than Christians burning people for fun and profit (prophet? I can't speel today.)