Twelve-Inch Richard
Home of the Impertinent

Does Christmas come from ancient pagan rituals and religions such as Saturnalia and the Norse religions who sacrificed humans to the god Thor or does it have much more humble beginnings?  Does it even matter?
 

The truth about Christmas is that the holiday does take a LOT of it's trappings from pagan religions but it also repackages them into a presentation that, unlike most of my agnostic or atheist friends want to admit, is tantamount to a redefining of the religious aspects.  The Apostle Paul quoted from pagan sources and rendered them in such a fashion so as to reflect Christian (or, at the very least, Pauline) attitudes.  I find the same with Christmas.
 

Certainly, there are those Christians who have branded Christmas as pagan (nearly satanic in nature) because of it's roots in the worship of Saturn.  Still, even though they warn everyone to 'stay away from Christmas' because it is 'anti-Christ' these same Christians have no problem with referring to the days of the week (i.e., Sunday - Saturday) with as much regularity as their bowels move even though every day of the week in their calendar is named after a pagan influence.
 

Druids, who introduced the yule log into the Christian mythology of Christmas aren't any better than the Christians or atheists or agnostics who deplore the celebration of Christmas as Jesus' birthday because they fail to adhere to their own ancient religious rituals... as to New Agers.  Of course, New Agers, by virtue of the very title "NEW AGE" get some leeway in my book because they can write or rewrite their history in a willy-nilly sort of way because nothing they believe has to follow any sort of logic in the first place.  Still, one would hope that Christians would be given the benefit of the doubt in celebrating Jesus' birth on December 25th for the simple matter of fact that most of the Christians I've ever talked to KNOW full and well that Christ was NOT born on December 25.  They simply choose to celebrate his birth on that date.  
 

So, to those who want to say Merry Christmas I say to them... More power to you.  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

Pagans, Christians and non-theists alike can, at the very least, agree that even if Jesus never existed that if we were to follow his basic command to love your enemies as you love yourself we would all be better off.
 

So, if you celebrate Saturnalia or the Norse traditions or if you are a tree hugging druidic hippy... I say... live and let live and let's all treat each other like we would want to be treated.
 

Richard