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So about that whole "Christians stole Christmas from the pagans" thing.

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GenesisNemesis

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A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
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From here

And:

The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).
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This is one of the very few cases where I'm glad that Christianity stepped in. Of course, it took a long while for the holiday to become pacified, but the point is, why should we care that they "stole it from the pagans" if this is what the pagans celebrated?
 
They care about the "they stole it from the pagans" thing because it undercuts their narrative about how it's a true story about this guy who actually existed as opposed to a fictional tale that was just plain made up.

Also, that guy whom the Romans picked is kind of dying for everyone's sins and they want to make it like that was their guy's thing.
 
The wiki article on Saturnalia does not support the description in the OP
 
Of course, it took a long while for the holiday to become pacified,
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I have confidence in humanity.

A tale about mass slaughter of every man, woman, child, toddler, infant, fetus and blastocyst on the planet seems horrific, but it's a popular theme for nursery decor.

I'm sure if Saturnalia had continued, we'd be sheltering homeless people for a week, then throwing papier mache Lords of Misrule onto the fire. My dad would be complaining about how in their day, every family made their own, as a family activity. Now you can buy them at Wal-Mart in packs of ten, for the family misrule, the office misrule party, the kids' school misrule parties, and one to throw under the bus for the community misrule celebration.
It's all so commercialized these days, innit?
Kids don't even throw proper stones at the Lord of Misrule at school. In my day, if a kid didn't go to the emergency room, the Principal said we lacked the proper spirit. now the teachers wear fucking helmets...

Of course, it DOES make it easy to see how the Romans accepted the stories about the Early Christains, and how they stabbed a baby to death and dipped bread in the blood as a sacrament.
 
jonatha said:
The wiki article on Saturnalia does not support the description in the OP
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Yeah, sounds like the OP got the info on the "lord of misrule"'s fate from a Christian website.
 
The historical accuracy of this characterization of Roman practices in the celebration of Saturnalia seems doubtful. I note that the first quote in the OP links to an unsourced claim. The author of the other quote, Lucian, was a 2nd century CE Greek satirist who, evidently, had no love of Roman culture, so I would suspect its intent was satirical parody, if not casual slander. There is no credible evidence that the Romans practiced human sacrifice.
 
credoconsolans said:
jonatha said:
The wiki article on Saturnalia does not support the description in the OP
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Yeah, sounds like the OP got the info on the "lord of misrule"'s fate from a Christian website.
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Actually it was linked from another atheist forum, but I retract my statements. You can ignore this thread now. :D
 
The OP asks, 'Why should we care if...' while demonstrating that the Christers did indeed hijack the festival (which, although I'm bored by observance of all holidays & will admit I don't read about them much) I thought was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice. At least, that is what FFRF says over & over. Trust me, there isn't an atheist on the globe who 'cares' about the earlier holiday(s) for a nanosecond. We're simply grinning over yet another fatuous aspect of the exalted Christian faith. (If we're not supposed to care about the Roman version of the year-end party/orgy/shoot 'em up, why is a first century blood sacrifice religion any better? Surely the Christians murdered more heretics in their first 17 centuries than these hard-drinking Romans did, if they were actually offing one guy a year, per 'comunity'.) In today's traditional Christmas, there's a year's end display of piety over a fictitious birthday in honor of a savior figure who (a) would puke if he could see his name put on a non-Jewish religion which threw out the Jewish rites, rituals, and holy days which he observed up to the night before his execution and (b) would spurn the idea of eating a Christmas ham.
 
From the link:

In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.
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why do we care? because according to Christians, Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ. It is not. That is another lie. It was a platitude to the pagans that rejected Christianity. It was Christianity's "OK, you can keep Saturnalia, but we are calling it Christmas now.. but no more orgies. OK, some orgies.. but that's it!"

Why do we care about THAT? Because according to Christians, their religion is true because it was first to do / invented X,Y,and Z. They were not. Nothing about it is original.
 
braces_for_impact said:
It is almost war on Christmastime isn't it? Where's my helmet...
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I was gonna say.

It's almost upon us again, and I for one am gearing up hard for it after suffering some 1500 losses in a row. I plan to be in the front lines, sacrificing myself by going to family events and saying "Merry Christmas" to those who say it to me first. But dammit, I'm not saying it first to anyone.

That'll show 'em.
 
James Chapman said:
The historical accuracy of this characterization of Roman practices in the celebration of Saturnalia seems doubtful. I note that the first quote in the OP links to an unsourced claim. The author of the other quote, Lucian, was a 2nd century CE Greek satirist who, evidently, had no love of Roman culture, so I would suspect its intent was satirical parody, if not casual slander. There is no credible evidence that the Romans practiced human sacrifice.
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Aye. Indeed, the Romans considered human sacrifice abhorrent and would frequently impute human sacrifice to their enemies.
 
I've already said people can ignore the thread, so it's useless to comment any further. Why's it still going on?
 
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