I was just reading information on how the Nazi's celebrated Christmas. I realized two things. First of all, any myth that the Nazis retained any form of Christianity is clearly rejected. Secondly, there are some aspects of the Nazi Christmas that are mimicked in today's "modern" world.
First and foremost, Nazis wanted to remove reference to Christ completely wherever possible. Instead of celebrating Christmas in particular, they wanted to celebrate the Solstice, or a sort of catch-all celebration. They probably wanted people to say "happy holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas" Sound familiar?
The words of Silent Night were changed to include no references to God, Christ or religion. Other tunes as well had references to Christianity removed. Swatstikas were placed atop Christmas trees rather than stars.
Something similar is happening in our own culture. People think it's offensive to mention Christmas or Christ or God or Jesus, etc. So they substitute it with words like happy holidays, etc. This is not even coming from other religions. It's coming from Christians themselves or people raised as Christians.
I heard a story about a university group who had an international Christmas. At first, they wanted to incorporate elements from all different cultures and religions, etc. to make this international "holiday", but the international students rejected this. They did not want a mixture, they wanted the real deal. They wanted Christmas.
Christmas is a great time of the year, so say Merry Christmas and celebrate the Birth of Christ. Never forgo these beautiful beliefs for some atheistic catch-all non-specific holiday that is meaningless.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Few things:
ReplyDelete1. Stop lying to your readers. The Nazis were a Christian organization. Want proof? Enjoy!
http://nobeliefs.com/mementoes.htm
(This is sort of related to your last, silly, post. How would you feel about taking the crosses out of these?)
2. Christ was not born on the 25th of December, if he was even born it would've been sometime in June/July. Christians stole the idea of a Christmas near the end of December from Pagan traditions. Yay! Just another example of your bible lying to you!
Have a great Christmas, Phil! Don't worry about praising your silly sky lord, just have a good time with your family and friends, enjoy giving and receiving gifts, enjoy the food you're fortunate enough to eat, be happy and don't let the idea of a god get in the way of that!
P.S. Holidays = "Holy days"
Winter Solstice came before Christmas. Winter Solstice was a Pagan celebration of the sun god which the Christians hijacked for their own means. Even though you're lying to your readers (as the above poster commented) about the Nazis wanting to celebrate the solstice instead of Christmas you're still mistaken.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you included ZERO references for the outrageous claims you made. Here is my reference! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice#Observances You just need to scroll down a little to "Christmas, Natalis Domini (4th century Rome, 11th century England, Christian)", because... Well you'll see.
Thank you guys for your posts and Merry Christmas :)
ReplyDeleteTo the first poster, we know that Nazism was against Christianity, especially the Catholic Church. Hitler had many priests killed. He had a death plot put on the Pope at the time. The fact that certain symbols of Christianity remained are not surprising in a country that is 100% Christian. You will notice from the photos you sent me that most are either prior to 1934. Things happened gradually.
Although both Hitler and Mussolini were anticlerical, they both understood that it would be rash to begin their Kulturkampfs prematurely, such a clash, possibly inevitable in the future, being put off while they dealt with other enemies.
The attitude of the Nazi party to the Church ranged from tolerance to near total renunciation. Many Nazis were anti-clerical in both private and public life. The Nazi party had decidedly pagan elements.
To the second poster, that website says that Christmas occurs around the same time as the Winter Solstice. No one will deny this. The solstice is actually on December 21st though. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, so it's natural that people would recognize it. This has no bearing though on the Feast of Christ's birth. In fact, many people believe the Pagan holiday associated with the Winter Solstice actually came after Christmas, because it emerged in the 3rd century.
According to G. Halsberghe, the Sol Invictus, which is the pagan celebration for December 25th was begun in 274AD. However, we have record of early Christians celebrating the birth of Christ far before this.