<p>No chimney. No Santa. No problem.</p>
<p>I thought Christmas was originally a pagan holiday?</p>
<p>In anycase, I love The Santa Clause’s explanation for kids without a chimney - Santa makes one!</p>
<p>Truth be told, I was a little afraid of Santa Clause as a kid. I had the Chuckie Finster syndrome.</p>
<p>^Yeah, it was originally a pagan holiday. But there was no magical Santa.</p>
<p>Lol. Chuckie Finster syndrome. xDD</p>
<p>Anyway… I was raised Christian, but I don’t remember Christmas ever being about Jesus. Sure, my mom had little statues of the Virgin and Joseph with the baby Jesus, but I was just like “OOH PRETTY!” Even now, it’s more about family time than it is about Christianity. If I ever have children, I’ll celebrate Christmas with them, and include Santa. I’m not Christian now, nor have I been for years.</p>
<p>We’re a bit outside the box here. At 3 or 4, son refused to let us light the fireplace on Christmas Eve, for fear Santa would burn his rear. I told there was no Santa Claus, twas all a marketing ploy. The tike did not believe. I told him I would prove it.</p>
<p>I said I guarantee you’ll have presents. A Yule log is traditional, and harkens back to my pagan past.</p>
<p>So I lit the fire. He eventually went to bed. Of course the next morning, there was the standard load of presents. He was amazed and queried “if it wasn’t Santa, then who?”</p>
<p>I looked him straight in the eye and said “The Christmas Buffalo”.</p>
<p>I got no argument.</p>
<p>He didn’t blink and eye when he got the pile of candy from the Easter Penguin either three months later.</p>
<p>The xmas tree is still full of buffalo and penguin ornaments. There may be a claus or two hanging around as well.</p>
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Nope…see what happened is the early Christians wanted to celebrate Jesus’s birth (he was born in like March) but they couldn’t let the pagan Romans find out, so they chose to celebrate it in December around the Winter Solstice or Saturnalia (not sure which) when the pagans had their festival, to blend in, even though Jesus was born in March. So it’s definitely not a pagan holiday, it’s always been about Jesus.</p>
<p>^I disagree.</p>
<p>Yule is the Pagan holiday, and Paganism has been around much longer than Christianity. In fact, Paganism is one of the oldest religions around.</p>
<p>I am a Christian, and I do believe that Christmas is the celebration of Jesus’ birth, but I also know that Christmas in the non-religious traditions borrows from a lot of other cultures and religions (as do most aspects of American life).</p>
<p>^ Oh, I know that all these traditions - Christmas trees, mistletoe, all that jazz - borrow from pagans rituals and stuff, but I still don’t think it’s a Pagan holiday. I mean, it’s a Christian holiday, originally disguised as a pagan holiday, that involves some pagan traditions to throw off the pagans…haha kind of confusing.</p>
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<p>You’re speaking as if “paganism” is a cohesive, coherent religion. It’s not. There are forms of paganism that popped up in the last century like Wicca and pagan religions that are thousands of years old. Paganism is nothing more than a reference to pre-Christian world religions of Europe, Middle-East (Zoroastrianism, various cults), Japan, etc.</p>
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<p>Early Christian missionary techniques were not designed to “throw off” the pagan cults; the followers of the cults weren’t stupid and would blindly give in to a new tradition after centuries of worship. Fusing Christian and pagan cult traditions was a complex phenomenon, composed of hundreds of social, cultural, economic, and political factors, that gave rise to Christendom throughout Europe.</p>
<p>^ thanks Sligh_Anarchist, for clearing it up…pshh and some people think humanities classes are useless =)</p>
<p>Definitely. Knowledge of pagan religion and the spread of early Christendom certainly isn’t utilitarian in the strictest of sense; nonetheless, it’s important to understanding such modern phenomena like Christmas, Easter, etc. I think it’s a tad bit pertinent, especially to Christians and those of us who are interested in such early developments. :)</p>
<p>We celebrated Christmas even though we’re not Christian. Christmas is a huge part of American culture. I don’t really see why Jews don’t celebrate it. I couldn’t imagine not celebrating Christmas with my kids. I don’t really plan on taking them to church unless my wife really wants to, but hey, December would suck without Christmas.</p>
<p>^ Duh cause Jews are too busy celebrating Hanukkah/Chanukah or however you spell it lol. Gosh the luckiest kids growing up with the ones who celebrated both…they got presents for both holidays on both sides of the family (or at least my best friend does, she’s half-jew and half-catholic)</p>
<p>What’d they do?</p>
<p>They pulled out the Menorah!</p>
<p>Pssh. I’m not religious, but Christmas clearly is, and always will be, inseparably tied with Christianity, Jesus, and religion in general. If you’re not religious and that somehow scares you, well up yours. Of course people want to celebrate it because it’s a neat idea. And everyone certainly has the right to celebrate it. But let’s not call it secular because you’re non-christian and, for some unknown reason, you feel cognitive dissonance by celebrating the holiday.</p>
<p>I can’t “secularize” Jewish or Islamic holidays by I deciding I want to celebrate them and then declaring since I don’t believe their fairy tales, I’ve effectively created a rift between the beliefs and the rituals, secularizing the holiday. Maybe I’m just sick of all this “holiday tree” and “winter break” tiptoeing. Do we call the Menorah the “holiday candles”? It’s just a farce. No one’s trying to convert anyone here.</p>
<p>Anyway, I was raised to believe in Santa as a young child and I’m glad I was, it made Christmas more interesting. It’s not that hard to be fooled, either. The main points were: there was lots of expensive sh** come Christmas day, my parents never bought me expensive sh** throughout the year, and they’re not even trying to take credit for the gifts. So I believed the fat man explanation. And you’re not smarter if your parents revealed the dupe from the start. You basically take a lot of things on faith from your parents anyway when you’re young. You know, like the continents of Africa or Asia actually exist.</p>
<p>I’m a Christian, but my parents never really attached anything Christian to Santa because, let’s face it, Santa has nothing to do with the Christian aspect of the holiday.</p>
<p>I still believed it for several years, though… :)</p>
<p>I know Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, and a whole bunch of other people of different faiths who celebrate the Santa aspect of Christmas. Jews decided to make Hanukkah a bigger deal than it used to be to compete with Christmas. I don’t think I even knew the Jesus aspect of Christmas until I was 8 even though I had celebrated it at least a half dozen times. Santa was just one of those fun parts of childhood like the Tooth Fairy.</p>
<p>santa’s not real… =[</p>
<p>I’m Hindu and we still celebrated Christmas.</p>
<p>I believed in Santa until I was about 8, when “Santa” left a thank you note for the cookies I left him in my dad’s handwriting. Yeah.</p>
<p>My kids learned that Christmas and Santa were part of their friends religion. They were encouraged to understand and participate in school gift exchanges, or at the friends’ houses ( tree decorating Christmas dinner etc). Their friends were invited to our house to participate with us in our holidays, practices. Learning to respect other peoples’ beliefs, practices without becoming them, and having pride in your own without one being better than the other has served them well.</p>
<p>Why do you ask non-Christians about Santa when really it’s the faith of the parents that matters?</p>