Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday. Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/51928?lang=bi

[–] Not_mikey@slrpnk.net 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That analogy seems a better fit for a lot of Jewish holidays then Christmas. Passover is about the mass death of innocent Egyptian children. Chanukah is about a revolt against Greek rule where:

The Maccabees destroyed Greek altars in the villages, forcibly circumcised boys, burnt villages, and drove Hellenized Jews off their land.

Christmas is just about some baby being born ( on probably a different day)

[–] kata1yst@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The "real meaning" of Christmas was getting the pagans on board with Christianity, don't let anyone lie to you otherwise lol.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 5 points 1 day ago

Yep the birth of Christ just coincidentally coincides with the end of Brumalia, which of course noone noticed when the emperor suddenly insisted everyone become Christian and had the bible written by committee. And it's of course a coincidence that that was (back in the day) exactly the winter solstice. And it's also just a coincidence that Jesus' life story has quite some parallels to that of earlier sun gods from the general area.

Most current Christmas traditions are more Germanic in nature, though, e.g. the Christmas tree. While in the current form a quite recent invention, decorating the house with evergreen stuff was common through the ages -- branches, wreaths, not whole-ass trees. The needles btw are fine smudging material don't just sweep them away.

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

I read pagers for a sec and was confused... then again, god is the biggest mass murderer of all time.

[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

VSCode doesn't commemorate Passover or Chanukah, though.