Posted in seeker, tagged Christmas, Easter, Jesus on March 23, 2008 | 13 Comments »
Rome killed a threat to its empire on Passover, according to the canonical gospels. But the early Roman church moved Easter so Christians could say, “No, really, we’re loyal Romans, not those darn Jews who won’t settle down and accept Caesar’s rule.”
Easter’s the day that churches assert their power on earth: to a church, what [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged Christianity, Christmas, Jesus, magi, zoroastrianism on January 7, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Anyone who has read this blog for long knows I’m fascinated by the Zoroastrian connections to Christianity. The magi in Matthew’s infancy story are Zoroastrian priests from the Parthian Empire. I had always thought Luke’s infancy story, with its shepherds, had nothing to do with them.
When I was researching no fathers, no slaves, I wondered [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged Christmas on January 7, 2007 | 7 Comments »
For 150 million Orthodox Christians, today is Christmas. Why? They stayed with the Julian Calendar, unlike the revisionist Catholics and Protestants.
For anyone who wants Christmas to be a holy day, January 7 is an excellent day. There are few competing holidays. Here’s Wikipedia’s current list:
Catholicism - Feast day of St. Raymond of Peñafort.
Eastern Orthodox Church [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged Christmas on December 19, 2006 | 16 Comments »
I had always thought John’s Gospel skipped the question of Jesus’s human birth because I only looked at the popular non-literal translations of John 1:14. Here’s the inferior King James Version:
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged Christmas on December 14, 2006 | 13 Comments »
If you’re interested in the war between Christmas trees and menorahs: The Seattle Times: Local News: Do public menorahs cheapen Hanukkah?
The most interesting parts for me:
Weiner believes that displaying a menorah every time there’s a Christmas tree “establishes a false parallel between Christmas and Hanukkah.”Hanukkah is a minor Jewish festival. Christmas is a major Christian [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged Christmas on December 12, 2006 | 10 Comments »
So, Seattle’s airports had Christmas trees. Secular trees, without even angels, which appear in Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The kind of trees that should properly be called holiday trees, ’cause the only Christian thing about them is that some Christians co-opted the pagan Yule tree.
A rabbi named Bogomilsky insisted that the airport should put [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged Christmas on December 29, 2004 | 5 Comments »
Okay, this season is actually winding down (though I have to say my favorite week of the winterdays is this one, when all of the pressure of Krismas is off, businesses are running in slow or shut down, and the only thing left to do is to have a great New Year’s Eve). But the [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged Christmas on December 28, 2004 | No Comments »
China Mieville’s ‘Tis the Season.
Posted in seeker, tagged Christmas on December 27, 2004 | No Comments »
So, I write about how little I like Luke’s version of the nativity, and our minister praises it today. And I must admit, the shepherds just about make up for the last roar of the Old Testament monster god who punishes Zechariah for a perfectly reasonable question.
There’s a bit of Old Testament in Matthew’s story [...]
Posted in seeker, tagged Christianity, Christmas, Jesus, magi, zoroastrianism on December 25, 2004 | No Comments »
Matthew’s got Magi, and anything with Zoroastrian magicians rocks. Luke’s is, in my opinion, a pretty twisted number; there’s a good reason why people leave the Zechariah and Elisabeth material out of their celebrations. Luke has also got the incredibly stupid census story: everyone goes to the place of their birth and disrupts the running [...]
