Cynix’s World

First of all Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2006 to all my fellow friends! Hope all of you will have great parties to go to & enjoy yourself all the way through to next year.

Have been getting quite a lot of forwards regarding Santa vs Jesus. The article mentioned that: In the battle between Jesus, the Christ child who gave Christmas its name, and Santa, a 70-year-old figure that is largely the creation of a soft drink company, it would seem that the humble carpenter from Bethlehem has met his match. And the safe bet would be that Santa is more popular than Jesus during X’mas.

You can’t really blame the kids if they thought X’mas is a birthday celebration for Santa Claus rather than Jesus when they keep seeing all this marketing campaign involving Santa & (more importantly) presents! And it might pain you to know that Santa Claus could very well be created by a large soft drink company which is non other than Coca-Cola Company. He wears the corporate colors — the famous red and white — for a reason: he is working out of Atlanta, not out of the North Pole. Although many people might argue about this, but I guess it’s safe to say that Coke did not invent Santa but they certainly make him one of the most popular men in America.

And then there’s indication that Christ (if you believe he existed) is borned in late spring. And quite a number of people think the celebration of his birth is shifted to coincide with pagan’s Winter-solstice celebrations so that early christians were not prosecuted.

There are also other views such as this:
Dec 25 is also the date of a celebration by the Romans to their primary god, the Sun, and to Mithras, a popular Persian sun god supposedly born on the same day. The Roman Catholic writer Mario Righetti candidly admits that, “to facilitate the acceptance of the faith by the pagan masses, the Church of Rome found it convenient to institute the 25th of December as the feast of the birth of Christ to divert them from the pagan feast, celebrated on the same day in honor of the ‘Invincible Sun’ Mithras, the conqueror of darkness”

However, To all the christians out there:
The essential fact is that God did enflesh Himself in time and space (1 John 4:2). He was born from a woman on a specific day in a specific year, walked among us, died for our sins, was raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven. This is what we celebrate at Christmas: God was (and is) with us!

And To all the non christians out there (or those that are christians by name - in honor of their parents, like me):
It doesn’t really matter when Jesus is born or whether he ever existed. Everyone Loves Christmas, coz it’s a time for caring, sharing & exchanging presents. And we can celebrate Christmas just as much as we wanted to!

P/S: Happy Dong Zhi as well! Hope all of you get to have Tang Yuan with your family.

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