Yes, it’s that time of year again. Time to BASH THE CHRISTIANS! Time to dig out those dog-eared bits of hearsay, and prepare to throw them. Whenever someone dares to suggest that Christmas should be about Christ, rather than drink, gluttony, fornication and selling stuff to morons who should know better, you’ll be ready!
Just scream: “Jesus is really Mithras/ Osiris/ Odin/ Horus/ some Mexican dude you can’t spell/ Elvis/ Angelina Jolie/ an alien spaceship/all of the above at the same time”! That’ll show them that you won’t be listening.
Or “Christmas is really a really really ancient pagan festival of the Tharg-folk / Germans / Greeks / Chinese / whoever”! Not you know, but they sure won’t know. And since they’re all honest folk, they won’t suppose that you would say something you don’t know or care whether it’s true. Just be impudent, and watch them shuffle and make excuses. Then you can get back to self-indulgence!
Who cares if it’s true? The jeer is the thing!
Some sensible discussion on this in patches in here, with some excuses for this conduct which try to blame the victim, and from which I quote this response:
I could care less what someone does in December. But they don’t solemnly celebrate the solstice, they seek Christians out and bash them. God is not real, Jesus was the product of a Roman soldier raping Mary, this is a pagan ritual, etc etc. I don’t go knocking on people’s doors saying put up the nativity, God hates you, your pagans are dead and forgotten, etc.
We tend to think all this rubbish about “25 Dec = birthday of Mithras” is to be met with rational argument. We tend to suppose that most people saying this don’t mean any harm. Perhaps this is true sometimes. But let us never forget that it is circulated out of malice, not out of ignorance. The facts are readily available to anyone who cares to know; and it doesn’t take much logic to work that that we don’t sing carols to Thor.
Let us also remember that Jesus was only a few days old when Herod sought to kill him. There is only one Being who is behind all the lies in the world, and he has hated Christ from the start.
Hi, Roger. I just watched the PBS/Frontline effort, “From Jesus to Christ” the other night. I thought it was very well done on the whole, but at one point they mentioned the hoary one about Mithras being born on Dec 25. How in the world did that one slide by?
I suppose that TV journalists are always in a hurry, and that myth is so widespread that none of them would check…
Dear Mr. Pearse:
Have corresponded with you previously regarding who The Last Man of Antiquity might have been, among other things, and have left you some comments now and again on your fine no-nonsense web site on Tertullian (frankly the only theologian who manages to keep me even remotely Christian). Wanted to radio a ‘Well done’ re your post on ‘Time to Bash the Christians!’ As my oldest would then add, ‘Not.’ In my more devout moments I tend to say out loud to those lovely folks: “Come on then, who knew the sci-fi paranoid manque Philip K. Dick was right? The Empire really didn’t end, and as the Colosseum or some similar amphitheaters all across the Mare Nostrum (to say nothing of Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, USA) haven’t yet been appropriately rebuilt ,insults are all you’ve got! Well parsed, oaf.” And so on. Makes for jolly dinner table conversation. Ah, but even La Rochefoucauld knew one doesn’t discuss religion and politics en salon. Sad that so many of us have forgotten.
Must say I don’t know that it’s anti-Christian feeling that is being exhibited by the majority of the knuckle-draggers in question. I wonder that it’s not good-old-fashioned spite and xenophobia towards anything that catches one’s attention, much less moves. If the U.S. Senate’s health-care insurance bill had caught their eye this time of year, they might have inveighed against that!In that fine ‘Jesus To Christ’ FRONTLINE episode that Mr. Oerter cites above, a graffito is seen in which a Christian is pictured on a cross with a donkey’s head. ‘Nuff said. Let those who think they are ‘outside looking in’ spew as they want. They only need control their mouths to be invited in. Oh, by the way, I’ve changed my mind on who the Last Man of Antiquity might have been. Now I wonder that it wasn’t Justinian, straining to reconquer the Roman Empire in toto long after the West was irretrievably lost.
Well, that’s a tussle for another day. Keep up the good work, and a profitable trip to Syria and Lebanon as well.
It’s weird. I wasn’t born a Christian, but I never felt the urge to run around jeering at them either.
Probably because I never knew anyone really believed in Christianity.