ANSWERS: 4
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I suppose the holiday could always revert back to being called Saturnalia - the festival of sun-return. It is was celebrated long before the Christian faith subsumed it, and will continue to be celebrated way into the future.
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If Christmas did not exist in winter time there probably wouldn't be a general gift-giving holiday season and time off work. There are other holidays where it is customary to give one another gifts, like Chanukah, however only Christmas has been attacked and commercialised to the extent that the holiday now has almost nothing to do with the birth of Jesus but more about boosting the economy. Personally I feel sorry for all the people who celebrate Christmas in this way. I have celebrated Christmas twice with friends, just for the fun of it, but it’s so difficult and expensive. I know people go into debt every year over Christmas; plus there are advertisements for next Christmas on TV as early as January! (Prepare special finance programs etc). Without Christmas in the winter there would be gift-giving; but it would not be main-stream. I suspect that without Christmas, the winter holiday period will slowly collapse.
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From http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/514338 "Christmas is a LIE! If you study the scriptures then you'll realize that Jesus of Nazareth was actually born in September (5 BC actually) and not December. The reason that the council of Nicaea in AD 325 chose the 25th December as the birth date of Jesus is that the pagans before them celebrated the Winter Solstice as the birth of the Sun (as it is the day where the length of day starts to increase) and as such the birth of the Divine Child (Horus usually). In an attempt to oust pagan celebrations the Christians replaced pagan celebrations with Christian ones and the Jews demonized the things that the pagans held sacred, this includes Yule. Birth of the Divine Child/birth of Jesus christ, you see what I mean? Yule is a time for making those you love the most as happy as you can and helping those around you."
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Yeah, and I think just the generic "Holidays" would reign supreme. If nothing else, businesses would have to push it as the season of giving, even if the original reason wasn't there- which, for many, it isn't. Original, for Christmas, being Christ's birth- not the pagan traditions it absorbed.
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