White house acknowledges the supreme importance of a major ideology

Only in the northern hemisphere!!

Prime Junta said:

My wife's comment was "bah, proper Christians prefer Easter anyway."

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The irony is the importance of Christmas is in fact Easter. I celebrate Easter every day. In fact, to go further holidays may violate a principal in Colossions 4:

14Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;

15And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

16Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:

17Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.

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But of course its talking about the fulfillment of the Jewish Law specifically.

Doing some research into Christmas it turns out the date is probably somewhere in the middle of September based on the birth of Jesus cousin John the Baptist who was 6 months older than him. John's father was a Levite priest and was involved in one of those Jewish holy days around the time of John's birth.

Furthermore, Christ would have had to be born before Herod the Great who tried ot have him killed in Bethlehem. He died in 4 BC according to the records of Josephus. Its estimated he was born around 6 BC then.

Dec 25th was chosen as the date to rival the Saturnium or something in celebration of the god Saturn. This was going on in Rome at the Winter Solstice. So the choice was political. This "Festivus" (of Seinfeld fame) grew to last about 7 days so I assume that's why Christmas lasts 12. As you may or may not known Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas at the end of those 12 days in January.

Regardless of any of this its still a great day. I got my (formerly) pagan tree in my house yesterday and my mistletoe is busy infecting the ones in my backyard. I'm typing on my present right now but I have no servants to give presents to on Boxing Day.

Meanwhile Corwin is working a nasty tan and I wait for the cold rain.

What is this War on Christmas? The only person that I know of who says "There is a war against Christmas" is O'Reilly. Olberman gives O'Reily a verbal beating just about every day on this topic and many others.

In regards to this resolution, well tis the season to get those Christian votes.

Prime Junta said:

I've always found it a curious irony that European countries with state churches, such as the UK, Sweden, or Finland, are extremely secularized, whereas the United States, which doesn't, has religion play an extremely visible role in public and political discourse.

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The Swedish state and church were separated in 2000 which has led to a sharp decrease in the church's membership numbers.