patrick m

Modern Christmas celebrations, decorations, traditions, and customs have very little to do with the birth of Jesus. Before Christanity, people celebrated the soltice with parties, food and drink and much merry making. For centuries the Catholic Church observed the Feast of the Nativity, but this was a minor aspect of the much more wide spread Winter soltice celebrations that took place throughtout Christian Europe.

The Puritans eventually outlawed "Christmas" in England and the American colonies and the protestant churches rarely observed Christmas at all untill the 1800's.

So it has always been a time for feasting and celebration but it was hardly a primarily religious event.

Why do we think it should be any different today?

I am a Christian, a Roman catholic, and I celebrate Christ's birth by going to Mass and practicing acts of charity.Why should I be bothered if my friend and neighbors do otherwise?

We all celebrate and enjoy the holidays in our own ways and thats fine by me!

Albert Einstein said that the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. He called it the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science, and it was this emotion, sometimes mixed with fear that engendered religion.

Where have you experienced amazement and wonder?

I am constantly amazed how uneducated so many people are about their own religious traditions, beliefs and practices.

It's like religious education stopped at Sunday School and was replaced by half truths, prejudices, resentments, gross misunderstandings and old wives tales.

There are classes, and books and even responsible online cources people can take. Why just trade ignorance back and forth?

It just is so embarrasing to read what someone writes about something they erronously think a Church or religion teaches, as they are often quite upset or dogmatic about things that has no real connection to actual official doctrine or practice, but is rather what grandma or some guy somewhere believed told them.

Do those persecutions affect the way Christains and pagans relate to each other now?

I know Wiccan/pagan Christians who incorporate both traditions and are shunned by Christains and pagans.

What common ground do we share?

I am not refering to ultra Fundamentalists either.

If people of good will discuss ideas and beliefs that differ from their own, do they need to be willing to examine the evidence, and be open minded? Herbert Spencer said that contempt prior to investigation would keep people in ignorance. How do you engage in discussions with those of diiferent beliefs? How is repect and tolerance important in this process?

Or was it a forgery suggested by Kathryn Lindskoog and the Portland C.S.Lewis Society and others?

Shadow Lands by K.Lindskoog

Anne Rice, wrote Interview of the Vampire (AKA The Vampire Chronicles) and Blood and Gold, and eighteen or so other books.

The inner fly leaf on the book Christ the Lord, published in 2005, says, "Having completed the two cycles of legend to which she has devoted her career so far, Anne Rice gives us her most ambitious, and courageous book, a novel about the early years of CHRIST THE LORD, based on the gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship...".

She also writes in the author's note at the end, about her own personal spiritual quest, her eventual return to the Roman Catholic Church and her "conversion" to faith in God and Jesus Christ as "...God and Man at all times...". She dedicates the book to her son.