this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
1283 points (98.1% liked)

Atheist Memes

5568 readers
855 users here now

About

A community for the most based memes from atheists, agnostics, antitheists, and skeptics.

Rules

  1. No Pro-Religious or Anti-Atheist Content.

  2. No Unrelated Content. All posts must be memes related to the topic of atheism and/or religion.

  3. No bigotry.

  4. Attack ideas not people.

  5. Spammers and trolls will be instantly banned no exceptions.

  6. No False Reporting

  7. NSFW posts must be marked as such.

Resources

International Suicide Hotlines

Recovering From Religion

Happy Whole Way

Non Religious Organizations

Freedom From Religion Foundation

Atheist Republic

Atheists for Liberty

American Atheists

Ex-theist Communities

!exchristian@lemmy.one

!exmormon@lemmy.world

!exmuslim@lemmy.world

Other Similar Communities

!religiouscringe@midwest.social

!priest_arrested@lemmy.world

!atheism@lemmy.world

!atheism@lemmy.ml

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] takeda@lemmy.world 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Frankly, Christmas right now has very little to do with actual Christmas.

Besides the well known tidbit that Christmas tree that was adopted by Christians.

The actual Christmas was about having a family dinner (like Thanksgiving) and then waiting until midnight for the birth of Christ.

The Santa Claus originates from Saint Nicholas, who was celebrated on December 5th. The legend was that he secretly was making and bringing toys to orphanage.

The current Santa Claus is just bastardization of Saint Nicholas in order to sell shit. Same thing with St Valentine. It is Christian in the name only at this point.

[–] Umbraveil@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Even worse

Modern red suited Santa was reimagined and heavily commercialized by Coca-Cola and Christmas was appropriated from Sol Invictus. Nobody even knows when Jesus was born.

Colonization and commercialization at their best.

[–] lunarul@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

That's a very US-centric description though. There have been decades of slowly secularizing Christmas in the US (although I did notice a comeback of religious themed Christmas songs on the radio in the last couple of years).

In my native country we celebrate Saint Nicholas on December 6th, and we get presents from him in our boots on that morning.

Christmas is focused on the birth of Christ, not on Santa (who is not considered the same as St Nicholas and there are several legends about the origin of Santa, generally all connected to the birth of Jesus). Christmas dinner is a time for families to get together, similar to Thanksgiving in the US (but not waiting until midnight for the birth of Christ, we don't have Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, we have it on Christmas Day, celebrating the birth of Christ; Christmas Eve is the last day of fasting before Christmas).

Also the 25th is just the first of 3 days of Christmas.