So when will Christmas be banned from America?

Discussion in 'Opinion POLLS' started by RightToLife, Dec 10, 2012.

?

When will the real christmas become non-existant

  1. 2020 or before

    4 vote(s)
    7.1%
  2. 2050-2100

    4 vote(s)
    7.1%
  3. 2100-2500

    1 vote(s)
    1.8%
  4. 3000

    2 vote(s)
    3.6%
  5. never

    45 vote(s)
    80.4%
  1. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    Bitte schön, or whatever you happen to speak :D What are your 1st and 2nd languages?

    Ah, I checked your profile and saw Austria mentioned. That clarifies one of those languages for me.
     
  2. mihapiha

    mihapiha Active Member

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    I grew up in 3 countries and English was just another one my parents decided I ought to know. But I live in Slovenia, Croatia and Austria. But I definitely know English better than Croatian. ;) And yes Croatian and Slovenian do differ a lot although both are Slavic. Croatian has 7 cases; Slovene 6, but it has more pronouns than Croatian. Slovene actually has along the known ones in English (I, you, he/she/it, we, they, you) 3 more (we two, they two and you two). May sound weird but you can check it out if you really want to. Wikipedia wouldn't be a bad way to start...
     
  3. Alif Qadr

    Alif Qadr Banned

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    RTL,
    Look up Christmas in an encyclopedia (any one), then look up what the United States government classified it as during either the Reagan or Bush the First administration. As a matter of fact, read Jeremiah Tenth Surah or chapter from Ayat or verse 1 - 16

    Take a looksee:

    After reading the above, read this article: http://theweek.com/article/index/222676/when-americans-banned-christmas

    Excerpt from above mentioned article
     
  4. Gorn Captain

    Gorn Captain Banned

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    "War on Christmas" is just crap fed to paranoid Religious Righties by Fox News....the same "news" network that told them "The polls are skewed...Romney's gonna win in a landslide."
     
  5. Think for myself

    Think for myself Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Christmas is about the birth of Jesus?

    I thought Christmas was about a jolly obese man with a long beard who has magic deer that pull him around the world where he leaves plastic toys purchased by parents in exchange for cookies and warm milk.

    Other times I think that Christmas, the story of the virgin birth, is simply stolen from other myths and used to create a new religion, which Jesus never intended and exists now here in the bible, was placed around the autumnal equinox to impose over existing cults.

    I digress.

    Luckily for folks of all faiths and no faiths, religious rituals are protected by our Constitution.
     
  6. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    Fascinating! Didn't classical Greek also have a special plural for pairs like that? I took Greek many moons ago, but lost interest in it and gave up. I have a faint memory of it maybe having a special plural form like what you've described for Slovene, though. I suppose it's very possible that Slovene was even directly influenced by Greek, Slovenia being not too terribly far away from Greece.

    Regarding the number of cases, that's very reminiscent of Russian, of course, which is my currently designated #3 language :D I haven't been very diligent in studying it, however. I don't know of any classes existing in my area for it, so it's up to me to learn it at home, alone with my cats and the intardwebs.
     
  7. mihapiha

    mihapiha Active Member

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    Slovene is one of the oldest of the Slavic languages. We don't know for sure whether it's the oldest but it's for sure the oldest in it's purity, which means, that the older you make any Slavic language the closer it comes to Slovene. Middle-Russian is rather close to Slovene, so other Slavic languages can check their vocabulary pretty easy on their heritage. If it's close to a Slovene word, it's Slavic, if not, it has a German, Latin, French, etc. heritage.

    But since you study or studied ancient Greek you may know the word "κλείς" for key. This a very simple example how you can track back the invention of the object through the language. Because if you do not have the word in your own language you just reuse the word from another language. The Romans made it into "clavis" and it went to "clé" in French and now you know it's heritage in English... This example should show how quickly languages adapt to other language and why Slovene is such a strange exception as it didn't change as much as other languages in the last 1000 years. It's even a miracle that it didn't get extinct looking at how few people actually use that language and what big languages are it's neighbors (German, Italian, Hungarian, Croatian). English as you may know is one third Latin-, one third German- and one third French based; so any language outside those three must be a complete shock to you and incredibly hard to study...

    The dual in classical or ancient Greek is similar but not as advanced. Here you find a simple example and you will see how much more detailed Slovene is. And unfortunately the two languages have not much in common. They are separated by about 1200-1300 years.

    I'm trying to convince myself to study my fifth language (French), but I don't seem to have the discipline to do so. I will have to finish the (*)(*)(*)(*) book I'm writing and then hopefully have some time to address that wish of mine..


    But back to topic: I think the "real Christmas" has been Americanized and capitalized already - especially if I look at Austria. In the German language we have the "Christkind" (translation: Christ as a child) and now all of the sudden "Weihnachtsman" (translation: Santa Claus). For some odd reason Santa Claus took over. I remember when I was a child I had to write my letter to the "Christkind" not to Santa. But Austria is more Catholic than some other countries and very old fashion when it comes to religion. My grandfather used to pray in Latin along with the priest because mass used to be still in Latin. Here you can see the trend over the years away from baby Christ toward Santa Claus. Weirdly enough though people still go to church on the night from December 24th to 25th at midnight and listen to the priest telling the story of the wise men for one more time in their life.
    We also open the modest presents on December 24th, but this may be only a family tradition. I don't really know of anyone doing the "opening in the next morning"-type of a deal. Usually it's done after Christmas-dinner.

    So the old-fashion tradition are becoming more and more capitalized and Americanized, because there was no Santa Claus in my youth. We still celebrate St Nicholas' Day though, which is weird in so many ways - not only because there are 14 St. Nicholases (not kidding) ;)
     
  8. Junkieturtle

    Junkieturtle Well-Known Member Donor

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    Unless you're absolutely unable to celebrate Christmas without public nativity scenes and the Target cashier wishing you a "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays", I think both you and Christmas are going to be just fine.

    A war on Christmas is just as absurd as a war on Valentine's Day or a war on April Fool's Day, which would seem to be the appropriate day for people who think Christmas would or even could be banned. :)
     
  9. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    It won't happen. The Jewish merchants won't allow it to happen.
     
  10. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    Gotta remember, the Boston Tea Party was a crime. So was opening fire on Ft. Sumter. Nobody cares about crimes anymore.
     
  11. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member Donor

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    Awesome.. By the way, if you want another correction, which I'm always more than happy to give, "it's" = it is, while "its" = possessive form. I don't blame you for being confused at that one, but just so you know.

    Regarding tracing of words through linguistic heritage, I know what you mean - I have an Althochdeutsch textbook that I picked up in Germany when I studied there back in 2008, and it was talking about the same thing being done to try and work out how people migrated and so on during prehistoric times. It works for place names as well as regular vocabulary, as I'm sure you already know well. Good note about "key," though - I know the Russian word is ключ, which bears a resemblance to kleis and the other examples you have.

    A note about Santa and opening presents - I thought Sankt Nikolaus was already an old Christmas tradition in Germany (and so, in Austria also). Is that not the case? Is he not also the Weihnachtsmann? Even Russia has Дед Мороз, Opa Frost, a Santa-like character who is, to my understanding, more associated with the new year than with their Christmas celebration, which I also understand to be on January 6th or so.

    I think the most common gift giving and opening tradition here is to do it Christmas morning. Some may opt to do it late on Christmas Eve, and I know that someone in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol also mentioned a tradition of opening gifts on Christmas Eve; he worded it "Presents on Christmas Eve, as usual." Hm, this reminds me that I need to actually read that this month! I'm remembering only the film version starring George C. Scott; I've yet to actually read the story as originally written and published, though I do own a copy now.

    Hm, your thoughts about Christmas being americanised also reminded me of Rammstein's Amerika :D I trust you're aware of that song, and perhaps even its video?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yydlX7c8HbY
     
  12. mihapiha

    mihapiha Active Member

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    St. Nicholas is here to check up on kids on December 6th. The good get a pice of chocolate and the bad get scared by his evil-sidekick "Krampus", which has no English version I'm afraid. Another example of how they use words from another language if they don't have the expression in their own....

    This is however one of the 14 holy Nicholases and I'm not sure which particular one we use. I know the Swiss have their own. A rather strange character who left his family to become an anchorite/hermit. After his death Switzerland actually got a new hermit in the same house copying what their St. Nicholas used to do, and legend has it, that the people who lived there as hermits always preformed miracles. Just a few years ago another one of those hermits died and the 16 people (If I recall correctly) applied to the post. So they're pushing their version of St. Nicholas from the middle ages till today.
    There are two St. Nicholases in Venice alone. So it's rather hard knowing which one we use, and which one the Germans or even Vienna uses (which is only 100 miles away). The Weihnachtsmann is literarily the CocaCola Santa Claus nobody ever heard of prior to 1931. But here the transition of the "Weihnachstmann" replacing the "Chirstkind" is still in progress and the more tradition based families gift their children via "Christkind"; The "Weihnachtsmann" is catching on though. I don't know the Russian Opa-Frost-tradition; they are orthodox so it's possible they have another version I know nothing about. And January 6th is another very important holiday here. Its the day we celebrate the three wise men.

    Remember though that here in Europe you have so many peoples and so many languages and traditions that they vary from town to town. You could tell how different weddings are every 100 miles. It's unreal how much these things vary in Christian countries which practically never had borders between them.

    So the Americana is taking over the old Christian tradition to a degree. But here we still have more St. Nicholases walking down the streets during the holidays than Santa Clauses. It's still more old fashion. You can tell the difference because St. Nicholas is always dressed white with crosses all over and has a hat similar to the pope....

    I'll try to figure out when to use it's and its; It is not obvious to me thus far
     
  13. daisydotell

    daisydotell Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The Christian version of Christmas maybe banned eventually but the merchants will never let the commercial side of Christmas die.
    They love having the money flow into their stores..
     
  14. RightToLife

    RightToLife New Member

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    i should have rephrased the question... not the banning of the santaclause version of christmas. i was talking about the story of jesus. that is going to be banned eventually. i agree the santa version wont be banned however
     
  15. Margot

    Margot Account closed, not banned

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    They won't be banning Jesus from the Christmas narrative.

    You know that Christmas in Bahrain is quite festive.. with all sorts of special events, lights, trees, caroling, parties etc. All the hotels and restaurants serve Christmas brunch... and services at all 16 churches.

    I had to laugh over that atheist fool trying to spoil Xmas for the US Navy Personnel.
     
  16. Gorn Captain

    Gorn Captain Banned

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    So you think the First Amendment will be revoked???
     
  17. RightToLife

    RightToLife New Member

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    eventually yes... many parts of it are already being undermined..... its only a matter of time at this point...
     
  18. Gorn Captain

    Gorn Captain Banned

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    You watch "The O'Reilly Factor"....don't you?

    :D
     
  19. RightToLife

    RightToLife New Member

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    never seen it actually... and I can't remember the last time ive ever seen fox politics, if i ever have.
     
  20. Junkieturtle

    Junkieturtle Well-Known Member Donor

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    What parts of the first amendment are being undermined, especially as it pertains to religion?
     
  21. Gorn Captain

    Gorn Captain Banned

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    So where are you getting this idea that the First Amendment will be abridged???
     
  22. Mr_Truth

    Mr_Truth Well-Known Member

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    Right wingers like welfare queen Ayn Rand will never get their wish granted ~ Christmas will always be around whether these delusional haters like it or not.
     
  23. RightToLife

    RightToLife New Member

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    from my own personal observations....
     
  24. RevAnarchist

    RevAnarchist New Member Past Donor

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    I doubt if CHRISTmas will be completely banned in the near future. Nevertheless, if secular progressives continue to aggressively challenge traditional Christmas displays with successful legal actions Christmas as we Christians know it will disappear in a couple or three decades (a pure guess). The severity of the attack, and the defensive operations of the Christians would significantly speed or slow the process, IMO. There are other variables such as if SCOUS continues to trend liberal or if Christians refuse to get involved. I would guess that Christmas could be non-existent in public within ten years if the perfect storm of anti Christian variables materialized. Or the Atheist /SP Grinch may be stymied if things go the way of a perfect Christian storm.

    reva
     
  25. RightToLife

    RightToLife New Member

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    sad, but true post....
     

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