• mercphilby@discuss.online
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    2 days ago

    I mean, today is stolen holiday, and Jesus never existed. So, it’s just another shitty day in Bethlehem because a bunch of rich cunts want to kill people.

    • bricklove
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      1 day ago

      I hate Christmas too but it’s not pagan if that’s what you meant by stolen.

        • bricklove
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          1 day ago

          It’s an internet discussion, if I linked a bunch of scholarly articles, like the creator of the video did, no one would actually read them. It’s a quick introduction for anyone who is curious. Also, this topic has come up on /r/askhistorians several times and has been answered by some of the same scholars referenced in the video.

          • mercphilby@discuss.online
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            1 day ago

            Everyone knows Jesus was not born on December 25th, and yeah, it was stolen. I can make a YouTube video too. 🙄

            • bricklove
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              24 hours ago

              That doesn’t make it a stolen pagan holiday. Are you a professor of Roman art and Archeology like Steven Hijmans, one of the scholars cited in the video? The medium of presentation doesn’t make the information invalid.

              • expr@programming.dev
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                14 hours ago

                It’s far from cut and dry, and there are multiple schools of thought and conflicting interpretations. Steven Hijmans is a revisionist. Traditionally, it’s indeed believed that it was originally a pagan holiday in celebration of Sol Invictus.

                Steven Hijmans presents an alternative interpretation of the various texts that challenges this understanding. He may or may not be correct, but nevertheless, one should not assume that his views reflect a consensus among historians.

                • bricklove
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                  3 hours ago

                  Thank you for engaging with the sources I was providing and not dismissing them outright. I was in the Christmas is pagan camp for a while and found the idea appealing because I dislike how Christianity homogenized everything and stomped out a bunch of unique cultures that we’ll likely never know about.

                  Then I started seeing some experts in the field trying to dispel the idea and I started to have doubts. Now I think Christmas was created independently and then it absorbed local customs as Christianity spread (that’s just my history enthusiast opinion though).

              • mercphilby@discuss.online
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                24 hours ago

                No scholars have ever gotten it wrong, or argued for something in favor of what their beliefs are, despite it being a well documented topic.