Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Christmas break

Mrs GOB and I are taking a brief break, removed from computer terminals, and thus there will be no further posts on this blog until about Wednesday 29 December.

I see that various authorities are complaining about the de-Christianisation of Christmas, but I'm afraid I don't have much sympathy with that. There was a mid-winter festival long before Jesus Christ was born, and the justification for it was the fact that, somewhere around 21 December, the days stop getting shorter and start getting longer.

Back in east Africa, where the human race apparently began, I don't suppose the seasons mattered very much. There was plenty of food all year round -- that's why human beings started to increase in numbers. But once we got into Europe, and started to experience some serious winters, the length of days, and the amount of sunshine, started to have some real significance.

Human beings didn't need to be very smart or observant to find the crucial point in the year when the sun shone for a little bit longer than it had done a week or so earlier. (Technically, this is the winter solstice.) True, winter had not yet finished; but with the sun regaining its strength, so to speak, it was time for a party.

My guess is that this celebration began thousands of years ago, long before the creation of written records. Certainly we do know that, as soon as written records began, there was a mid-winter festival. The Romans called it Saturnalia; the Germanic tribes called it Yule.

When Christianity arrived on the scene, the early Christians were unaware of precisely when Jesus was born, since the Gospels don't give a date. But it wasn't long before the Christian authorities decided that it would be a good plan to latch on to some of the popular pagan festivals, which they promptly proceeded to do. Hence any grumbles from today's Christians that Christmas is being de-Christianised should be countered by a gentle and polite reminder that the mid-winter fun and games were being celebrated long before the Church joined the bandwagon.

I still think it's a good time for feasting and drinking, even in this electrically-lit and centrally heated age.

See you before long.

4 comments:

jatin said...

Alcoholism is disease, no matter what. Beating this awful oppression isn't simply possible, anyway especially stimulated by society. The repulsiveness of alcoholism has demolished people and families for a significant long time, and in case you know about someone with this misery, you know firsthand that the issue doesn't vanish.
alcohol rehab florida
florida rehab center

michael said...

So there are two principle regions I need to discuss on the site that are going to assist you with getting the muck you need. First up, you have the mangas: these are singular funny cartoons – otherwise called doujin – which have somewhere in the range of 10 and 100 pictures pages inside. They're accessible in a lot of dialects including Japanese, Korean, Chinese and English, albeit English is by all accounts the most upheld language at this moment. At the point when you click on a manga, you'll see the entirety of the related labels, characters and the arrangement that it's appended to – just as the choice to peruse it legitimately from the site or download it to your hard drive. The doujinshi I examined all hosted their exhibitions facilitated by third-get-together has, yet you can peruse it legitimately from YesPornPlease without any issues.The subsequent region to observe is the arrangement page: this is the place various deliveries from a similar assortment are packaged together. For example, in case you're searching for Pokemon doujinshi, Simply-Hentai.com has barely short of 1,000 manga for you to appreciate in one advantageous area! Different arrangement incorporate High School DxD, Persona 5 and even Overwatch! Get the job done to say that regardless of who your preferred character is from a film, anime show or computer game, Simply-Hentai.com likely has some doujinshi for you to chow down on. I simply love the sheer size of the file here to be straightforward: amount is a major thing with regards to hentai and these people have an incredible library that you'll battle to appreciate even 1% of the substance from. One thing I've learned throughout the most recent year is that anime nerds sure ability to put an extraordinary assortment of muck together!
yespornplease
yespornplease.com

waylanmarx said...

The short-term loan is the Payday Loan Instant Approval, which is given for the period of one or two weeks only as you must make the loan repayment when you get your monthly salary. The aim of short-term loans is to be helpful for those people who have the tight budget and can’t cope with the sudden financial problems.

ikatejone said...

At the point when you click on a manga, you'll see the entirety of the related labels, characters and the arrangement that it's appended to – just as the choice to peruse it legitimately from the site or download it to your hard drive.
Roofing Contractor Services In Cedar Park TX