I liked the opening. It was very fair and thoughtful, but you spent too much time on the whole solstice thing. Christmas has nothing to do with the solstice. Christians celebrate the birth of Christ and that's it. The people who set the date may have had ulterior motives, but they would have dared not explain them to the Christian masses.

It never ceases to amaze me how people try to project the religion of the date setters onto the masses, most of whom could give a flip about the motives at the time. We all know now, but that doesn't make us worship the sun on Christmas. It Doesn't make us worship the moon if we have Christian activities on Monday or worship Thor's Brother Tiu when we have bible study on Wednesday, or worship Odin on Wednesday or Thor on Thursday or his mother, Frigga, on Friday.

Your mention of Sunday was just a plain non sequitur when it comes to Christianity. The day is about a weekly commemoration of Christ's resurrection, not the sun. With this logic, we'd be into Nordic religion had we chosen any other day but Monday or Saturday. Here. some official fact finding was sorely needed.

And speaking of Saturday, maybe you should also check out other origins of Santa. Here's one that points to Turkey. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6655033

The way you wrapped up Santa cemented your argument, but it was the first such theory I had ever heard. So the episode was good at first, but was soon hopelessly fixated on "the real story". It just became fodder for Christmas haters. Christmas haters pride themselves on regurgitating stuff like this without understanding the context, and often willfully distort it.

I realize that you're not secular, and not antagonistic toward Christmas, but defining Christmas is replete with sophistry and unofficial history, all of which must be carefully explained. Everyone feels enlightened speaking of solstice and paganism, but few people look deeper and analyze it. On my last podcast, www.gopexposed.com , a woman blasted Christmas, using the word, pagan, feeling herself so intelligent, and probably didn't even know what pagan meant. Sure, there's story behind the story, but that's just it! It is NOT the story. Paganism is just a footnote, and often an erroneous one. Certainly it's a malapropism since at the time, pagan meant valley dweller and all sun worshippers didn't live in valleys.

How unbalanced was your approach to this topic? Well, the only two things you debunked in the minds of your listeners was the true meaning of Christmas and the origin of Santa. You spent most of your time cementing the notion that Christians just don't know what they're doing.

Secret sun-worshipping popes, yes, but this was never ever true for the masses of Christians. And especially now, with our numbers so large and the focus completely away from any semblance of sun-worship or even harvest and killing the fatted calf, it makes the solstice origin for the date even less significant.

Thank you for your comment Jeff. I appreciate the time and intelligence behind it.

I agree that Christian people do not worship the sun at Christmas, (or at any other time) the fact remains though that many people (both religious and secular) are somewhat ignorant that the date coincides with a festival celebrating the return of light to the northern hemisphere. More importantly, they are ignorant of the huge extent to which this doctrine of sun worship infects almost all major belief systems that purport to teach man a spiritual path. So sadly, yes I do think a large section of people purporting to be Christian are in fact ignorant of many aspects of their own faith.

Even within the Christian church the influence of Freemasonry and of secret societies has become readily apparent. Whether the propagators of this doctrine choose to share it openly with the masses has little effect on their ability to conceal aspects of it within the theological body of Christianity as a whole. The point of the show (perhaps not fully realised) was to point out to people the extent to which the mystery religions infect the world around us and also (at times) aspects of the Christian faith.

I was referring merely to the etymology of the word 'Sunday' not making any kind of comment about the Sabbath in general. I was most certainly not stating that it being named after the sun inferred worship of the solar body by Christians.

You are correct that my worldview is not secular and on reflection I may have conceded moral ground in addressing the podcast primarily to secular people. I did attempt to balance this by interviewing a priest about the meaning of Christmas and stating that my own belief was Christian.

I am not in the business of proselytizing, or attempting to tell anyone else what it is that they should believe. I am not stating that is what you were doing, merely explaining my own intentions in producing this particular show.

A celebration of God sending his son into the world is of course entirely justified, although we both know that Christmas is not kept in this way by a very large segment of its celebrants.

John, I listened to you podcast today. Very good production values and recordings of the people in Huddersfield.

But, for me, as a thick Englishman, uneducated and not able to remember all the names of the God's etc.. I couldn't really understand what you were getting at other than that Christmas has little to Jesus.

You seemed angry that most people just enjoyed a year end piss up and were ignorant of the sola significence.

All I would say is that life and times move on and these days many people look for an excuse to party and forget about their worries and stresses of life.

You ask how Jesus would look at us now - well surely any Godlike being has the power to change how we look at things. Perhaps he or she just enjoys a good laugh, much as any so called God enjoys inflicting so much pain and suffering on his so called innocent people.

Richard Vobes

Thanks for the comment Richard. It confirmed some of my own thoughts about where the show fell down. I posted a podcast response which is here: http://www.dissidentvox.com/blog/_archives/2007/1/31/2698674.html

One thing I would add, is that I don't think God enjoys inflicting suffering. I think much of the suffering we endure as a race is self-inflicted. I also don't think he atempts to change us unless we want him to do so. Though I guess he could force the issue. Then again that wouldn't be very loving would it! :)

Regards
John B

Carols are the spirit of Christmas and spread cheer and happiness along with Christmas Trees