Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! Happy Winter Solstice! Or Whatever!

 General, Religion  No Responses »
Dec 212013
 

First of all, take whatever seasons greetings you would like from the list above, and ignore the others.

And now onto the ranting.

Reading some US-based Atheist blogs, it appears that our friends on the other side of the pond can sometimes get a little wound up about what seasons greetings they receive. To the extent that a woman has been punched for saying “Happy Holidays” – hopefully the assailant will get prosecuted for ‘aggravated assault’ or something equivalent. After all getting physical with someone who has deliberately insulted you is wrong; getting physical with someone who has just wished you well is downright evil.

Except for occasional outbreaks of gross stupidity such as Birmingham’s winterval controversy, people in the UK are just a little bit more sensible about the whole situation. In particular christmas is not seen as an exclusively christian event – to the extent that I’m seen as a little weird when I wish people “Happy Winter Solstice” (and I’m happy to be thought of as weird!) even though people know I’m not a christian.

Christmas isn’t a christian event? Of course not. Even christians don’t do the religious thing over the whole period; for most there is just a short christmas midnight mass and then it is back to eating and drinking too much in the company of family. If I were the christian god, I’d be shouting “Get on your knees you miserable sinners” the whole period.

And bear in mind that some of us get confused as well: I recently wished someone a “Happy Winchester” as a seasons greeting.

The Origin And Importance Of Christmas …

 General, Religion  No Responses »
Dec 032013
 

Before those po-faced spoilsports start jumping up and down screaming that Christmas is supposed to be all about the baby jesus, let’s take a look at the origins of Christmas…

Turns out that it might not be an exclusively Christian thing after all – despite “his” name being right there in the name – as it seems there have been other religious festivals at around the same time of year. And long before Christianity.

After all the puritans did oppose Christmas as being too “pagan”. And there is a lesson to be learnt from the mistakes made during the English Civil War – however long ago it may have been – whilst the ultra-religious are perfectly free to believe that Christmas is all about religion, it is plain that the overwhelming majority of the population are more interested in the party aspect of Christmas.

No harm in that. There’s a lot to be said for having a party or two with friends, co-workers, and family in the “bleak mid-winter”. No reason to introduce any religious poppycock if that isn’t your thing.

But where did this notion of paganism in association with Christmas come from? It turns out that having a mid-winter festival has been popular for ages :-

  1. Yule is a Germanic mid-winter festival that has vestiges in our current celebration of Christmas such as the Yule log and probably the Christmas tree.
  2. Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honour of the god Saturn marked with revelries and gift giving.
  3. The Winter Solstice has probably been “celebrated” as a brief time of plenty before the famine months of winter begin, for thousands of years. Holly, Ivy, Mistletoe are all aspects of Christmas with a potential pagan past.

There is a tradition that the date of Christmas was deliberately chosen to match the dates of existing religious festivals; whether this is true or not is almost irrelevant. What is almost certainly true is that the importance of the christian festival of Christmas owes a great deal to earlier mid-winter festivals.

After all Christians are masters of the art of syncretism.

What Should Be The Age Of Consent?

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 172013
 

Today there has been a bit of a “discussion” on the age of consent thanks to a suggestion from Professor John Aston that we should perhaps consider lowering the age of consent to 15 in the light of just how many young people indulge in illegal acts. The government in a classic demonstration of wooly thinking has ruled this out.

But there’s no harm in having the discussion … and I’d be perfectly happy if the age of consent were raised to 18, or even 30!

The trouble with a simplistic age of consent barrier is that it criminalises consensual sexual activity between two teenagers; to the extent that they could find themselves on the sex offenders register. As adults we could brand the behaviour of such teenagers as irresponsible, and immature, but criminal? That seems a bit extreme.

Simply lowering the age of consent to puberty – when a child becomes an adult in physical terms – is also wrong as it leaves those teenagers open to exploitation by sexual predators.

What seems sensible is to adopt measures similar to Sweden’s where an age of consent is a fuzzier thing. Let us pick an age – such as 18 – as the age of consent, but where either participant is under that age of consent, then the act is only criminal where the other party is more than 2 years older.

One other thing that struck me about the discussion in the media today – there is a wide assumption that the only sexual predators hunting young people are men. Yet there are female abusers, and by casual assumptions we are making it harder for the victims of female abusers to come forward.

The Unknown War Memorial

 General, History  1 Response »
Nov 102013
 

There is war memorial near to where my parents live which is a little bit special. It is a memorial put up by local people, but unlike other it is not a memorial to the local people who died in the first world war (which were later amended to include those from the second world war) but to commemorate all those young men who marched past on their way to the battlefields of the first world war.

You see, the place where it is overlooks what is now the M3 but used to be a smaller road leading to the same place … the port of Southampton which was the embarkation point of so many young men heading to the battlefields of the first world war.

Shawford Down War Memorial

Whilst it is no grand memorial, it does deserve to be a little better known.

Remembrance Sunday Thoughts

 General, History, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 102013
 

Today (at least it is when I’m writing this) is Remembrance Sunday in the UK; traditionally a day to commemorate the sacrifice of ordinary men in the two world wars.

I did not watch the ceremony at The Cenotaph, or attend any of the more local ceremonies, although I have in the past. But one thing that is a noticeable change since my childhood – there is a much greater emphasis on the sacrifices made by our armed forces in all wars up to and including the present.

Fair enough; I don’t have a problem with commemorating the war dead from any war, but the the armed forces already have a day – Armed Forces Day – and Remembrance Sunday is special. It is special because it remembers the two world wars when ordinary men were called to service in their droves; whereas other wars involved soldiers, sailors, and airmen who had chosen to be shot at for a living.

Before WWI, there was nothing like Remembrance Sunday despite all the wars that the UK fought before – nothing for the Boer War, the Crimean War, the Napoleonic Wars, and nothing before. There were war memorials constructed – as a resident of Portsmouth, I can visit an unusually large number, but as for national ceremonies … excluding the burial of heros such as Nelson, they had to wait until after WWI.

Perhaps we need to move the Armed Forces Day to next to Remembrance Sunday to more clearly distinguish between the two days.

Perhaps we also need to make the commemorations somewhat less military in nature – encourage those whose relatives served in the two world wars to attend in place of them. After all the number of world war veterans is dwindling; it won’t be too long before none of them are left, and it would be a great shame to leave Remembrance Sunday to the politicians and the present-day military.

 

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