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Sunday, November 11. 2007

Bring Back Saturnalia?

In the pomo world anything is better than Christmas, and Saturnalia was much more fun - no rules - a festival of disinhibition like Mardi Gras or Bacchanalia.

So if we must have a Winter Solstice holiday, let's get rid of this "offensive-to-many" Jesus stuff and reach back to the Romans, before the church fathers got rid of all the pagan fun and replaced it with a Christ's Birthday Holy Day. Fort Collins, CO surely agrees.

Sorry - no room at that inn anymore.

Posted by Bird Dog in Religion at 12:09 | Comments (17) | Trackbacks (0)

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Ritual human sacrifice to devils revisited?

This is rather maccabe desire for the Lord's Day.

Fort Collin's citizen's propose no such thing.

Christmas will not deminish.
#1 Leag on 2007-11-11 13:42 (Reply)
Was being a bit facetious about their PC insanity.
#1.1 BD on 2007-11-11 13:52 (Reply)
Good catch, BD. Well said. PC insanity covers it perfectly.
#1.1.1 mila (Link) on 2007-11-11 18:05 (Reply)
The proposed multicultural considerations will only apply to some areas of Ft. Collins public displays IF it is passed.

Vote on proposal hasn't taken place.

Blog news? is often as undependable as MSM's.

Maccabe is the liturgy of the day.

Thanks for all your labors on MF, BD.
#2 Leag on 2007-11-11 14:29 (Reply)
The lights are lit, Leag. It's a done deal.
#2.1 mila (Link) on 2007-11-11 18:08 (Reply)
Really?

???*So if we must have a Winter Solstice holiday, let's get rid of this "offensive-to-many" Jesus stuff and reach back to the Romans, before the church fathers got rid of all the pagan fun and replaced it with a Christ's Birthday Holy Day. Fort Collins, CO surely agrees.*?????

That is not done even if they vote for proposals.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5737943,00.html

Good luck with your studies.
#2.1.1 Leag on 2007-11-11 18:25 (Reply)
Well, a very "Merry Christmas" from all of us here in over-the-top PC Fort Collins! I just love it when my town makes the news. Our city council seems to have their heads "in the clouds" (ahem...)...we have some serious loony-toons people out here. Denver does not have any trouble with their colored lights! They have a civic display that is out of this world.

We don't have a large ethnic population here in the Fort, maybe white guilt is part of the problem.

Don't mean to sound too pissed, but we recently moved OUT of the City of Fort Collins (also called the Choice City....?) after almost 25 years in the heart of Old Town....moved out to the county to escape the insanity. Getting to be as bad as Boulder down the road.
A recent idea from our city council: pass an ordinance forcing people to paint & repair their houses...in the interest of civil beauty. Our council must not have a lot of weighty issues on their collective mind...like poverty, jobs loss, economic downturns....our Food Bank is BEGGING for donations...and these fools want us to take care of that horrible peeling paint. GOOD GRIEF.
Sorry....I know flaming is rude, but this used to be a fairly fine place to live....been here in Northern Colorado for almost 30 years. And I hate to see the way things are going. Moved here from California to get away from that crap.
Time to move to Wyoming?
#3 mila (Link) on 2007-11-11 18:02 (Reply)
Fort Collins was not a less than likable University town till the lesbians took their tops off, with City Council's blessing.

Sharing yule time space with Jews and Africans is an improvement over that.
#3.1 Leag on 2007-11-11 18:33 (Reply)
ha ha ha....must have missed that event!

Point being...we are not "sharing" the Holiday Season with anyone anymore....the Holiday has been sterilized to PC neutrality in order to avoid offending anyone, anywhere, who may have differing views. This is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Christians should be allowed their traditions....Jews theirs, Muslims, etc. We all can have a day or two, a symbol or two...if we just practice tolerance of others.

No, proposals cannot legislate culture or mores. They can, however, repress people and make getting along more difficult.
And, BTW, all City-owned properties are covered by the ruling...Old Town Square and other Privately Owned properties are not controlled by the ruling/suggestions of the Holiday Decoration Committee (or whatever it is called exactly).

This kind of repression of American tradition in the name of PC will crush our culture into a sterile, The Sheep Look Up world.
#3.1.1 mila (Link) on 2007-11-11 22:16 (Reply)
Urban renewal can be a blight on us poor folks, no doubt.

Moving to the country is not such a bad thing, either.

I'm from Northern California hills long time ago, also.

Down here in Colorado Springs nobody is messin' with the chipped paint on my little crib, yet.

I'm getting your first comment about the lights, now.

White's all right...I'm partial to it.

They look nice atop a mennorah or strung upon a creche, too.

I'm sorry the goings on make you feel repressed and hope you have happy holidays and Merry Christmas.

Democracy is always messy but a hell of a lot of fun, methinks.
#3.1.1.1 Leag on 2007-11-12 10:25 (Reply)
As far as I know, everyone celebrates some sort of Winter Solstice. Maybe we should just take a census and make some proportion of decorations match the percentage of the population that follows that tradition. If a city has a 10% Jewish population, 10% of the decorations are menorahs or other appropriate symbols. If 100% of the local population is Christian, all symbols would be Christian. That sounds inclusive to me.

I have often wondered, reading stories like this, how the Pagans felt when watching their Holy Days perverted, taken over or simply cancelled by the upstart Christians.

Seems as if most people have a tendency to say "let's compromise and do it my way".
#4 TomP on 2007-11-11 18:26 (Reply)
As I understamd it, none of the Romans really believed in the Gods. They were more symbolic.
#4.1 BD on 2007-11-11 20:21 (Reply)
You may be right, BD, but as I recall, the disbelief was mainly limited to the intellectuals among the ruling classes. As you may know, the very word "pagan" is derived from "country dweller", i.e. "hick". The common folk appear to have believed in the Gods until (and pehaps, after) forced to accept Christianity by the ruling classes. I suppose you could view the pagans as the people who lived in the Classical version of "fly-over country". The military strongly favored Mithras, I gather that in many legions, the officers and many of the men participated in the rites of Mithras.

In short, there may have been a strong belief in the Gods, but the people who wrote about it didn't share it, so we don't see it.
#4.1.1 TomP on 2007-11-11 23:39 (Reply)
some of the emperors thought they WERE gods. that can happen to ya if you don't have to engage the Democrats every two to four years.
#4.1.2 buddy larsen on 2007-11-11 23:51 (Reply)
sort of like, "Let's you & him fight!"
#4.2 buddy larsen on 2007-11-11 20:27 (Reply)
A practical and reasonable suggestion, Tom. Based on that...it will never fly! :)
(how about running for Fort Collins City Council?)
#4.3 mila (Link) on 2007-11-11 22:24 (Reply)
Thanks for the nomination, mila, but I would be hard put to move more than about 100 miles from the ocean. Feel free to propose the idea, it's certainly in public domain as far as I am concerned! :o)
#4.3.1 TomP on 2007-11-11 23:43 (Reply)

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