Talk:Christmas

Religious exclusivity

This article seems to be solely focused on the Christian side of Christmas, hardly discussing the historical origins being a Roman and pagan holiday but rather connecting that to the bible. This shows an overwhelming amount of religious bias that should be investigated. Christmas originally was pagan and Roman, was appropriated by the Christians, then has been removed from the religion and turned into a secular celebration of giving and community 101.188.130.15 (talk) 03:29, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Specify exactly where your contested content is, otherwise it's just an unsubstantiated and unhelpful rant. Also, provide reliable sources for your claims. For example, I could counter that the introductory paragraph already acknowledges that Christmas is celebrated "culturally by many non-Christians", and subsequent intro paragraphs go into detail about the corresponding winter solstice date on the Roman calendar and the pre-Christian themes and origins of various customs. Every definition in reliable sources that you can find will almost surely define Christmas succinctly and foremost as the commemoration of the birth of Christ, so that is what we should indeed reflect. Remember that we are a worldwide encyclopedia, and need to put forth the definitions and descriptions of the nature of Christmas that are shared around the world. The "secular celebration of giving and community" may be true of some circles, communities, and nations (i.e. USA), but not of others (i.e. Armenia, Russia). But the "religious commemoration of Jesus Christ's birth" is a universally applicable definition of Christmas.

As for the statement that "Christmas originally was pagan and Roman", that's just untrue. The holiday of Christmas has always been Christian, you seem to be conflating the falsity that "Christmas originally was pagan and Roman" with the fact that Christmas absorbed (whether intentionally or inadvertently) many traditions from concurrent and otherwise unrelated holidays. Those two statements don't equate to the same thing. Pagans and Romans never had a celebration called Christmas, nor was there ever any one pagan and/or prechristian Roman celebration that encompassed all the pre-Christian customs that Christmas presently does. Describing Christmas as what it is, a holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, doesn't insinuate that everything about Christmas is Christian or that anyone celebrating it must be Christian, and in fact our article already explains all of this in detail. If you have specific concerns, or specific proposals, present them. Otherwise, asking for a vague "investigation" isn't going to accomplish anything.— Crumpled Fire • contribs • 00:39, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 December 2022

Section on Controversies contains the statement that “Christmas Day did not become a public holiday in Scotland until 1958.” The date makes no sense and contradicts the 1871 date given in the Wikipedia link provided in the above quoted line. The date should be changed to be consistent. 23.242.167.156 (talk) 19:13, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

• Good catch. It seems to have been added in Special:Diff/754444500. I can't access the book source, but it was probably a typo. Ovinus (talk) 23:06, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

bias in discussion of origins of christmas

The sections titled "Calculation Hypothesis" and "Solstice Date Hypothesis" contain no counterarguments and directly quote one historian's subjective assessment that it is "a thoroughly viable hypothesis." In contrast, the section titled "History of Religions Hypothesis" does contain counterarguments, and in fact counterarguments make up the majority of the text in this section, some of which is repeated text from the previous sections. It is obvious which hypothesis the writers of the article support, therefore the article is biased. This complaint has already been made under the topic "religious exclusivity," but instead of responding to that criticism, an editor decided that scolding an anonymous member of the public for not providing specific examples was more appropriate than considering whether there was a problem with the article. I'm writing to show that the public is more than capable of giving a specific description of whats wrong with this article. The question is whether christian wikipedia editors are actually capable of recognizing their own bias. 183.108.104.61 (talk) 00:08, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

The two hypotheses presented after the Calculation Hypothesis section appear clearly framed as counter-arguments themselves to Calculation. Counter-arguments to counter-arguments are appropriate and scholarly. Furthermore I am aware of no compelling reason why Christians would favor one hypothesis over another. Finally, if you see a problem with this section, you are welcome to do the research yourself to improve it. Jtrevor99 (talk) 00:57, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 December 2022

[copyvio redacted] [link redacted] Shurahbeelhamid (talk) 16:27, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: @Shurahbeelhamid: I'm redacting the blogspot link you cited as a source. More importantly, this information is out of scope for this article. —C.Fred (talk) 16:31, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

I've also had to redact the text about the 2022 bomb cyclone because of a copyright violation. —C.Fred (talk) 16:33, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 December 2022

"Replace History title with Origin of Christmas and add the section below under the new title" The true origins of Christmas stem from both the pagan and Roman cultures. The Romans actually celebrated two holidays in the month of December. The first was Saturnalia, which was a two-week festival honoring their god of agriculture Saturn. On December 25th, they celebrated the birth of Mithra, their sun god. Also in December, in which the darkest day of the year falls, the pagan cultures lit bonfires and candles to keep the darkness at bay. The Romans also incorporated this tradition into their own celebrations. As Christianity spread across Europe, the Christian clergy were not able to curb the pagan customs and celebrations. Since no one knew Jesus’s date of birth, they adapted the pagan ritual into a celebration of his birthday. ERobayoCa (talk) 01:27, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

References

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. RealAspects (talk) 07:38, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@RealAspects: Whether or not one agrees with it, it's very clear what @ERobayoCa is requesting: (1) change the section title "History" to "Origin of Christmas"; (2) add the remainder of the text as a paragraph in that section. The Cite problems are due to: (a) two ISBNs being given in the same parm with a comma&space between (this should be a pipe "|"); (b) the access-dates being given as mm/dd/yyyy instead of yyyy-mm-dd. – _•Raven  ^.talk 04:43, 18 February 2023 (UTC)