why do we have the same songs for X-MAS?

I have heard songs for X-MAS in France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy...

It's all the time the same, what is funny is the fact we have the feeling these songs are traditionnally sing since a long time in our own countries.

C .... is for the Candles upon the Christmas Tree,
H ..... is for the Happiness with all the Family,
R ..... is for the Reindeer prancing by the window pane.
I ..... is for Icing on the cake as sweet as sugar cane,
S ..... is for the stocking hanging on the chimney wall,
T .....is for the Toys around the Tree so Tall,
M ..... is for the mistletoe where everyone has kissed,
A ......is for the Angels who make up the Christmas list,
S .....is for Old Santa who makes every kid his pet...

..so be good and he'll bring you everything in your.......
Christmas Alphabet!

Yeah, when you are a kid, you wait and wait and wait for your toys and nice food!

Christmas is not about toys, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus!

Christmas is about USING the birth of Jesus as an excuse to sell toys.

Most of the most popular modern christmas songs (not carols) were written by the classic broadway song writers, many of whom weren't Christian at all, they were Jewish.

White Christmas... Irving Berlin; The Christmas Song... Mel Tormé; Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow... Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne; Silver Bells... Alan Livingston; even Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer... Johnny Marks.

Christmas... the "Season" belongs to everyone.

<<Christmas is about the birth of Jesus!>>

Ed: !

Lighten up pal!!! We are all aware of what the word CHRISTMAS means!

Just what is it with you guys now over there across the Pond? That Guy who shall be nameless must have brainwashed many of you into some sort of evangelistic "Christian" fundamentalism that will turn you all into deadpan Puritans sucking all the joy out of a life which to us over here appears to get battier by the day.

Damian,

You should lighten up. Ed has long since established him/herself as imbalanced. You just want an excuse to vent your Euro-centred "we're so much more clever than the Americans" drivel?

Christmas is a modern festival, widely enjoyed by people of diffrerent reiligions for different reasons. It remains popular despite the attempts of the politically correct to diminish it in favour of other religious festivals of no interest to anyone outside their own religion. Long live Christmas, just hold off on the carols until Dec 15 at least!

Most of the internationally recognized Christmas songs are religiously inspired or traditional. Silent night, Come All Ye Faithful, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, The First Noel, Deck the Halls, Joy to the World, We Three Kings, Away in a Manger, (or in Sweden ) Santa Lucia, and perhpas others specific to certain countries.

As Christmas is enjoyed by people of many faiths it is not surprising that many Christmas songs created on Broadway were written by Jews. A few of these (Rudolph, Jingle Bells) are widely recognized, but most are heard more in North America, and perhaps Japan, than elsewhere.

You tell them Steve K...

It's nice to know that no matter what side of the spectrum we North Americans are from we all still get irked by the European superiority complex.

"Christmas is about the birth of Jesus!" writes Easterner but you have to ask yourself "Is it?" Here's what Alicia R Paul of Addison Texas has to say.

"Christmas, Easter, Sunday and Halloween were around when Jesus walked this planet. Did He or His apostles celebrate ANY of them? NO! Why are you? Because for centuries, your uneducated ancestors were misled by the Catholic Church and it's daughters. Now you too can read. You have no excuse.

"Research further. ... Christmas is NOT about Jesus in any way shape or form. No matter how hard you try. It is about the pagan worshiping of Nimrod, Noah's grandson ... a great hunter and great warrior. When he died, people thought ... he must be equally as great in death and worshiped him on his birthday, the winter solstace. ... To appease him, they burned yule logs and decorated trees.

"Emperor Constantine wanted to keep his favorite pagan holidays when he adopted Christianity, so he turned the Judaic worshiping of the Jewish Messiah into a perverted religion full of pagan practice such as Christmas, Easter (...), Sun Day (...), Halloween (...), etc. So he threw in some stuff about Jesus to make the Christians happy and packaged it around Jewish holidays ...

"Now you know the REAL truth in a nutshell."

This is a review of the book "The First Christmas" by Paul Maier at Amazon. Is there any truth to this? It surely must be significant that the evidence points to March not December for the birth of Jesus.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0825433304/002-7936348-7896830?v=glance

For more of the same ...

"The old Celtic festivals are still remembered today, if in different forms. Samhain is now commonly celebrated as Halloween. May Day, the modern observance of Beltane, is celebrated throughout the world, and Christmas is not actually the birth day of Christ, but a date chosen by the Early Christian Church and celebrated instead of (to replace) the older observance of the winter solstace. The early church hoped to convert greater numbers of people to the new faith by absorbing the primary pagan holidays into its own ritual tradition."

http://www.geocities.com/~huathe/cosmology.html

Of course you could well argue that although this may be true the festival has become about the birth of Jesus. That would be a fair point to make I s'pose. Anyway I am rather deviating from discussing language so I'll shut up now.

"Long live Christmas, just hold off on the carols until Dec 15 at least!"

Yeah I agree. By the time Christmas actually rolls around you're almost sick of it. And ban that Wham song too.

Steve K,
Thanks for the compliment >:-0

Oh, Damian, I'm not an Evangelist, but an Orthodox Christian...just so you know

Ed,


I don't really for other countries but X-Mas is in France only about a great Diner where you stay 6/7 hours at table, gifts for all of the people and absolutly nothing about Jesus or something like that. Even muslims, chinese people celebrate X-Mas in France.

Where are you from Ed, is in your country Jesus so important?

>>"Christmas is about the birth of Jesus!" writes Easterner<<

Did I really write that? I don't remember, too bad for me perhaps, should I consult a psychiatrist? I thought Ed and I were two different persons... I'm not sure where he is actually from, but I know he speaks Bulgarian, while I speak Hungarian, so one thing we have in common is to be affiliated to an Eastern European culture, albeit a different one. :-)

By the way, back to the original topic, religious people do remember the birth of Jesus at Christmas, but there are others for whom it is more of a secular holiday and a good occasion to enjoy each other's company. Even in the Middle Ages it was sort of a popular holiday, though the Christmas tree was not always a necessary ingredient to it, being introduced around the 18th century. Various countries celebrate it in their own way, but it is also an universal holiday everywhere where a form of Christianity was traditionally dominant. In my country it is essentially a family holiday, a time to spend with your beloved ones in peace for a couple of days, and for my family particularly an occasion to come together, because we live pretty much apart. It does have a calm, "inspired" atmosphere for me, especially when there is snow (last time there wasn't, hopefully it will be different this year). At any rate I think it is spoiled by all that shopping spree before. I never shop a lot for Christmas, and at home we also have a festive but simple meal. For me it is essentially about togetherness and not about presents.

As for songwriters who were of Jewish descent, why should we be concerned with their ascendancy? The fact that we sing all those songs now is all that matters, doesn't it?

>>religious people do remember the birth of Jesus at Christmas, but there are others for whom it is more of a secular holiday and a good occasion to enjoy each other's company.<<

I think these two things do not necessarily exclude each other. :-)

Easterner,


You are right, these 2 things do not necessarily exclude each other. I think it's the same in many european countries. It's the occasion for being with your family. In France you usually have an important dinner for a lonf time, you eat and you talk and talk at table.

It's unteresting to notice that in english you have Christmas (american version?) ans Santa Claus (british? and german of course). In french wa don't speak about Jesus because we say "Noël". The religious calebration in France are the 3 kings but X-mas is not. The 3 kings are celebrated in Spain and it's much more than X-mas for that last country. In Italy, La Befana is much more important that X-Mas.


That's true X_mas was et the beginnig not about Jesus.