[plug] Some Christmas cheer! Hooray!

[Leon Brooks]

On Tuesday 21 December 2004 13:38, skribe wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 12:56, Leon Brooks wrote:
>> On Monday 13 December 2004 14:35, Senectus . wrote:
>>> I do not celebrate Christmas

>> You're a good Christian then.

> I'm sure the several billion or so Hindus, Jews, Daoists, Buddists
> and Atheists will be happy to hear that they're good Christians
> because they don't celebrate Christmas. =)

Actually, I suspect that they _won't_, on the whole, be happy to be told 
that. (-:

OTOH, I know of at least one Buddhist who does celebrate Christmas (not 
sure why), and several devout Atheists, one pair of whom (a married 
couple - again, not sure why) do it "because it's the one time of the 
year when it's safe to be nice to people".

If you walk through the list of "Christian" things, quite a lot of them 
have totally non-Christian origins; forex (and if you get offended, 
stop reading :-):

 * the cross with the ring on it, supposedly Christ's crown of thorns,
   is the old-style T of the pagan god Tammuz, son of Nimrod, and the
   ring represents Nimrod in the form of the invincible sun ("Sol
   invictus"); the cruciform T also corresponds to the "lens effects"
   generated by the sun and atmosphere at sunrise and sunset;

 * Easter is a pagan moon and ferticility festival, including the
   lunar dates for it, and the eggs, rabbits and other fertility
   symbols;

 * the fish represents Dagon, another pagan sun-god who assumed the
   form of a giant fish to swim under the world at night and prepare
   for the next day's sunrise;

 * the Eucharist is taken straight from the Egyptian triumvirate of
   Isis, Horus, Seb and continues to bear their initials and often
   the original sun-rays on its round solar face today;

 * said Eucharist is often served from or displayed in front of a
   gold plate, also representing the sun and also 100% pagan;

 * the evergreen Christmas tree (in Oz?) is derived from the Norse
   world-tree and even more directly from assorted tree-worship
   cultures who believed that their deities really inhabited a
   specific tree; when they won a battle they would typically
   bring the heads and bodies of the vanquished to their god's
   tree, hanging the former from the branches and laying the
   latter against the trunk as sacrifices - the origin of the red
   baubles and presents on/at today's trees;

 * you really don't want to know about the angel at the top;

 * Vestal Virgins are taken directly, name and all, from the pagan
   cultus privatus of Vesta;

 * the Papal keys we get from Janus and Cybele (Janus was a god of
   locks and doorways, whose moniker wound up bestowed on janitors
   around the world);

 * well, you get the idea...

I think the point is that symbols can be kind of misleading, whether 
someone is a Christan or not is not exactly independent of the symbols 
or the professed affiliation but really you can never be sure until the 
rubber meets the road and desperate situations arise.

Back in the land of computers [bet you didn't think *any* of this was 
going to be on topic!], Open Source is terrifying to the "established 
religions" precisely because we're more prone to judging people and 
companies by what they actually do than by their advertising, company 
reports, stock performance or regular messages from random CXOs. This 
is why we're still willing to give Sun a chance even with Scott at the 
helm and after badmouthing Red Hat and caving in to MS on patents: 
they've written and contributed a lot of code to our community.

However, we also have lots of people who cry out the digital equivalent 
of "I'm a Christian" (more literally "I'm a Penguinista") but when it 
comes down to being there and doing stuff to make Open Source happen, 
be it writing code or putting in the hours and words and miles and 
patience needed to gain for it the wide acceptance which the patent and 
marketing-behemoth threats make it necessary to have, or whatever needs 
doing - even as little as standing up once and saying "Yes, I use it 
and it's good" at the risk of being shouted down and ridiculed - 
they're not there.

Think about that during PLUG's nominations and stick up your hand. (-:

Cheers; Leon