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The whole timing of Christmas is suspect. There is no evidence that Jesus was born at (or shortly after) the winter solstice, but there is plenty of evidence of pagan winter solstice celebrations. As it has done with other festivals in many places since, the early Christians just took a pre-existing celebration and rebranded it as the celebration of the birth of Jesus.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Tomorrow night I will celebrate Sunturn (aka. winter solstice) with friends, the way we have done the last 15-20 years. This year we have to stay up late: The exact time for lifting our glasses is past midnight, at UTC 3:28 (which is 4:38 local time). Every year we watch the "Rare Exports Inc." movie - if you haven't seen it, try to get an opportunity to. It is great!
For Easter, there is less discussion about the right season, although Jews and Christians differ in their ways to calculate it, so the celebrations may be weeks apart. But then: The reasons for celebration is quite different in the two religions, so there is no logical reason why they should be synchronized. But: The great majority of cultures that experience any sort of winter season, has celebrated some sort of "spring feast", that nature and life wakes up again.
Here in Norway, Easter never (at least for the last three generations) was considered a great religious feast. Even in my childhood, everybody went to church at Christmas, noone at Easter, except for those who go every Sunday. People go up in the mountains to ski on the last remains of snow. In the south, they take their boat out on the fjord. Ask kids what they think of as "Easter symbols": They will say "Chickens!" Eggs. Marzipan. Branches of sprouting birch and pussy willow - the Norwegian word for catkins is "goslings", known by any four-year-old to be an important element of Easter.
While there are still people around here trying to claim Youle as a Christian celebration - they are fewer ever year - I can't remember anyone claiming monopoly on Easter as a religious feast. Even going back to my grandparents and great grandparents, photo albums and that sort of things have no indications of any church activity, but lots about skiing, cottage life, boat trips to the small islands.
Another celebration: I spent a year in the USA when 17-18 years old, as was surprised that they celebrated new year as a religious feast. I had never heard of that in Norway, not a word in that direction. So I asked what made it a reason to celebrate, an was met with a strange look: Don't you know? Don't you know that it is Jesus' Circumcision Day? I have to admit: I had never ever heard that mentioned before, and here in Norway, not until this day. It must be said that circumcision was practically unknown in Norway at that time; I knew it as word when I was a boy, but when someone told me, at around 10-12 years, what it really meant, I first refused to believe it, that anyone would do anything as crazy as that! So using Jesus' GM day the basis for celebration wasn't very strong, and if someone had been promoting it, I guess we would have responded with an "Ouchh!"
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Celebrating Jesus' circumcision day is something I never heard of before. It strikes me as odd, but then most religious customs seem odd to non-believers.
Re Christmas/Yule/Sunturn/Saturnalia/..., this just reinforces my point that early Christians simply repurposed an existing holiday.
There is an intimate tie between Easter and Passover (Pesach, in Hebrew). The date of Easter is calculated as the Sunday after the first full moon after March 21. But wait - this is not the real moon, but a calculated moon known as the Paschal moon. In Hebrew, Easter is known as Pascha, obviously from the same root.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I've lived in the USA my whole life and grew up Catholic. I've never heard a religious reason for New Year's Day until you mentioned it just now.
On a side note, there is a medically valid reason for waiting the Jewish prescribed number of days for circumcision. It's been a long time, but I think it deals with a perfect balance between immune system development being far enough along and something else.
Bond
Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
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Richard Andrew x64 wrote: Thousands of years ago, people in east Europe thought that evergreen trees had magic powers and that this is what enabled them to stay green throughout the winter.
They thought that by bringing a bow of the tree into their homes, they would benefit from the tree's magic powers.
Yep, you got it.  The practice of fostering nature is fundamental to people who practice Paganism. I have to wonder if Christmas trees would exist without the Pagans. It's funny that Pagan customs are embraced during a Christian holiday.
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If you go to "Christian" societies in Africa, you might be surprised by how much of the old tribal religions has been integrated into Christian practices, and are still alive today. They call themselves Christians (well, I guess that they have no choice, if they want to interact with white man), but lots of their practices would not be accepted in a Western all-white church.
That is not only Africa. Even in North America will natives, living their daily lives in a modern, industrialized society, honor sprits and powers that are remote from the Bible. They practice their transition rites from child to adult, with a lot of religious elements, and the religion is not Christianity. You will find the same in Latin and South America: Even if the village has a church, and the village people attend it, there are plenty of rituals of religious nature outside the church, both in a physical and religious sense.
In Norway, it was discovered in the late 1800s, that high up in a valley (Setesdalen, if my memory is correct), there were still people making sacrifice to the old Norse gods, like Odin ant Thor. They knew very well that the Christian church was much against it, so they had kept it secret for several hundred years, but continued the practice until it was discovered. As they rightfully feared: The practice was forced to stop. Freedom of religion does not go as far as to making sacrifices to Odin and Thor.
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Well, you can avoid all that worry about ungrounded, unfused electric wires wrapped around a tree standing in a bowl of water by....
... using real candles, which is what people traditionally did -- in fact, my mother, being German, I have pictures of our Christmas tree with candles when I was 2 or 3 years old.
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The electrical hazard isn't that big. In a traditional electrical Christmas candle chain, the individual candle lights are coupled in series, so that the 240 V AC distributed over 24 candle lights make the voltage drop over each of them about 10 V. You can see the series coupling in that unscrewing any one of the lights make the entire chain go black. In theory you could by accident create a shortcut between the first and the last light in the chain; that would be a voltage similar to that of the outlet where it is plugged in. I never heard of that happening.
Today, most people use about five hundred LED bulbs rather than 24 candle lights, with an adapter box providing maybe 12 V, maybe only 5. Not really life threatening.
One of our friends 30 year ago still used live candles. They had a fair number of spray bottles available all around the tree. Their sons had an awe for the tree when the candles were lit that I found impressing, yet not something that I wanted to transfer to my children.
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trønderen wrote: The electrical hazard isn't that big.
I can imagine it has improved over the years. The last Christmas lights I placed on a tree only had that little two-pronged plug. Those were the times when we'd scoff at wearing a helmet while skateboarding in concrete parking lots, or jumping over a set of stairs. Our tolerance for risking danger back then was a lot more casual than it is now. Either way, I'll skip the candles for LEDs.
trønderen wrote: One of our friends 30 year ago still used live candles. They had a fair number of spray bottles available all around the tree. Their sons had an awe for the tree when the candles were lit that I found impressing, yet not something that I wanted to transfer to my children.
Wow. That's nuts. You can understand why the whole concept of setting up Christmas trees is so baffling to me. I've gotten some good answers though.
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trønderen wrote: In a traditional electrical Christmas candle chain,
I meant real candles, not "electric" candles.
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Sure. I was referring to your first paragraph - I wanted to point out that electrical candles are not as life threatening as you seem to think.
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Marc Clifton wrote: using real candles, which is what people traditionally did
Yes, I cannot believe that. If you're going to append lit candles to a tree located inside your house, there must be a really good reason why you'd risk so much danger to do so.
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Christmas trees arrived before electricity.
Besides, in the early days of electricity, you wouldn't believe how people handled it! They knew how to handle open flame, having lived with it for thousands of years. Even today, lots of fires are caused by people not knowing how to handle it.
Having a modern city-guy put real candles on a tree would probably scare the sh*t out of me. A 90-year old great grandpa who learned to lit both the oven and the open fireplace when he was five years old would make me feel much more confident. Modern people do not know how to handle open fire. A kid may still learn from the great grandpa, but I fear that the young adult would shrug at the old man and rather check if there are some YT videos that can show him how modern people would do it.
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trønderen wrote: Having a modern city-guy put real candles on a tree would probably scare the sh*t out of me.
That made me laugh. I know a bit about the origins of Christmas trees, but who was responsible for coming up with the idea of lighting candles and appending them to a flammable plant inside their house? Perhaps people may have been more familiar with fire science in the past, but it's beyond any person's ability to avoid accidents. The thing about fire is that you don't realize it's out of control until it's too late. I can attest to that. It's one thing to embrace nature, but who came up with the candle idea? The meaning and significance behind that practice are still a mystery to me. Killing a tree, abducting it, and decorating it with shiny objects and fire is a strange thing to do. I can see why you'd like to have a tree inside your home, but dressing it up after you kill it doesn't seem to be in line with the Pagan philosophy of embracing nature. If you do that to a tree, you might as well lure farm animals into your living room and decorate them with all sorts of obscure ornaments and fire, too. Set a few chickens on fire and watch them run around the living room in a ball of flames. What a wonderful time of year. 
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Steve Raw wrote: Set a few chickens on fire and watch them run around the living room in a ball of flames.
Why not go whole hog, and set a pig on fire? Roasting meat smells a lot better than burning feathers.
(For the humour-impaired, I certainly do not advocate burning pigs, chickens, or any other creature alive)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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For the serious side: Have you ever tried yourself, or been to a party where they roast a whole pig? Or lamb, or calf or whatever?
It takes a long, long time to roast it! With lots of intense heat. If you are talking about a small piglet, it can be baked at moderate temperature for a few hours, but for a large hog, you will probably cut off slices as they have been roasted, to let the heat in to the meat that is not yet done. Roasting a pig over a bed of charcoal is suitable for a celebration that runs all day, with people coming to have their serving(s) over a period of many hours.
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I sit corrected.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Yes, I've attended a Hawaiian luau. It was a lot of fun.
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google videos for “turkey frying disasters” to reaffirm your skepticism!
Biggest mistakes:
- Too close to structure
- Too much oil in pot
- Turkey is still frozen
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Steve Raw wrote: Do you ever take a step back and think
about the idea of a Christmas tree?
No I haven't put up a tree in probably 30yrs.
As the aircraft designer said, "Simplicate and add lightness".
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.3.0 JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: SimpleWizardUpdate
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It's been many years for me as well. I do find Christmas trees to be confounding, but that doesn't mean I don't like them.
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let's not forget to tip the waitresses . then there's the Easter Bunny . but that of course is a few months away . so we have something to look forward to .
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No fuse? Two prongs? 120V?
I don't really get any of these things. Here in the UK every plug has a fuse in it, every plug has three pins (not always used for 'double insulated' appliances) and a punchy 240v flows through those terminals. No fuse? Why doesn't everything burn down with electrical failures? No earth, how do you protect metal items? 120v - So you need twice the current/twice the area of wire per watt? Do you have RCD protection, so any earth leakage will cut the power?
I take your point!
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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UK is the only country I know of which (often) has fuses in the socket. (And the only country to use those huge sockets fuse or not.)
The common solution is to have a central fuse box - that is, in the other end of the cable. It doesn't make that much difference. Except that the central fuse is dimensioned according to the cable running to the socket, to keep it from overheating and causing a fire.
If there were no central fuse, and the cabling was 1.5 sqmm (capable of handling 10 A), then you plug in a 4 kW heater with a 20 A fuse, this fuse will not prevent the cable up to the socket from overheating. So I guess that you have a central fuse box as well. Then you have a cable (from the fuse box to the socket with one fuse in each end. Having fuses in both ends won't prevent that many fires compared to a cable with only a fuse in the central end.
This plug with a fuse is/was closely associated with the "ring circuit" wiring layout, which is something else I have never heard of outside the UK.
The British plug does have its advantages over Schuko, say, used in most European countries. One is the the mechanical strength. Compare it to the original USB B plug compared to mini, micro and C plugs - people rejected the B plug, crying for something smaller and more lightweight.
Another: It is polarized - the Schuko (as well as the ungrounded US plug) is not, even though the most common power supply ("TN") is asymmetric: One pin is "live", the other is "neutral". If you turn the plug 180 degrees around, live and neutral switches, on the plug side. So you really should always use two-pole switches on the plug side; they are almost always single-pole.
So I am not too exited about neither Schuko or the US plug, we should have learn some lessons from the UK, but without adopting that strange "ring circuit" layout and the cast iron (or is it lead?) plugs.
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trønderen wrote: UK is the only country I know of which (often) has fuses in the socket. (And the only country to use those huge sockets fuse or not.)
My mother-in-law's house in South Africa also used giant plugs, albeit of a design different to the British standard (three round prongs, with the ground larger than the other two). I understand that the modern South African standard uses something closer to the European standard.
I don't remember off-hand whether the sockets were fused.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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