Christmas is upon us! Just like in the past Christmases, people are busy preparing for this great holiday. Halls and malls are decked ostentatiously. Christmas carols, old and new, fill the air. Glittering lights trim houses and trees. Busy shoppers trooping the malls, checking their lists not once but twice. Parties..Exchanging gifts, cheers and goodwill.
Christmastime is the time spent by Christians to commemorate the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ! Accordingly, the message of the baby boy's birth in a manger is humility and simplicity. But apparently, two thousand years after the 'supposed' first Christmas, the real essence of celebration is warped around commercialism and materialism, and the main celebrator is obscured by the white-bearded red-suited overweight sleigh riding fellow. Ask the kids whom they associate Christmas with. Santa is the sure answer!
Okay.okay.. ' Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year'... says the lyric of a song.
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I don't want to sound like a 'Grinch' who stole Christmas. For I am not one. But I'd just like to share some interesting facts about Christmas.
1. According to written accounts, the period known to be Christmas , has been celebrated long before the birth of Jesus Christ! December 25 was the celebration of the Italic god Saturn and the rebirth of the sun god, a pagan celebration! All the symbols associated with Christmas - evergeen tree, wreath, mistletoe, holly have roots traced to mythologies. Christmas is a pagan celebration adopted by Christians!
2. According to the Scriptures, Jesus Christ was born in late summer or early fall, sometime in September; definitely not in December.
3. During Christmas, parents give the impression to their young kids that Santa Claus exists. This runs counter to the value that parents should tell the truth. Unfortunately, even a high end department store in their store ad, encourages people to BELEIVE in Santa.
4. Reindeers don't and can't fly!
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Some events in Christmas are at odds with science.
1. The angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would bear a child. Angels are supernatural beings taking human forms but with wings in addition to the arms (as depicted to us). The existence of angels, along with the centaurs or spinx, entails a major revision of human anatomy textbooks.
2. The birth of a child by a virgin. Science calls it parthenogenesis, when a egg develops into an embryo without fertilization. It occurs in few reptiles, amphibians and some lower forms of animals. But it has never been reported to occur in humans naturally.
3. Granted that parthenogenesis occurs in humans, the baby that will be born is a girl as genetically, the egg contains the female chromosome.
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This may sound a lttle eccentric. But are we not interested about the truth? For we know that 'the truth will set us free'. Truth from which vantage point of view - biblical or scientific? We know science and religion dont mix, they are always at odds which each other. Few scientists are trying to harmonize and connect these two poles together, but an unthinkably unfathomable divide does still exist. Charles Darwin, after piecing together the snippets of data he collected from a five-year voyage of the HMS Beagle, saw an intellectual storm brewing. He was born religious from a religious family and was married to woman with a strong conviction and unquestionable faith. The theory he formulated, he knew, was going against a strong current of his, his families' and his community's belief system, among others, the immutability of the species. Darwin was as confused as everybody else, being raised a Christian and exposed to the teachings in his youth and drawing a conclusion from the natural world, that is far on the contrary to the belief systems he knew and practiced. The inconsistency, he noted, unfolded right before his eyes, on the materials he collected from mother nature.
Apparently, the truth people are seeking, is dependent on either personal conviction or logical philosophy. Sound data, facts and figures will always lead to the truth, one which governs the natural world.
Is their supernatural truth? or spiritual truth? The world used to be filled with myths and superstition. But little by little, the rational human intelligence has debunked and demystified a lot of them, and made sense of what's going on. Such allows us to winnow and narrow down which 'truths' are worth believing. The scientific method, as it stands now, is the best way of knowing the unknown. It may not be the only way! Its endless capacity, ironically, is limited only to the natural world. And so science can neither confirm nor deny that supernatural or spiritual truth exists.
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And so it's Christmas once again! The miracle of Christmas for so long I held so close in my heart! This was 'truth' to me for a long time. That Jesus Christ was the reason for the season!
But time changes..The meaning of miracle has become so loose, so cheap, and it loses its real meaning. It has become associated with anything looked at beyond mediocrity. The miracle of the Hudson River. The Chilean Miners Rescue. And a lot more! These 'miracles' were acted out of human ingenuity. Some extraordinary feats made possible because of modern day technology.
Well, I love Christmas! It still is the most wonderful time of the year! It's just that it has a different meaning to me now.
Merry Christmas everyone!
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