When you hear the word Christmas, what do you think about?
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Think.
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Let me guess: Presents? Snow? Christmas tree? Spending time together with the family?
How is it that I feel less than 1 % would have a certain child in a manger in mind, when they hear that word? This is not a statistic result, only a pessimistic estimate.
In the Western world, most people are brought up in the middle of some sort of a Christianity, even though they didn't have any personal insight to it, nor any grasp of faith. Surely everybody knows what's Christmas, even if they didn't belong to church. And most people find it a positive event, even though you sometimes get bitter of all the spending and coloured lights and annoying tunes and general clichés.
In my country, the majority of people belongs to Lutheran church. The amount of Jews is very small and invisible, and nobody has even heard of Kwanzaa outside of the Web. So it's safe to say Christmas and not to mention all the other choices in the name of political correctness. That makes things simple.
But what is there left of Christ in Christmas, besides the name? In my language, Christmas is called joulu - Yule. Coming from the old pagan word. They merely glued a religious theme over ancient pagan winter festivities. And even though I have the feeling we're closer to the real spirit of Christmas here at the origins of Joulupukki, it has also turned more materialistic here as well.


Not that I'd rather sit in a log cabin with the floor covered in straws, eating turnip casserole... Not that I didn't think more about assorted chocolates than the birth of Jesus. But this global, American Christmas with all the red and too much sugar, buying gifts just for the habit... bright, so bright everywhere. - It's very dark here at wintertime. The sun rarely comes out at all. But now I'm drifting... I think I'll stop here.
Usually when someone else starts topics like this, I rarely read them. It's all been said before, so many times. But I just wanted to make a point. Again.