Christmas - a gift to the world!!

[AlfredJPruffock]

On behalf of Chief Elder Pruffrock, I can confirm that recruitment is coming along nicely. The Jam Making and Body Smearing workshops are almost full.


Senior Acolyte Cojak.

At Ease SA Cojak, please reman seated.

A fascinating link concerning the Origins of Christmas, I was interested in particular by this snippet concering the Shetlands having had the dubious pleasure of working in that wilderness back in 1980.

I am considering adding an Evil Eye breakout session to the upcoming Satindu weekend workshop, think of the commercial advantages when attending interviews etc


Is perhaps of significance that in the Shetland Islands, the Yule or Christmas holidays began seven days before Christmas and ended at Antinmas, i.e. the twenty-fourth day after Christmas.

The Shetlanders name these holidays the Yules. Seven days before Christmas, the elves called Trows by the Shetlanders are let free from their homes in the earth and dwell above ground if it pleases them.

This is the probable origin of the elf symbolism of and with Santa Claus.

It seems to relate back to the concept of the misrule of the seven days of the Saturnalia leading up to 25 December.


The most important of the rituals in Yule was the saining, which had to be properly carried out to deal with the grey folk as the elves were called.


The modern myths emanating from the USA regarding alien greys, is none other than the revamping of the elves at Yule.

On the last day of the holidays, the twenty-fourth day after Christmas, called up-helly-a, or Uphalliday in Shetland, the doors were all opened and a great deal of pantomimic chasing went on to rid the area of the mischievous elves. People piously read the Bible and displayed iron ostentatiously "for it is well known that elves cannot abide the sight of iron." The infants were carefully guarded and sained by learned wise women. No doubt, we have the sign of the evil eye involved here as an ancient custom (cf. also the paper The Cross: Its Origin and Significance (No. 39)).

[cojak]

On behalf of Chief Elder Pruffrock, I can confirm that recruitment is coming along nicely. The Jam Making and Body Smearing workshops are almost full.


Senior Acolyte Cojak.

[AtW]

Nice to see you celebrating a pagan festival Chico
Perhaps there is hope yet.

We will be celebrating Yule second year in a row - beats Xmas big time since you are not expected to make presents.

[sasguru]

Nice to see you celebrating a pagan festival Chico
Perhaps there is hope yet.

Origins of Christmas

PS Mr. Pruffock - how is your new religion Satundism going?

[wc2]

Chico how about you singing us a xmas carol.

SILENT NIGHT !!

[AlfredJPruffock]

[expat]

Yes, yes come one come all to receive this free gift. Meet your Creator, learn how to live life to the fullest, come to a place where all human life is valued, where new converts will not be asked to blow people up.

Or burn them at the stake, not now anyway.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Meet your Creator ...

I met God last week down the pub.

I took my jacket off and asked him to step outside.

But he chickened out and left by the bog window.

You can run , but you cant hide ....

[Chico]

Christmas is our present to the rest of the world, says Archbishop. . .

By Ruth Gledhill and Tosin Sulaiman

From The Times

THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, spelt out the meaning of Christmas last night. “Christmas is the Christian’s Christmas present to everybody else,” he said. “Christmas, for a Christian, tells us why people matter.”
Dr Williams was speaking at a ceremony opposite the Old Vic theatre in South London to switch on the Christmas lights for Lambeth Council.


Lambeth was the first council this year to get caught up in the annual “Christmas is banned” news story, the religious equivalent of the perennial winter weather story. For fear of offending ethnic minorities, council officials had decreed last month that the lights should not be Christmas lights but “winter lights” and “celebrity lights”.

They were hastily switched back to Christmas lights after Christian councillors on Lambeth Council objected. Just to make sure that the rest of the world noticed that Christmas was not after all banned in Lambeth, the borough’s most eminent Christian resident was persuaded to join Kevin Spacey, the artistic director of the Old Vic, in switching them on.

Speaking after the Morely College Can’t Sing Choir had performed Christmas carols, Dr Williams said: “You’ve probably noticed that there has been quite a lot of fuss in the papers about Lambeth and Christmas. If you haven’t, I don’t know which papers you’ve been reading, but here is what I want to say about that.”

Christmas, he said, was the Christian community’s gift to the world, symbolising why people mattered. “They matter because God took us seriously — seriously enough to get involved with our lives, to suffer with us and change things. That is what I believe. That is what Christians believe and Christmas exists because of that belief.

“You may or may not believe that. You may think people matter for other reasons, but never mind. That is what we are saying and that is our present. That is our gift to the rest of the world.”

Speaking on World Aids Day, he asked his audience to think of people with Aids and HIV. He also asked them to remember those who are under threat in Pakistan, from where he has just returned after a week-long visit.

Speaking of the earthquake victims, he said: “As winter draws on we are all very, very conscious of what is happening over there. We are conscious of the danger to children, to old people, actually to nearly everybody there because of the cold and the likelihood of more deaths. Again, we are remembering [that] people matter over there.”

He described local examples of society’s care for those in need. “At the back of our garden in Lambeth Palace [we] can look across at St Thomas’ Hospital at the new children’s wing there, which is so tremendously well-designed. Go round the corner and you can visit Surestart in Lambeth and see what is being done for kids there. People matter.”

He continued: “I have got an answer, I think, to why they matter. It may or may not be yours, but I am glad to be able to share it with you on behalf of the Church. I am glad to be here and to wish you all the very best, and the most blessed Christmas you could possibly have, because you matter too.”

Dr Williams was asked to bless members of the crowd.


Chico's comment: Yes, yes come one come all to receive this free gift. Meet your Creator, learn how to live life to the fullest, come to a place where all human life is valued, where new converts will not be asked to blow people up.