christmas was a pagan holiday the winter solstice(shortest day of the year)-the evergreen is an old pagan symbol for life in the dead of winter ...a kind of hope that life can go on through the dark days of winter-in england christmas was a kind of pauper day where the poor would be exalted,(drunks and local fools would be king for a day type of thing) if a poor whino went to a rich man's house he was to be let in and be fed and given drink.(or the rich would recieve a trick, sound familiar??) it was quite a raging party of debauchery til england tried to clamp down on it. america was born partly on the sinful ways of this pagan holiday>the puritans(1660's) did not come here so much for for freedom of religion...it was that they wanted more religion in government!!!! soon they were burning witches... they banned the pagan holiday but in jamestown it was popular and it could not be stopped. the churches finally joined in and took the holiday over, the evergreen tree would have apples hung on it to represent the tree of knowledge in the garden of eden(now we use ornaments) holly represented the thorny crown of christ (green and red), gifts were given to children to represent the wise men with gifts for the baby jesus and instead of the son of odin's b-day it became christ's b-day. charles dickens book "a christmas carol" really defined the christmas of today. so as with most of the judeo-christian religion, it is taking stories from other religions claiming them as their own and condemning any one who follows the original religion. nice..... :rolleyes:
"Dammit Jim!! I'm a guitarist not a roadie...so haul my gear"
