What's wrong with Santa Claus?

[CaryC]

[CaryC]

[CaryC]

[CaryC]

[CaryC]

The greatest gift you can give the Baby Jesus, is your life.

Merry Christmas.

[Wiskey Reb]

An interesting tidbit Wikipedia.

Do You Hear What I Hear?" is a song written in October 1962, with lyrics by Noël Regney and music by Gloria Shayne Baker.[1] The pair, married at the time, wrote it as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis.[2] Regney had been invited by a record producer to write a Christmas song, but he was hesitant due to the commercialism of the Christmas holiday.[3] It has sold tens of millions of copies and has been covered by hundreds of artists.[2]

[Wiskey Reb]

Here us a rabbinic Jewish perspective on the origins of what became Christmas, all solstice related traditions, and Hanukkah. An excerpt from this article.
https://jewishaction.com/religion/sh...oint-of-light/

An allusion to Chanukah is found in the twenty-fifth word in the Torah: “or,”– light (Genesis 1:3). This “or” was incontrovertibly the light God created in the Six Days of Creation. The Gemara (Pesachim 54b) says Man himself created fire, later, on Motzei Shabbat, only after Creation was completed. God gave Adam Divine knowledge (commemorated in the blessing in which we say Havdalah on Motzei Shabbat7: “Atah chonen l’adam daat — You give Man knowledge”) to produce fire which existed only in potential8 in Creation.

The creation of Adam’s light was grounded in darkness and fear. The midrash says that after the first sin9, Adam saw his first sunset; he was alarmed, afraid that the world was blacking out, running down, and that he had caused it to happen. The cosmic darkness, he thought, not only reflected his own inner darkness, but perhaps resulted from it. At sunrise, Adam realized it was the way of the world, and that he would have to cope with it and confront the darkness. After Shabbat, he took two stones and created fire, blessing God, “Blessed are You, who creates the lights of fire.” We say this blessing on Motzei Shabbat, at the time of the inception of fire10, when we light fire and begin our own creative acts. In this version, Adam created fire thirty-six hours after his own creation: after twelve hours of light on Erev Shabbat, twelve hours of dark on Friday night and twelve of light on Shabbat. In another version11, the first light served Man, shining for the thirty-six hours of Erev Shabbat and Shabbat, before finally becoming night, and then Adam had to learn to contend with darkness.

Avodah Zarah 8b expands this with a version from Avot D’Rabi Natan chapter 1. Elucidating the source of the Roman Saturnalia and Calends, which engendered the later pagan solstice celebrations, the Gemara tells us this: As the days passed into winter, Adam noticed in terror that the days were becoming shorter, the hours of light were becoming less. He thought the world was being destroyed, disintegrating, because of his sin. He fasted for eight days until the solstice, the darkest point of the descent into darkness. Then he saw the days brightening, becoming longer, and understood with relief that it was the way of the world. As the light grew, he made an eight-day festival, and the next year he again celebrated his reprieve12. His sons eventually forgot the original source of the holiday and used it for pagan celebration.

Centuries passed. The origins of Adam’s festival themselves fell into oblivion and into darkness. And in the period of the second Beit Hamikdash, the Syrian/Greeks decreed idol worship upon the Jews and were defeated. We know from The Book of Maccabees II:10, that the Rededication (Chanukat HaBayit) of Chanukah on Kislev 25, was exactly and propitiously three years to the day after the Greeks had forced the Jews to idolatry and rebellion, on the Greek idolatrous holiday on Kislev 25 of 162 BCE. It is reasonable to suppose that this pagan festival was in fact related, as vestige or precursor, to the Greco-Roman winter solstice celebration13. Chazal call the period of Greek coercion, “the time of darkness”14, and in the midrash15 they identify it with the substance of the original darkness of the Six Days of Creation, which is to say, the darkness of Adam’s fears. The decree, in its temporal configuration, thus began on the darkest physical day of what was the historic “time of darkness.” And Chanukah would be its strict reverse.

Hanukkah is a time of responding to the pagan days of darkness, which pagan minions attempt to impose on the world, by generating increasing light in dedicating G-d's temple and illuminating all the rich meaning of G-d's word which dwells therein. Unlike the later Hasmonians, who usurped the Davidic line and inserted themselves as a line kings.

[Wiskey Reb]

In short, Jewish understanding has always attached messianic hope to Hanukkah. So, it is not surprising that Jesus would address the issue as he did. Nor is it shocking that Christianity developed a tradition similar yet apart from and opposed to Jewish tradition.

Yet, how St Nicholas somehow became attached to messianic typology....perhaps one need only look at his fisticuffs, punch in the nose, knows when you're awake ( bad?), character in his right hand, and his gift giving character, so long as you are sleeping(good?), in his left in order to see the seemingly typological, albeit mirror image backwards to the real messianic pattern symbology which has blessing in the right hand and judgement in the left. St Nick an anti-type? Hmmm.

Of course, how that Davidic, messianic typology will play out in terms of the rock em sock em saint Nick tradition remains to be seen. Who will get rocked, and who will get socked? As for me and my house, if my house being awake earns me a lump from st Nick, I'll gladly accept that over pleasantries for remaining asleep. Selah...

[Bezukhov]

What's wrong with Santa Claus? Ask an Elf.

Elves Stage Bloodless Coup While Santa Claus Is Away
Satire


http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/201...claus-is-away/

[Rob_0126]

Spurgeon did not celebrate christmas either.

We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas: first, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be said or sung in Latin or in English; and, secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and, consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority. (Charles Spurgeon, Sermon on Dec. 24, 1871).

When it can be proved that the observance of Christmas, Whitsuntide, and other Popish festivals was ever instituted by a divine statute, we also will attend to them, but not till then. It is as much our duty to reject the traditions of men, as to observe the ordinances of the Lord. We ask concerning every rite and rubric, "Is this a law of the God of Jacob?" and if it be not clearly so, it is of no authority with us, who walk in Christian liberty. (from Charles Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalm 81:4.)