The reason for the season, as they say ...
As some Canadians celebrate the birth of the Christ Child on Dec. 25, polling shows that across the country, even in more secular areas, most Canadians have a favourable view of Jesus.
According to polling from Leger-Association for Canadian Studies, about 73 per cent of Canadians have a positive view of Jesus, whereas 27 per cent have a negative view of the son of God.
Jesus is most popular in Alberta, where 78 per cent of people say they have a positive view, and the most unpopular in British Columbia and Quebec, were 32 and 33 per cent, respectively, have a negative view of him.
Jesus is less popular among younger Canadians, with 18 per cent of those between the ages of 18 and 24 saying they have a “somewhat negative” view of Jesus and nearly nine per cent reporting a “very negative” view of him. Among those aged 24 to 35, nearly a quarter, or 24 per cent, say they have a “somewhat negative” view and 16 per cent have a “very negative” view. Compare that to those 75 and older, where just 13.7 per cent have a somewhat or very negative view of Christ.
Francophones are also less likely to look favourably upon Jesus: 36 per cent of French speakers have negative views of him, compared with just shy of 25 per cent of anglophones.
As well, Protestants like Jesus more than Catholics, with 61.8 per cent of Protestants having a “very positive” view of Jesus, and about 45 per cent of Catholics having a very positive view. Fifty-seven per cent of Muslims also have a very positive view of Jesus.
(Sidebar: what does that tell one when Muslims have a better view of Jesus than Catholics do? Clearly, the bishops, the schools and, above all, the parents are not doing their jobs. Step it up, guys!)
And before anyone blathers on about how they are independent thinkers and don't need religion, consider that Western civilisation was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and the opposition between religion, which explains cosmological purpose, and science, which explains how the physical world works, was manufactured by people who don't understand religion or science but like to adhere to the latter to feign erudition.
Also, this:
Yes, obey that snowboard instructor, "independent thinker"! Show everyone how free from guilt you are by not wearing a cloth mask that does not keep out any for of the flu. Not brave enough? Then stand in line at Wal-Mart and walk where stickers on the floor tell you to. Those people who realise that they cannot find or understand their existential purpose in consumerism or junk science are the total tools around here, right?!
And who is this guy Canadians don't like?
Here:
Why, then, did Christians in the West come to celebrate Christmas on 25 December? The answer seems to lie, not in paganism, but — as one might expect — in the great seedbed of Jewish tradition. Rabbis and Church Fathers in the early centuries of the Christian century shared a conviction that the great events of creation and salvation were framed by an essential symmetry. Jewish scholars, tracing this symmetry, could argue that both the creation of the world and the birth of Abraham and his immediate heirs had occurred on the same day of the year that Israel was destined to obtain redemption.
Christian scholars, drawing on similar traditions, came to believe that Jesus had died on the anniversary of his incarnation. And the date of that anniversary? First in Carthage, and then in Rome, it came to be identified with what, according to the Roman calendar, was 25 March. Then, once that particular date had bedded down — and operating on the assumption that Christ had been born nine months after his conception — it required only a simple calculation to arrive at the date of his birth. By the 4th century, 25 December was coming to be enshrined across the western half of the empire as the anniversary of Christ’s birth.
By 597, when missionaries from Rome arrived in Kent to attempt the conversion of the pagan Angles and Saxons, it had become an irrevocable part of the calendar of the Latin Church. As Bede, a hundred years later and more, would teach his countrymen, the rhythms of time were not random, but structured by the purposes of God. The birthday of Christ was joined by a fateful and divinely-ordained patterning to the day of his death. Athelstan, celebrating Christmas at Amesbury, would have known, contemplating the birth of his Saviour, to remember as well His death. ...
The foundational story of Christmas, that of the birth of the Son of God amid poverty and danger, gives to the festival its own very particular flavour. The feasting, the gifts, the brief liberation from their sufferings of those ground down by poverty, or oppression or war: all, in the case of Christmas, are endowed with a very culturally distinctive resonance. It is a resonance that derives, not from timeless and universal archetypes, but rather from a specifically Christian narrative. All the other myths and narratives that, over the course of the centuries, have become a part of the festive fabric, from Santa Claus to Scrooge, from football matches in no mans land to the Grinch, endure because they go with its grain.
This year of all years — with a clarity denied us in happier times — it is possible to recognise in Christmas its fundamentally Christian character. The light shining in the darkness proclaimed by the festival is a very theological light, one that promises redemption from the miseries of a fallen world. In a time of pandemic, when the festive season is haunted by the shadows of sickness and bereavement, of loneliness and disappointment, of poverty and dread, the power of this theology, one that has fuelled the celebration of Christmas for century after century, becomes easier, perhaps, to recognise than in a time of prosperity. The similarities shared by the feast day of Christ’s birth with other celebrations that, over the course of history, have been held in the dead of winter should not delude us into denying a truth so evident as to verge on the tautologous: Christmas is a thoroughly Christian festival.
So there's that.
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