Santa Free Zone

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,...431570,00.html

Areas in Germany and Austria have created Santa Free Zones in part to protest the commercialisation of Christmas.

It should be noted that part of the article above is wrong relating to Coca-Cola creating the modern day Santa (Jolly old man in Red) is false but it was the success of that 1930 campaign that established the Santa into the minds of the public.

So what do you think of this protest of commercialisation after all even 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' was created as part of an advertising campaign in 1939.

Well,Christianity did borrow heavily from other religions. If you go to Egypt, you would see the ancient drawings of Mary and the baby Jesus to be Isis and the Horus. Isis in a Roman incarnation of Hera and Selena was quite popular back at Rome.

Also Mithra came from Persian but became popular with Romans and was also one of their gods. And Mithra's birthdate was placed on 25 december to a virgin mother and he too was seen as the salvation of mankind, mediator of earth and heaven. And part of the story was that Mithra also had a last supper with 12 of his followers before ascending to heaven. Also they have a ritual of purification where the followers ate bread that symbolize his body and drank wine to symbolize blood. Then there are the stories of death and rebirth in many of these older religion. And these are the only things I could remember off hand for there are other similarities relating to the trinity, jupiter, etc. Also there is the interesting question of the cruxifiction and the idea of human sacrifice prevalent in many ancient religion.

And I mention Romans specifically because to a certain extent Christianity is one of the lasting influences of the Roman empire as it was the Emperor Constantine who adopted Christianity (which until then was quite a minor cult) as the empire's main religion. Of course the Romans borrowed a lot from the Greeks and Egyptians and that Christianity borrowed from them and Judaism. Which is why I suppose many religious holiday promote the idea of sharing.