Text 11893, 69 rader
Skriven 2013-12-27 18:56:04 av Björn Felten (2:203/2)
  Kommentar till text 11891 av Gerrit Kuehn (2:240/12)
Ärende: Yuletide greetings
==========================
 GK> Nope. More important is what you claimed (but did not quote):

 BF>> In Sweden some 6% are celebrating Jesus (AKA are Christians).

   Ah, I see. Well my point there was that -- despite some 800 years of
Christian attempts to wipe out our old "pagan" holidays and turn them into
Christian ditto, we here up in the north still have managed to keep most of our
old holidays.

   The church may think they've managed to turn our major holidays into
Christian ones, but they haven't.

   I repeat: we don't celebrate Christmas, we celebrate Jul. All of us up here,
not only Sweden.

 GK> So what is the definition of "are Christians"?

   Indeed, what is. One can be this (quoted from your Wikipedia article):

   "Approximately 2% of the church's members regularly attend Sunday services."

   That's 2% out of your 67.5% of the Swedish population...

   If you don't regularly attend your church's service, how dedicated to your
religious beliefs are you then?

 GK> I am fine with "being member of a Christian church"

   Even when it means you became a forced member when you were born?

 GK> probably also a legal definition in your country

   We don't have any such legal definition here, we have total religious
freedom, so any attempt to register our religious belonging would be a
violation of our constitution. That's why the exact number in either direction
will always depend on other criteria.

 GK> The other claim you provided was "celebrating Jesus".

   See above about Christmas (the birth of Christ) vs. Jul (thank you Odin for
bringing the sun back to us).

 GK> So please don't tell me that only 6% of your fellow citizens celebrate
 GK> Christmas aka the birth of Jesus. :)

   We all celebrate this holiday, but as I've said more than once now, it's an
old Norse celebration of the winter solstice -- *not* aka the birth of Jesus.
WTH, we even know now that he wasn't even born this date...

   Of course, after some 800 years of Christian propaganda, we see lots of
Jesus references all over the country, but we still don't call it Christmas.

 GK>  From the statistics I can access I get that about 6% of Swedish
 GK> citizens take part in at least one church service per week *on*
 GK> *average*.

   As I said above, it's more like 2% of 67.5%.

 GK> Even if I take off Muslims, Jews and some others that would
 GK> not celebrate Christmas.

   You have to take out every other religious belief. Even the native Sami
religion. Christmas *is* the Christian name of the world wide habit of
celebrating the turn of the sun. Christians make up less than ten percent of
the Earth's population, devoted Christians far less. More than 90% do *not*
celebrate the birth of that Jewish kid.

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