The General Chat Thread (2016-2022)

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Cinisajoy said:
Here our Asian restaurants run by Asians will be open. Convenience stores will be open. Pretty much everything else closed.
And yes the Black Friday people are strange.
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A lot of stores will be open on boxing day which I do not agree with, staff need a proper holiday not just 1 day!
 
Lullabelle said:
A lot of stores will be open on boxing day which I do not agree with, staff need a proper holiday not just 1 day!
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Here they only get Christmas. All stores are open the next day and this year due to Christmas falling on a Sunday, no one gets an extra day off. If the business is normally closed on Sunday anyway.
 
Cinisajoy said:
Where did you get that idea? There is virtually nothing about Thanksgiving on TV or in the stores. The stores put out Christmas stuff the day after Halloween. Thanksgiving is now the day of or the day before Black Friday. (The biggest shopping day of the year for Christmas. )
Every town has a Christmas parade. Even Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is to bring in Santa Claus.
You don't shop for Christmas on Christmas. You shop the month before and wrap everything in colorful packages.
Oh and you may not realize it but nearly all stores are closed on Christmas anyway. It doesn't matter whether it falls on a Tuesday or a Sunday.
Oh and our bank holidays, the only things closed are the banks and government offices. All shopping still open.
So yes, Christmas is still very commercialized.

As far as religion and Christmas go, if I so desired there are at least 132 churches in my city alone. There are at least 10 within about a kilometer of my house.

And of those 10, there are at least 7 different Christian religions.
Christmas is our biggest holiday.
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Thanksgiving was created to cover all religions, Christmas was seen as one religion only.

So when it was created, it was given precedence over the singular religion holiday of Christmas which followed fairly close after. And in between various other religous(non catholic) holidays.
 
classic33 said:
Thanksgiving was created to cover all religions, Christmas was seen as one religion only.

So when it was created, it was given precedence over the singular religion holiday of Christmas which followed fairly close after. And in between various other religous(non catholic) holidays.
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NO. Not by a long shot. Thanksgiving has absolutely nothing to do with religion.
Thanksgiving is specifically to give thanks for our new country away from a king's rule and telling people how they must worship. Although anymore I think it is just an eating and American football day.
Christmas is the BIGGEST holiday in America.
Only NEW YORK CITY has a parade on Thanksgiving Day. It is NOT for Thanksgiving. It is to ring in the Christmas season.
Now I am not including the religions that don't believe in Jesus Christ, but there are many religions here in the US that celebrate the birth of Christ.
I will highlight the ones I know.
We have the Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist and Lutheran churches. Most of them have very similar church programs for Christmas. Then you have the Presbyterians. (not sure where they fit on the family tree of churches) Branched off of those are your Protestant churches (they were protesting some of the traditions of the Catholic Church). These include but are in no way limited to the following: you have your Baptist (traditional and contemporary in both regular and southern baptist), church of Christ, Assembly of God, . Then branched off of that are your Pentecost, Jehovah Witness, Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon). Then you get into the non-denominational Christian churches that didn't like all the practices of the denomination they broke off from.
Now with the exception of the JW and a few splinter religions, All celebrate Christmas with gifts.
And 90% of the churches I mentioned will have some sort of play depicting the birth of Christ.
I expect no less than 3 flyers on my door and more in the mail inviting me to a Christmas church thing.
Except the Catholics who just have Midnight mass.
Even most cities decorate for Christmas not Thanksgiving.
Hope this clears it up.
Oh I forgot the Anglican church but they are few and far between here.
 
Oh and apologies if I went off track on the religions but I felt it was important to clarify as Christmas is not seen as a Catholic holiday or at least not in the US. I think I got the church splits reasonably accurate.
*Background on me: southern baptist, went to a Catholic school, Methodist friend, married Church of Christ, Episcopalian and attended an Assembly of God for a bit. Now I am an ordained minister through some church out of California. (that was because a friend wanted me to perform a wedding. They still aren't married. )
 
Cinisajoy said:
As far as religion and Christmas go, if I so desired there are at least 132 churches in my city alone. There are at least 10 within about a kilometer of my house.
And of those 10, there are at least 7 different Christian religions.
Christmas is our biggest holiday.
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That's a lot of churches1 I don't live in a city, so I don't know how it compares but I live in a medium sized town and only have one church nearby. Maybe two or three in walking distance. Its a strange thing, I think. In the UK we are not really very overtly religious compared to the USA. At least, that is the impression I get from watching TV and reading. It probably depends on different regions of America, quite how much religion plays a big part.

Here is a simple cooking related example. I watch The Pioneer Woman sometimes on TV. Once or twice she has mentioned going to church and Sunday food following church. This is something which simply wouldn't be mentioned on TV here - at least, not as a regular Sunday 'norm'. Very few people here attend churches regularly.
 
Cinisajoy said:
NO. Not by a long shot. Thanksgiving has absolutely nothing to do with religion.
Thanksgiving is specifically to give thanks for our new country away from a king's rule and telling people how they must worship. Although anymore I think it is just an eating and American football day.
Christmas is the BIGGEST holiday in America.
Only NEW YORK CITY has a parade on Thanksgiving Day. It is NOT for Thanksgiving. It is to ring in the Christmas season.
Now I am not including the religions that don't believe in Jesus Christ, but there are many religions here in the US that celebrate the birth of Christ.
I will highlight the ones I know.
We have the Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist and Lutheran churches. Most of them have very similar church programs for Christmas. Then you have the Presbyterians. (not sure where they fit on the family tree of churches) Branched off of those are your Protestant churches (they were protesting some of the traditions of the Catholic Church). These include but are in no way limited to the following: you have your Baptist (traditional and contemporary in both regular and southern baptist), church of Christ, Assembly of God, . Then branched off of that are your Pentecost, Jehovah Witness, (Mormon). Then you get into the non-denominational Christian churches that didn't like all the practices of the denomination they broke off from.
Now with the exception of the JW and a few splinter religions, All celebrate Christmas with gifts.
And 90% of the churches I mentioned will have some sort of play depicting the birth of Christ.
I expect no less than 3 flyers on my door and more in the mail inviting me to a Christmas church thing.
Except the Catholics who just have Midnight mass.
Even most cities decorate for Christmas not Thanksgiving.
Hope this clears it up.
Oh I forgot the Anglican church but they are few and far between here.
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Where does "Mary had a little lamb" come into things?

The Church of Latter Day Saints(Mormons) don't celebrate it.
 
morning glory said:
That's a lot of churches1 I don't live in a city, so I don't know how it compares but I live in a medium sized town and only have one church nearby. Maybe two or three in walking distance. Its a strange thing, I think. In the UK we are not really very overtly religious compared to the USA. At least, that is the impression I get from watching TV and reading. It probably depends on different regions of America, quite how much religion plays a big part.

Here is a simple cooking related example. I watch The Pioneer Woman sometimes on TV. Once or twice she has mentioned going to church and Sunday food following church. This is something which simply wouldn't be mentioned on TV here - at least, not as a regular Sunday 'norm'. Very few people here attend churches regularly.
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Oh yes, Sunday services at the church are a big part of most Christians lives.
Not only is it readily acceptable but on Sunday mornings most of the broadcast channels have televised church services. ABC is one of the Midland Baptist churches and CBS has the big Odessa Baptist church.
And as to the Pioneer Woman, she lives in the Bible Belt.

Just in my family, we have at least 3 real ministers. And most of my cousins are in church every Sunday morning. The youngest one didn't even have to go to the Baptist college to be ordained because he knew church doctrine inside and out.

And yes our area has a lot of churches.
 
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classic33 said:
I only tried to give a valid reason for not "splashing out" this year!
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Oh I loved your reason. It just didn't make sense.
More sense would be because Christmas falls on a Sunday if the business is normally closed, then the employees don't get the normal holiday pay.
 
Cinisajoy said:
Oh I loved your reason. It just didn't make sense.
More sense would be because Christmas falls on a Sunday if the business is normally closed, then the employees don't get the normal holiday pay.
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But the UK gets an extra Bank Holiday out of it, Bank Holiday Tuesday.

A four day weekend!
 
When I worked in the construction industry unless there was an urgent requirement to do otherwise, we had to take 2 weeks of our annual holidays over the Christmas/New Year period.
 
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