Merry Christmas! Please, remember Christmas. I forget Christmas and act like a gold-plated self-absorbed jerk.
I forget all of my blessings, when I forget Christmas; when I "Happy Holiday" phone-it-in good cheer and allow my tendencies to allow myself to be the absolute center of the universe.
This is the remembrance of Christ's birth - Christmas.
St. Francis of Assisi (12th Century) is credited with developing the creche - the Nativity Scene that is the anathema of the ACLU set and the bane of local government. One hundred years later the Italian artist Giotto painted one the first Nativity Scenes in a two dimensional simplicity and grace. From that time on the Nativity became a touchstone for all that is good and human.
Here is what a secular celebration of the Winter Solstice looks like -
Good Old ACLU Secular AL Hitler and the like-minded gents. This photo was taken in 1941 when a great separation of Church and State leader was taken seriously - deadly serious.
The pictures from December 18, which have only just come to light, show Hitler and his generals at a party for SS officer cadets in Munich.
But the Nazi Christmas was far from traditional.
Hitler believed religion had no place in his 1,000-year Reich, so he replaced the Christian figure of Saint Nicholas with the Norse god Odin and urged Germans to celebrate the season as a holiday of the ‘winter solstice’, rather than Christmas.
Out of sight at the top of the tree behind Hitler was a swastika instead of an angel, and many of the baubles carried runic symbols and iron cross motifs. The remarkable pictures were captured by Hugo Jaeger, one of the Fuhrer’s personal photographers.
He buried the images in glass jars on the outskirts of Munich towards the end of the war, fearing that they would be taken away from him.
Later he sold them to Life Magazine in America which published many of them this week.
Christmas is for everyone. The Alternative was tried.
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