Stating the Obvious.

It’s that time of year again when my mind – for all it is beset by difficult issues and depressing prospects – cannot help but venture frequently into the rationale behind the basis of Christmas as we know it. Yes, we all know that having a festival at this time of year goes back to pre-Christian Pagan beliefs, but we’re not encouraged to think of it that way and very few people do.

I keep hearing those lines from a carol in my head:

For Jesus Christ our Saviour

Was born on Christmas Day

They raise obvious questions:

Christ? Who says so? Saviour? From what? Born on Christmas Day? How irrational can the human mind be? (I think it might be an apposite aside to re-quote the bishop who said, in a TV interview: ‘Without a belief in original sin [which means that all babies are born evil] there is no Christianity. Quite.)

And then there are the fundamentalist Christians (mostly in America, thankfully) who profess their certainty that anyone who does not take Jesus Christ into his or her heart is bound for eternal hell fire.

What I would like to do is take one of such people to the Dalai Lama so he can say to the esteemed one: ‘Because you are not a Christian, your death will plunge you into the fires of hell where you will burn forever.’ I would love to hear the reply.

(And might I just add as an afterthought that being a nice person is no basis for claiming, as I’ve heard some people do, to be a Christian. Since when did being a nice person have anything to do with religion?)

And I suppose all the above is glaringly obvious to all intelligent people. Sorry, it’s just that I have to keep the blog going because it’s about all I’ve got of my own choosing at the moment.