From The Daily Mail:
With just under 34 days until Christmas, the Pope has put a dampener on the festive period by rubbishing the idea that donkeys or any other animal have a place in the traditional nativity scene.
Benedict XVI also claims angels never sang to the shepherds to proclaim Christ birth's - trashing the much-loved carol 'Hark! The herald angels sing' in the process. From this falsehood the tradition of singing carols was born, the Pope says.
His views are revealed in his latest and last installment of three volumes on the life of Jesus, released today, which is set to be a worldwide bestseller.
The former Hitler Youth member also pointed out that snowfall was unheard of in the Middle East at the time, pine or fir trees were not native to the region and tinsel had not been invented yet.
"As to strings of coloured fairy lights - just forget it, they hadn't even discovered electricity," added the 85-year old misery guts. "And don't get me started on gold, Frankenstein, incest and mirth."
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
"Killjoy Pope crushes Christmas nativity traditions"
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12 comments:
I notice he didn't trash all day drinking as a hallowed tradition. Nor paper hats come to think of it.
AKH, it must be a long time since you attended your last Nativity Play, I've been to a fair few in recent years, there were no paper hats in evidence and we long suffering parents were not offered copious amounts of booze.
From what I remember of the ordeal, a spot of mulled wine would have gone down a treat.
Does this mean there's no papal endorsement for tea-towels either? Or is His Holiness prepared to be more liberal in the matter of costume?
all the stuff of nativity plays - the ox and ass, baby in a manger - comes from the apocryphal gospels, St Bartholomew etc. I wonder why the church in the past permitted these traditions to build.
McH, they probably had tea towels, but it's unlikely that all the men's beards were just painted on.
G, it didn't "allow" it, these ideas are all nicked from elsewhere. "Daniel in the lion's den"? Why not make combine two Bibble stories into one by having "Jesus in an animal feed trough surrounded by oxen, asses and little lambs"?
It's normally the Protestants who start waving the Bible and claiming traditional (Catholic )ideas are not in there.The Puritan Government managed to ban Christmas altogether,so if his Holiness keeps on checking things out in the Bible he won't have anything distinctive left.
According to archaeological evidence, it is likely that Jesus was born in a "stable", but they probably would have hoofed all the animals outside. The houses at that time consisted of two rooms, the inner one for humans and the outer one for animals. As the inner room was packed with men, poor Mary had to give birth in the outer room.
DBC, indeed, where in the Bibble does it say that priests have to wear silly hats, dresses and instead of getting married should fiddle with little kids? Nowhere that I'm aware of.
B, Jesus wept, and the men couldn't just politely wait outside for a couple of hours?
Mark, this is the Middle East, that hotbed of women's rights, we are talking about? Also, unless God gave her a dispensation, it was likely to have gone on for a lot longer than two hours and it was winter, so it might have been raining or even snowing, despite what the Pope says. It snowed in the Holy Land when my brother went there. If it was summer, all the men would have been sleeping on the roof, so there wouldn't have been a problem.
Graeme, most of it is in Luke's (non-apocryphal) gospel, e.g.
"And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger."
AC, yes, that's what Luke's Gospel says, but he wasn't there at the time either, was he? And slightly misleading use of commas there, take those out and all three were lying in the manger.
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