L.B.Loveday asks: “...who, apart from the author, would seriously question that Christ did exist in a human form?”

Anyone with a sound knowledge of history not distorted by an irrational belief.

Wobbles
you say "by definition, only one religion can possibly be true". Not so. Some religions cheerfully accept that there is truth in other faiths (Hunduism, Baha'i).

Many Christians, Jews, Moslems and others also accepts the validity of other faiths. The ecumenical movement has arisen precisely because many people of faith recognise that most religions point to the truth of God, but no religion captures it perfectly.

McReal and AJ Philips
There are two separate though related issues here - was Jesus a historical person, and was he the Messiah and Son of God as Christians claim. The first is a historical question, the second broader.

I accept that there are scholars who doubt Jesus' historical existence. But most historians, including atheists and scholars of religions other than Christianity, accept that Jesus existed as a first century Galilean Jew who attracted a following, came into conflict with religious and civil authorities and was executed by the Romans. This is the simplest, most logical and most straightforward explanation for the undisputed historical phenomenon of the emergence of Christianity in the first century. Prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins also accept Jesus’ existence as an historical figure.

Likewise, most scholars believe that some of Jospehus' references to Jesus were probably doctored, but not all. As a Jew and Roman collaborator it's perhaps unlikely that Josephus would have accepted Jesus as the Messiah, but the fact he mentions Jesus at all points to his existence as a historical figure. Indeed, the fact that almost all early non-biblical references to Jesus and Christians are hostile to him – Josephus Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger, and early rabbinic traditions in the Talmud – strengthens their credibility as evidence for the historical existence of Jesus.

It is also striking that none of the early Jewish and Roman sources hostile to Christianity attempted to refute it claims by arguing that Jesus did not exist or was not crucified

What some commentors appear to overlook is that you were stating your response to a sudden and unexpected change to a "traditional" event. I imagine many would have similiar (if less well-articulated) concerns if an atheist were to appear on stage at their sunday church service and perform a ceremonial act of reverence upon the assembled parishoners. In fact, I have had similar reactions when an episode of Big Bang Theory didn't air at the published time.

I didn't read any malice or negative intent in your article. You simply voice the fact that you don't need to be christian to celebrate christmas. A fact that is demonstrated by the fact that the majority of australians spend the day unwrapping presents, eating too much, drinking too much and dozing in a chair through the hot afternoon, and so few in church solemnly observing the commemoration of their particular model of imaginary man in the sky.

I understand your disappointment at the evangelisation of your xmas carols, Chrys. This year I was forcibly blessed the the roaming Uniting Church missionary before I could watch my wife conduct the local state school choir. It was distasteful, and I wanted to shout out my objection to being prayed at so she wouldn't think everyone in the audience shared her delusion, but I tolerated it because I'm polite.

I'll be thinking of you when I open a cold one on the big day after sharing a morning and lunch with my kids and extended family and rejoicing in the fact I live in a secular democracy where I'm free to choose what I do and beleive and have enough wealth to be able to spend time in such a enriching and fulfilling way.

talisman, "If you don't want to be
exposed to excesses of Christian 'happy clapping',
don't go to Carols by Candlelight."

C'mon spinner, where is there such a beast as a public council approved carols by candlelight that is a prayer fest with excesses of 'Christian happy clapping'?

That would be a very rare animal in Australia if it existed at all, much like the panthers of NSW.

Aunt Sally has become far too common in modern rhetoric, yet it is unusual for the logical fallacy to be discovered or challenged, even where the story is so obviously fake and crafted to suit the offender's script.

There should be points awarded for the most elaborate and outrageous Aunt Sally and points too for the best shy at her, outside of her creator, who in most cases would win every time, for that is the originator's purpose in trotting out Aunt Sally after all.

We seem to have lost part of what set us apart as Australians, our radar for BS and our zest for 'rewarding' the offender trucking a load of it into the debate, especially where it is a case of faking it rather than stretching it a bit. The latter was sort-of tolerated while the former, faking it, was always roundly condemned.

Chrys Said: "Even assuming Jesus Christ was an actual person ..."

"who, apart from the author, would seriously question that Christ did exist in a human form?"

You are reading far too much into this sentence. What I did *not* say was, "Although I don't think that Jesus Christ was an actual person ..." I said, "Even assuming Jesus Christ was an actual person ...". The latter simply acknowledges the fact that this is a statement which is debated in scholarly circles.

While it is true that the majority of Bible scholars accept that Jesus existed, there are some seriously qualified theologians who dispute it. For example, Hector Avalos, a former Pentecostal preacher and child evangelist, is now Professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University. He has a Doctor of Philosophy in Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Studies from Harvard University, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Arizona. Avalos believes that Earl Doherty's "The Jesus Puzzle", "outlines a plausible theory for a completely mythical Jesus."

Similarly, former Baptist minister, Robert M Price, Professor of Theology and Scriptural Studies at the Coleman Theological Seminary is also a proponent of the 'Jesus as myth' hypothesis.

Richard Dawkins, in fact, has a bet both ways on the Jesus as myth hypothesis. He concedes that it's possible to mount a serious, though not widely supported, historical case that Jesus never lived at all, although, personally, he believes Jesus probably existed.

So, yes, there are much better qualified historians and theologians than me who believe that Jesus was, or may have been, mythical. However, I did *not* say that *I* support this view, I simply acknowledged that such a view exists. As it happens, I *don't* have a fixed opinion on this as I haven't had the opportunity to do sufficient research into this area.

The author writes to an audience of hardened hearts who repress the divine presence within to take on the role of denialists against the climate of good that flows through people of faith. A good that underpins the solidarity of our western culture tested across time by horrendous evil in all of its expressions by State, and Church. This solidarity is being tested in an age of frivolous materialism in which the rights and behaviour of the self autonomous individual are forever claimed and exercised at a serious cost to what we know as society, and the polis.

The author's whinge is the inverse to the medieval Scholastics who contemplated the number of angels that could fit on the head of a pin, which engaged questions of the immaterial and the material. Her denial of the immaterial - God and the story of His revelation through the history of the Jewish people to see the prophesied fulfilment in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as the Risen Christ - leaves her floundering in the turbulence of life. Is hearing God preached in a Carol or at Christmas really a problem? Such turbulence! Such absence of charity.

Unwillingness to spark the divine within us leaves us in the dark of cold hard reason broken from faith. But there is a continual light, that of the Church commissioned, for all time to the end days, by Jesus and carried forth since across two millennia. It is here, it is real, it is active, it is committed to all that is true, just and of beauty. To deny such continuity as a phenomenon it is to deny a material reality. To deny it is to repress that immaterial divine within us that is the Spirit that has carried the Church's presence across time whilst we humans stumble and fall, but to always rise to higher levels of truth, knowledge and beauty along the continuum.

I wish a joyous Christmas to all.