Pericles: Regardless of the actual foundations of the coin in the pud biz, Philo is not the only one who has made that claim. For example:

"Here's another tradition we've pinched from the pagans ... Caught in the middle of a long, cold winter, it's no surprise that people often feared the sun would never return, so they tried to ensure the fertility of their fields and animals by preparing sacred meals. One such was a pudding that was originally made from wheat boiled in milk....

.... The coins in the pud have a more macabre background and are leftovers from one of the rituals of the Saturnalia when human sacrifice was called for to ensure the gods would prevent the sun standing still (the meaning of 'solstice').

They decided to leave it up to the gods to choose the sacrificial victim, so a coin was mixed into the pudding and whoever found it was seen as the gods' choice! (And surely that's not why we always hide coins in the children's portions of pudding ...)"

http://www.write101.com/christmas-traditions.htm

http://www.santas.net/thecoininthepudding.htm

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:Ce1m7EtK2k4J:www.sciaga.pl/tekst/zalacznik/14608/+christmas+pudding+coin+and+pagans&cd=27&hl=all&ct=clnk

Just some general info on the civilizing influences of Christianity:

http://www.answers.com/topic/infanticide

It's fascinating how 'Religion' tends to wander away from, or around the written word.
Moses came down from the mountain with 10 fairly straight forward Rules, straight from the Man Himself. Asimov, in speaking of his 'guide to the Bible' remarked on how, in just a few short decades, these 10 commandments had evolved into over a thousand Laws; strictly defining what it means to 'work', etc.
When I read the Gospels, I get the impression of Jesus, the Law reformer. He seemed to argue that when the law becomes too strictly defined, people tend to confuse conformity with the Law, with it's original intent, or spirit.
My interpretation (as vulnerable as any other) is that Jesus (assuming he existed) tried to recover the essence of the Law, by stressing just one Law, as Foxy mentioned.
This I would think makes Christianity exceptionally vulnerable to interpretation; except 500 or so years later, Mohammed took it back the other way. He was very specific on religious observance, and still there is disagreement between the largely peaceful majority, and the extremists, as to who is most accurately interpreting the words of their Prophet.
My problem with Theism is not the Word, or the religion, but the underlying basic tenet that everything is God's Will; therefore people have no responsibility to each other, despite what the Word says.
Once again, not everyone interprets their religion thusly; but the overall state of the world tends to indicate more than enough do.
Another 'elephant' David?
Of course, many non religious feel the same way about responsibility, and how far it extends. This essential Tribalism is a slightly different discussion, I think.

Dear Foxy,

There are books that give overall pictures of the churches under Hitler. They reveal a picture of cooperation and even enthusiastic support.

I credit the Lutheran church with examining its own dark past. Much of what I know about Lutheran antisemitism is from books such as "The Roots of Anti-Semitism: In the Age of Renaissance and Reformation" published by Fortress Press, a Lutheran publishing house.

The following is a review of a recent movie on the subject.

From: http://www.vitalvisuals.com/?q=node/19

Theologians Under Hitler
Aug 6th, 2009 by sdmartintn

In the days after World War II, a convenient story was told of church leaders and ordinary Christians that defied the Nazis from the beginning. Recent research has uncovered a very different story. Rather than resisting, the greater part of the German church saw Hitler's rise in 1933 as an act of God's blessing, a new chapter in the story of God among the German people.
This film, based upon groundbreaking research, introduces the viewer to three of the greatest Christian scholars of the twentieth century: Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch, and Gerhard Kittel, men who were also outspoken supporters of Hitler and the Nazi party. In 1933 Althaus spoke of Hitler's rise as "a gift and miracle of God." Hirsch saw 1933 as a "sunrise of divine goodness." And Kittel, the editor of the standard reference work on the Jewish background of the New Testament, began working for the Nazis to find a "moral" rationale for the destruction of European Jewry.

This provocative film asks: how could something like this happen in the heart of Christian Europe? Could it happen again? How does the scholarship of this period affect the church today? Does the church of today retain the ability to recognize profound evil?

Appearing in "Theologians Under Hitler:"

Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University; author, "Theologians Under Hitler"
Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth University
Doris Bergen, Notre Dame University
Harmut Lehmann, Goettingen University
Hubert Locke, Washington University
Joerg Olemacher, Greifswald University

You make my point perfectly, Pynchme, thank you.

The first reference you provide is one that I referred to earlier - write101 - a site that is dedicated to:

"...how to conquer your fear of the Demon Apostrophe, when to use 'who' and when to use 'whom,' how to distinguish between 'its' and it's,' and answers to all those language questions that have plagued you for years!"

Not, as I pointed out, considered one of the more reliable historical sources for information on pagan rituals. Merely another vehicle for the transmission of rumour and hearsay, it turns out.

And is the site that - most likely - provided Philo with his "information" in the first place.

With your next two references, you brilliantly expose the ability of a rumour to be summoned as fact, by a subsequent browser.

The first is from "Santa's Net", which, you will notice, has a sister site called ToothFairies.net, which should give some indication of their tenacity for veracity.

The second seems to be an excerpt from a child's essay, trapped in the aspic of internet time by Google's all-seeing cache.

It had been copied, verbatim, from "Santa's Net".

Which is the exact point that I set out to demonstrate to Philo - that simply copying and pasting random stuff from the Internet doesn't constitute evidence of anything, except the ability to use a search engine.

Nobody here, myself included, has denied that infanticide has occurred throughout human history. For various reasons - socio-economic reality, religion, superstition etc.

I started this conversation with Philo to explain to him that the basis for his assertion that Christianity was responsible for the elimination of this particular nastiness, was entirely without foundation.

Philo will, I am sure, continue to choose to believe that I am wrong, and that the elimination of barbarism was entirely due to his unique form of religious worship.

And that is entirely his prerogative.

But as Banjo's response showed, contributors tend to trust information that is presented as fact.

Philo's post was a betrayal of that trust.

Bravo Pericles!

BTW for those who believe Jesus 'invented' the Golden Rule of treating others how you would like to be treated. He may have (if he existed) said these words along with a lot of other common sense teachings.

But the Golden Rule has been in use for long before Christ, it may be found inscribed in ancient texts from Egpyt, Greece and Asia. More recently in Judaism and continued by Christianity. It is also considered good sense by people who do not subscribe to any formal religious belief.

That the world's religions both ancient and (relatively) modern contain similar philosophies would indicate that our Godly origins are of our own creation rather than divinely inspired. This should bring comfort to many, because this way, there is no single 'true' religion, they all have their merits and considerable flaws - entirely human.

Foxy and david f,

FYI: A brief account by the Amercian Israeli Cooperative:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Marrus.html

Of course, there was an Holocaust event in Germany against the Jews in the eleventh century, en route to the the First Crausade.

In the earlier case, the Pope set events in motion based on the false claim that Christians were in peril in Jerusalem, when in fact the Christians were quite safe, often in administrative positions, whilst the Jews managed the finances.

In Germany, during the Great Depression, there was underclass and Germany herself was stuggling with repaying reparations, yet there was a Middle Class, with money in the Bank.

The NAZIs played on the fear the Middle Class could loss its upmanship, because of the Jews (and the Communists). I suspect the priests and Lutheran would not have been too vocal, because the NAZIs would have been seen to be acting in the interests of the wealtheir parishioners.