• Flag
      6•7 months ago

      Here is a term from the old world:

      Jul/jól

    • @[email protected]
      4•7 months ago

      The gift giving was more as a celebration of epiphany which eventually migrated if I remember correctly.

      • @[email protected]
        34•7 months ago

        It’s the calendar date of the day you were born, repeated each year. But that’s not important right now.

              • @[email protected]English
                7•7 months ago

                Supposedly in the summer due to something about the stars. Xmas was supposed to be cultural approtiates of the winter solstice or something. I’m sure someone will add to this.

                • @[email protected]
                  11•7 months ago

                  On a serious note, yes Christmas was placed where it was in order to coincide with Saturnalia, the Roman winter solstice festival. This was an attempt by Constantine, the emperor who legalized Christianity in Rome, to transition the Romans to Christianity more easily.

            • ALQ
              5•7 months ago

              It’s not even like there aren’t two US flag options, too: 🇺🇸🇺🇲

              If anyone figures out the difference, let me know, because these look pretty much the same.

              • @[email protected]
                3•7 months ago

                Taking a screenshot and zooming in, the grainy extrapolated pixels appear to be in exactly the same pattern. Very odd indeed.

              • Xylight (Photon Dev)English
                2•6 months ago

                Apparently because of how flag codes work, the USA and US Minor Outlying Islands technically have different flags in unicode, even though they’re the same flag. There are countless people who have used the USA minor Outlying Islands flag instead of the regular USA flag.

  • palordrolap
    14•7 months ago

    Josh probably isn’t that much of a fan of his birthday, tbh. It’s the rest of us.

    Well.

    Those of us who decided or accepted that we’d celebrate Josh’s birthday for him around the time of Roman Saturnalia or the pagan mid-winter* festival, even though that’s very much unlikely to be the right date**, because there were already celebrations going on at that time. The whole “let’s decorate a tree” thing is pagan.

    There are some offshoots of Josh’s fan club who don’t think much of his birthday either, and instead have the big celebration around his death-date instead. Not like “at last he’s gone and kicked the bucket”, more like “yay he went to heaven and paved the way for the rest of us, or so we tell ourselves because that’d be awesome.”. That’s totally not also based around celebrations that existed before Josh, no siree.

    Anyway, my point is that his opinion isn’t really known, and he probably wouldn’t decorate a tree. He’d be more likely to shout at it for not having figs.

    * where “winter” is defined as the seasons autumn and winter together, the same way that “day” can mean daytime and nighttime together)

    ** compare how the British monarch often has two “birthdays”: An actual one and an official one in June where people can celebrate in nice weather. (Liz’s real birthday was in April and Chuck’s is in November. Both rainy months.)

  • solidsnake2085
    9•7 months ago

    I’m more about celebrating other people’s birthdays. I don’t do anything for my birthday. I usually sit at home and watch Steven Seagal movies, which is something I’ve done for the past 22 years.