It seems that The Japan Times' editors, in choosing to run Kevin Rafferty's "A thought for the holy day" on Dec. 24, did so out of either fear of or favor for that small, highly vocal clique that still believes that Jesus is the reason for the season. What we now call Christmas began as a solstice holiday in the megalithic period all over the Middle East and Europe, beginning approximately 5,500 years ago. It was only later appropriated by the church fathers and put into place by and after Constantine (fourth century).
Why Rafferty was allowed to inflict the obtuse arrogance of his monotheistic mythology on readers remains a mystery to me. His smug confidence in the superiority of his belief system is hard to swallow for those who have actually read more than one book. Anyone who has read any comparative mythology or studied the documents of the Christian church knows that the book upon which Rafferty bases his subjective conclusions was written by 30 to 40 different people over a long course of history, as well as shaped and reshaped countless times over the centuries by scribal intent and a political church bent on expanding its spiritual monopoly.
I implore The Japan Times to be more circumspect in the future, and not kowtow to the virulent vociferousness of monotheistic writers, be they from any of the three Abrahamic religions that are strangling our world today. These voices deservedly have a diminished role in contemporary society.