It brings a tear, Into my eyes, When I begin, To realize, I’ve cried so much, Since you’ve been gone, I guess I’m drowning in my own tears, I sit and cry, Just like a child My pouring tears Are runnin’ wild If you don’t think You’ll be home soon I guess I’ll drown in my own tears I know it’s true Into each life Some rain, rain must pour I’m so blue Here without you It keeps raining More and more Why don’t you Come on home Oh yes so I won’t Be all alone If you don’t think You’ll be home soon I guess I’ll (drown in my own tears) Ooh, don’t let me (drown in my own tears) When I’m in trouble, baby (drown in my own tears) Oh, yeah, baby don’t let me (drown in my own tears) I guess I’ll drown in my own tears Oh, mmmmm.
She sits on the dock a fishin’ in the water uh, huh I don’t know her name she’s the fisherman’s daughter uh, huh Come on down to my boat baby Come on down where we can play Come on down to my boat baby Come on down we’ll sail away. She smiled so nice like she wants to come with me uh, huh But she’s tied to the dock and she can’t get free Come on down to my boat baby ……. Fish all day sleep all night Father never lets her out of his sight Soon I’m gonna have to get my knife and cut that rope, cut that rope Then we can go fishin’ in my little red boat Make you happy in my little red boat so come on down to my boat baby ……
You’ll remember me when the west wind moves Upon the fields of barley You’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky As we walk in the fields of gold
So she took her love For to gaze awhile Upon the fields of barley In his arms she fell as her hair came down Among the fields of gold
Will you stay with me, will you be my love Among the fields of barley We’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky As we lie in the fields of gold
See the west wind move like a lover so Upon the fields of barley Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth Among the fields of gold I never made promises lightly And there have been some that I’ve broken But I swear in the days still left We’ll walk in the fields of gold
Many years have passed since those summer days Among the fields of barley See the children run as the sun goes down Among the fields of gold
You’ll remember me when the west wind moves Upon the fields of barley You can tell the sun in his jealous sky When we walked in the fields of gold
Now and then I think of when we were together Like when you said you felt so happy you could die I told myself that you were right for me But felt so lonely in your company But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember
You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness Like resignation to the end Always the end So when we found that we could not make sense Well you said that we would still be friends But I’ll admit that I was glad that it was over
But you didn’t have to cut me off Make out like it never happened And that we were nothing And I don’t even need your love But you treat me like a stranger And that feels so rough No you didn’t have to stoop so low Have your friends collect your records And then change your number I guess that I don’t need that though Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over But had me believing it was always something that I’d done But I don’t wanna live that way Reading into every word you say You said that you could let it go And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know
Somebody I used to know Now you’re just somebody that I used to know Somebody I used to know Now you’re just somebody that I used to know I used to know That I used to know I used to know Somebody
Just a bit of knowledge on Christmas. The word “Christmas” originated as a compound meaning “Christ’s mass”. It is derived from the Middle English Cristemasse, which is from Old English Crīstesmæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038. Crīst (genitive Crīstes) is from Greek Khrīstos (Χριστός), a translation ofHebrew Māšîaḥ (מָשִׁיחַ), “Messiah”; and mæsse is from Latin missa, the celebration of the Eucharist. The form “Christenmas” was also historically used, but is now considered archaic and dialectal it derives from Middle English Cristenmasse, literally “Christian mass”.”Xmas” is an abbreviation of Christmas found particularly in print, based on the initial letter chi (Χ) in Greek Khrīstos (Χριστός), “Christ”, though numerous style guides discourage its use; it has precedent in Middle English Χρ̄es masse (where “Χρ̄” is an abbreviation for Χριστός). In addition to “Christmas”, the holiday has been known by various other names throughout its history. The Anglo-Saxons referred to the feast as midwinter, “midwinter”, or, more rarely, as Nātiuiteð (from Latin nātīvitās below). “Nativity”, meaning “birth”, is from Latinnātīvitās. In Old English, Gēola (“Yule”) referred to the period corresponding to January and December; the cognate Old Norse Jól was later the name of a pagan Scandinavian holiday which merged with Christmas around 1000. “Noel” (or “Nowell”) entered English in the late 14th century and is from the Old French noël or naël, itself ultimately from the Latin nātālis (diēs), “(day) of birth”.
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day (Old English: Crīstesmæsse, literally “Christ’smass”) is an annual commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ, celebrated generally on December 25 as a religious and cultural holiday by billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year, it closes theAdvent season and initiates the twelve days of Christmastide. Christmas is a civil holiday in many of the world’s nations, is celebrated by an increasing number of non-Christians, and is an integral part of the Christmas and holiday season.
The precise day of Jesus’ birth, which historians place between 7 and 2 BC, is unknown. In the early-to-mid 4th century, the Western Christian Church first placed Christmas on December 25, a date later adopted also in the East.Theories advanced to explain that choice include that it falls exactly nine months after the Christian celebration of the conception of Jesus, or that it was selected to coincide with either the date of the Roman winter solstice or of some ancientpagan winter festival.
The original date of the celebration in Eastern Christianity was January 6, in connection with Epiphany, and that is still the date of the celebration for theArmenian Apostolic Church and in Armenia, where it is a public holiday. As of 2011, there is a difference of 13 days between the modern Gregorian calendar and the older Julian calendar. Those who continue to use the Julian calendar or its equivalents thus celebrate December 25 and January 6 on what for the majority of the world is January 7 and January 19. For this reason, Ethiopia, Russia andUkraine celebrate Christmas, both as a Christian feast and as a public holiday, on what in the Gregorian calendar is January 7.
The popular celebratory customs associated in various countries with Christmas have a mix of pre-Christian, Christian and secular themes and origins. Popular modern customs of the holiday include gift giving, Christmas music and caroling, an exchange of Christmas cards, church celebrations, a special meal, and the display of various decorations, including Christmas trees, lights, nativity scenes, garlands, wreaths, mistletoe, and holly. In addition, several closely related and often interchangeable figures, known as Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas and Kris Kringle among other names, are associated with bringing gifts to children during the Christmas season and have their own body of traditions and lore. Because gift-giving and many other aspects of the Christmas festival involve heightened economic activity among both Christians and non-Christians, the holiday has become a significant event and a key sales period for retailers and businesses. The economic impact of Christmas is a factor that has grown steadily over the past few centuries in many regions of the world.
Date of celebration
For centuries, Christian writers accepted that Christmas was the actual date on which Jesus was born. John Chrysostom preached a sermon in Antioch c. 386 which established the date of Christmas as December 25 on the Julian calendar since the conception of Jesus (Luke 1:26) had been announced during the sixth month of Elisabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist (Luke 1:10-13) as dated from the duties Zacharias performed on the Day of Atonement during the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar Ethanim or Tishri (Lev. 16:29, 1 Kings 8:2) which falls in September–October.
In the early 18th century, scholars began proposing alternative explanations. Isaac Newton argued that the date of Christmas was selected to correspond with the winter solstice, which the Romans called bruma and celebrated on December 25. In 1743, German Protestant Paul Ernst Jablonski argued Christmas was placed on December 25 to correspond with the Roman solar holiday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and was therefore a “paganization” that debased the true church. In 1889,Louis Duchesne proposed that the date of Christmas was calculated as nine months after theAnnunciation, the traditional date of the conception of Jesus, which itself was based on a traditional belief that he was conceived and crucified on the same date, 15 Nisan.
In the early 4th century, the church calendar contained Christmas on December 25 and other holidays placed on solar dates: “It is cosmic symbolism…which inspired the Church leadership in Rome to elect the winter solstice, December 25, as the birthday of Christ, and the summer solstice as that of John the Baptist, supplemented by the equinoxes as their respective dates of conception. While they were aware that pagans called this day the ‘birthday’ of Sol Invictus, this did not concern them and it did not play any role in their choice of date for Christmas,” according to modern scholar S.E. Hijmans.
However, today, whether or not the birth date of Jesus is on December 25 is not considered to be an important issue among mainstreamChristian denominations; rather, celebrating the coming of God into the world in the form of man to atone for the sins of humanity is considered to be the primary meaning of Christmas.
Using the Julian calendar
Eastern Orthodox national churches, including those of Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem mark feasts using the older Julian calendar. December 25 on the Julian calendar currently corresponds to January 7 on the internationally-used Gregorian calendar. However, other Orthodox Christians, such as the churches of Greece, Romania, Antioch,Alexandria, Albania, Finland and the Orthodox Church in America, among others, began using the Revised Julian calendar in the early 20th century, which corresponds exactly to the Gregorian calendar.
These Orthodox Churches celebrate Christmas on the same day as Western Christianity. Oriental Orthodox churches also use their own calendars, which are generally similar to the Julian calendar. The Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates the nativity in combination with theFeast of the Epiphany on January 6. Armenian churches customarily use the Gregorian calendar, but some use the Julian calendar and thus celebrate Christmas Day on January 19, and Christmas Eve on January 18 (according to the Gregorian calendar).
Commemorating Jesus’ birth
Anbetung der Hirten (Adoration of the Shepherds) (c. 1500–10), by Italian painter Giorgio da Castelfranco
Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary as a fulfillment of the Old Testament’s Messianic prophecy. The Bible contains two accounts which describe the events surrounding Jesus’ birth. Depending on one’s perspective, these accounts either differ from each other or tell two versions of the same story These biblical accountsare found in the Gospel of Matthew, namely Matthew 1:18, and the Gospel of Luke, specifically Luke 1:26 and 2:40. According to these accounts, Jesus was born to Mary, assisted by her husband Joseph, in the city of Bethlehem.
According to popular tradition, the birth took place in a stable, surrounded by farm animals, though neither the stable nor the animals are specifically mentioned in the Biblical accounts. However, a manger (that is, a feeding trough) is mentioned in Luke 2:7, where it states Mary “wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (KJV); the New International Version now translates this, “She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them” (NIV). Early iconographic representations of the nativity placed the animals and manger within a cave (located, according to tradition, under the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem), not a stable.
Shepherds from the fields surrounding Bethlehem were told of the birth by an angel, and were the first to see the child. Popular tradition also holds that three kings or wise men (named Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar) visited the infant Jesus in the manger, though this does not strictly follow the Biblical account. The Gospel of Matthew instead describes a visit by an unspecified number of magi, or astrologers, sometime after Jesus was born while the family was living in a house (Matthew 2:11), who brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the young child Jesus. The visitors were said to be following a mysterious star, commonly known as the Star of Bethlehem, believing it to announce the birth of a king of the Jews. The commemoration of this visit, the Feast of Epiphany celebrated on January 6, is the formal end of the Christmas season in some churches.
Christians celebrate Christmas in various ways. In addition to this day being one of the most important and popular for the attendance of church services, there are other devotions and popular traditions. In some Christian denominations, children re-enact the events of the Nativity with animals to portray the event with more realism or sing carols that reference the event. Some Christians also display a small re-creation of the Nativity, known as a Nativity scene or crèche, in their homes, using figurines to portray the key characters of the event. Prior to Christmas Day, the Eastern Orthodox Church practices the 40-day Nativity Fast in anticipation of the birth of Jesus, while much ofWestern Christianity celebrates four weeks of Advent. The final preparations for Christmas are made on Christmas Eve.
A long artistic tradition has grown of producing painted depictions of the nativity in art. Nativity scenes are traditionally set in a stable with livestock and include Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus in the manger, the three wise men, the shepherds and their sheep, the angels, and the Star of Bethlehem.
History
The earliest evidence of the celebration on December 25 of a Christian liturgical feast of the birth of Jesus is from the Chronography of 354 AD. This was in Rome, while in Eastern Christianity the birth of Jesus was already celebrated in connection with the Epiphany on January 6. The December 25 celebration was imported into the East later: in Antioch by John Chrysostom towards the end of the 4th century, probably in 388, and in Alexandria only in the following century. Even in the West, the January 6 celebration of the nativity of Jesus seems to have continued until after 380.
Many popular customs associated with Christmas developed independently of the commemoration of Jesus’ birth, with certain elements having origins in pre-Christian festivals that were celebrated around the winter solstice by pagan populations who were later converted to Christianity. These elements, including the Yule log from Yule and gift giving from Saturnalia, became syncretized into Christmas over the centuries. The prevailing atmosphere of Christmas has also continually evolved since the holiday’s inception, ranging from a sometimes raucous, drunken, carnival-like state in the Middle Ages, to a tamer family-oriented and children-centered theme introduced in a 19th-century reformation. Additionally, the celebration of Christmas was banned on more than one occasion within Protestant Christendomdue to concerns that it was too pagan or unbiblical.
Controversy and criticism
Throughout the holiday’s history, Christmas has been the subject of both controversy and criticism from a wide variety of different sources. The first documented Christmas controversy was Christian-led, and began during the English Interregnum, when England was ruled by aPuritan Parliament. Puritans (including those who fled to America) sought to remove the remaining pagan elements of Christmas. During this brief period, the English Parliament banned the celebration of Christmas entirely, considering it “a popish festival with no biblical justification”, and a time of wasteful and immoral behavior.
Controversy and criticism continues in the present-day, where some Christian and non-Christians have claimed that an affront to Christmas (dubbed a “war on Christmas” by some) is ongoing. In the United States there has been a tendency to replace the greeting Merry Christmas with Happy Holidays. Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have initiated court cases to bar the display of images and other material referring to Christmas from public property, including schools. Such groups argue that government-funded displays of Christmas imagery and traditions violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the establishment by Congress of a national religion. In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lynch vs. Donnelly that a Christmas display (which included a Nativity scene) owned and displayed by the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island did not violate the First Amendment. In November 2009, the Federal appeals court in Philadelphia endorsed a school district’s ban on the singing of Christmas carols.
In the private sphere also, it has been alleged that any specific mention of the term “Christmas” or its religious aspects was being increasingly censored, avoided, or discouraged by a number of advertisers and retailers. In response, the American Family Association and other groups have organized boycotts of individual retailers. In the United Kingdom there have been some minor controversies, one of the most famous being the temporary promotion of the Christmas period as Winterval by Birmingham City Council in 1998. There were also protests in November 2009 when the city of Dundee promoted its celebrations as the Winter Night Light festival, initially with no specific Christmas references.
Jesus (Isa عيسى)
Jesus and Islamic view of Jesus
Jesus takes up the whole of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) in the Bible, as well as being the focus of the subsequent books of the New Testament.
He appears several times in the Qur’an: in
verses 35-59 of Sura 3: al-Imran (The Family of Imran),
verses 156-158 of Sura 4: an Nisa’ (The Women),
verses 109-120 of Sura 5: al-Ma’idah (The Repast),
verses 16-35 of Sura 19: Maryam (Mary),
verse 50 of Sura 23: al-Mu’minun (The Believers)
verses 57-65 of Sura 43: az-Zukhruf (The Gold Adornments) and in
verses 6 and 14 of Sura 61: as-Saff (The Battle Array).
Reference is made to him several more times.
The Qur’an contains few narratives from Jesus’ life, but does include many brief descriptions in common with the Bible:
Made the dead to live
Is the Messiah (the Christ)
Had disciples
His disciples were successful over disbelievers
Healed the blind and lepers
Filled with the Holy Spirit
Is alive in heaven now
In the Qur’an Jesus is said to have created a bird out of clay and blown life into it; and he is also said to have spoken as an infant in the cradle to defend his mother from the false accusations of fornication. These two narratives are not found in the Bible, but are in the Infancy Gospels (Non-Canonical Gospels).
The Qur’an rejects the Christian view of Jesus, specifically his divinity. According to the Qur’an, Jesus did not ask to be worshipped and Jesus asked people to worship God. Also, according to the Qur’an, God “has no partners” and believing that God took physical form is in of itself a sin.
Ho love of mine.. with a song and a whine.. You’re harsh and divine.. like truths and a lie.. but the tale end is not here.. I’ve nothing to fear.. for my love is yell of giving and hold on… in the bright emptiness.. in a room full of it.. is the cruel mistress ho ho o… I feel the sunrise.. that nest all hollowness.. for i have the way to go.. not come… And i feel so lonely yea.. There’s a better place from this emptiness..
Creation is the product of synchronizing our energy with the universe. Once we experience the whole and recognize it, we become aware that we are nothing but the Divine Creative Force.
