Talk:Winterval

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17th Dec 05. Edited African American to Afro-Caribbean, because using a US-centric term in an article about an event in Birmingham, England is remarkably stupid and blindly PC.

LOL, that's just ludicrous. There are people out there who think every black person is American? That's not even PC, it's a cocktail of ignorance and arrogance.
I noticed it's been changed back - would love to know the justification for this! 86.15.128.27 (talk) 22:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Black or Black British are the official 'ethnic groups' for people of Caribbean, African, or other Black backgrounds for the UK, so they could be used [1]. However, African American is most definitely wrong. 82.18.132.162 (talk) 22:59, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd also like to know why New Year's Day is a "specifically Christian" tradition. If there's no backup for this it needs rephrasing.

Presumably because it uses the Christian calendar, though there's never been anything religious about New Year. Mon Vier 23:38, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
New Year is Christian because the years being counted are those since the birth of Christ (2006 is theoretically 2005 years after the birth, with year 1 beginning at the moment of his birth). If you go to countries which have no Christian tradition, they often have a completely different system for counting years (obviously the period of time it takes to go round the sun is always roughly 365 days, but the starting point of a year and the number of years counted are both completely arbitrary). Admittedly, there is an inconsistency about celebrating the birth on the 25th December but the new year on the 1st of January, really they ought to be on the same day if they're both meant to be anniversaries of the same event, but they're so close together that no one really pays it much attention. Originally these mid-winter festivals were pagan and somewhat hijacked by the church, and the real birth of Christ (if it happened) probably occured earlier in the year.
No they're not! The current calendar (Gregorian) is an adaption of the Julian calendar that was created in 49 BC. This replaced the badly innacurate Roman calendar in which December was the tenth month. The creation of AD and BC as a divider came much later (525 AD) - the counting of years being totally seperate from the counting of days. This is also a seperate issue from when a year begins. Options included Lady's day (25th March, hence the UK financial year of 6th April - remember the calendar shifted from Julian to Gregorian), the current New Year day, or the day that a particular monarch was crowned. New Year was actually a roman/pagan celbration. Duncan 21:14, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Wintervali

I have this year seen the term Wintervali used to include the Hindu Diwali in the Winterval portfolio. Lumos3 12:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

This article should definitely be either merged or incorporated into Christmas controversies, which is now an article that covers all Christmas-related controversies over the years, not just the current "war on Christmas" concept in the USA. In addition, the Christmas controversies article has been criticized for being US-centric, so a Europe-related controversy would be much needed and appreciated. — `CRAZY`(lN)`SANE` (merry C–mas) 00:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose Winterval is suffciently well used and debated to warrent its own article. Nothing to stop you adding material from here to Christmas controversies though. See Wikipedia is not paper.Lumos3 09:40, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
Oppose and its an ongoing issue here - the Archbish of York again refered to it (2006). It should be refered to in the other article Duncan 21:18, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Background Bias?

It may just be me, but the Background section seems more than a little biased. In fact, in places it reads like a Birmingham City Council document rather than an encyclopedia article, and takes one or two thinly-veiled swipes at the clergy who criticised "Winterval" in the process. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.29.43.187 (talk) 14:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Encyclopaedia articles can and do separate fact from fiction. An article on Flat Earth theories can point out that they are contradicted by the evidence, and an article on Winterval can point out that the comments from some members of the clergy were also contradicted by the evidence. Duncan (talk) 21:02, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Archishop of Wales...

...should have read our article before spouting off! 86.132.140.178 (talk) 15:33, 22 December 2007 (UTC)