Tortie Cat

Cue Eddie Izzard's comment "you didn't need to put your watch back you needed a whole new f**king watch"!

IvanJames

The first time I read BCE/CE, as a little jewish kid, I thought, "ha! take that, wankers! now we don't have to measure time by somebody else's god anymore!"

French Prometheus

As Huon pointed out to me, the French word Noël does contain an implicit reference to Christianity as it comes from the Latin word natalis. However, most people (including me until yesterday) don't know it. The Christian origin of the word is not very apparent (far less than in Christmas).

French Prometheus

Concerning the use of BC/AD in the world, I'll copy and paste what I wrote in another thread.

Many calendars have been used by various human civilizations throughout history. The "Christian" one, currently in use in the West, was invented several centuries after the alledged death of Jesus. Even when the Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity, they didn't use the BC/AD calendar. Actually, even the Church didn't use it until Dionysius's reform in the 5th century. The early Chuch used the Roman imperial system.

Nowadays, most Muslim countries don't use the Gregorian calendar with its Christian point of origin. They still use a lunar calendar with years marked as AH (Anno Hegirae).

The Gregorian calendar has no official value in Japan and all official documents must be dated according to their imperial system. The Japanese usually know what "Christian year" it is now but most of them are incapable of telling the "Christian" year of a particular event (whether personal or historical) without calculating it.

John A. Broussard

Since the time of the winter solstice was considered to be the "rebirth" of the earth, maybe the French word simply refers to that.

I don't know, but someone else here might.

sorompio

I'd love to see the infamous AD lost and gone forever, no matter the difficulties. It's a shame to mantain that nonsense of the jewish carpenter and represents a big insult to people of other religions and the non-believers in general.

We'd rather go back to the tradition of Rome. In that case, this year is:

Anno 2758 (Ab Urbe Condita)

But, of course, we could refer to some scientific advance. Just to mock our creationist friends, we could split our calendar in the day of the publication of Darwin's "The Origin Of Species" :devil3: :Cheeky: :devil1: :thumbs: :rolling:
In this case, we should write:

Anno 146 (Ab Origine Specierum)

Oh yeah! This idea would surely create some stir here and there... :thumbs: :wave:

Huon

The french word "Noël" is derved from the latin "natalis", and means "nativity". Very similar names in all the romance languages. And it is just a miracle if the day assigned by the Church to commemorate the birth of JC is near the winter solstice. St John Baptist's day on June 24th is near the summer solstice. The assumption of the Holy Virgin has been placed on August 15th, after the end of the harvest time.