Merry Christmas crackaz :)

A.Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose "an enemy of the Roman people" to represent the "Lord of Misrule." Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival's conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

B.The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival's observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

C.In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

D.The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia's concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus' birthday.

E.Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, "In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior's birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been." The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

F.The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that "the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens' Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones."[3] Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4] However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

G.Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, "Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome's taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily."

III.The Origins of Christmas Customs

A.Christmas Trees
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning "Christmas Trees". Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Church.

B.Mistletoe
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim. The Christian custom of "kissing under the mistletoe" is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.

C.Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas

D.Santa Claus

a.Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.

b.Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as "the children of the devil"[11] who sentenced Jesus to death.

c.In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas' death, December 6.

d.The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.

e.In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.

f.In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

g.Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: "Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…" Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.

h.The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore's poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper's Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.

i.In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa's fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.

Mohammed The Bear: A response from a Sudanese Muslims point of view

Rhythm and Poetry

just pretend you didn't see that idiot motaz sobahy.. i don't know why the fuck would they bring such a fake artist to present one of the puerest forms of arts ever made.. anyways..
that was BIB, a rap group from Sudan, they been droppin shit for more than ten years now and I only hurd of em today .. they deserve mad props yo
gtg, peace out

Dirty Acres

Wooo, over a thousand visit to my blog, awesome.. I don't even post that much lol

sorry yall, Ramadan really is some shit, I sleep all day and cruze all night, I can't find anytime to do anything. but I'll drop some stuff later.

anyways, I thought I could use my traffic to promote Cunninlynguists new joint Dirty Acres .. If you don't know who Cunninlynguists are, they're just another motherfuckas bringin truth in the form of hip hop.. they drop science with thier "Stunning English" and life visions and philosophy, rappin about diffrent issues from love to politics their shit is a must have. You Never Know Ft. Immortal Technique is a good example of their hip hop revolution.
and clcik here to download the pro for their new album which is going to drop by the end of November, Dirty Acres .. I didn't listen to it yet, waiting for Azan so I can smoke me a fat joint before listenin to it..
I promised myself I'll buy it if I ever left Sudan, all they sell here is crag david and 50 cent man, what a shame, but I'll buy the shit, you too.. support the artists if you like their work, don't be a bitch.. aite.

Life Is a Struggle

I told you.. this is art

My mind flashed back to the early moon
When I was just a sperm cell in the fallopian tube
In the mist of a state of triple darkness
Going through a struggle so I could exist
Avoiding everything that came within my path
As I watch other sperm cells get ripped in half
One out of a million completes the job
And for the other sperm cells the womb is a grave yard
Though my travels I had to pass through
Alot of battles and violent hassles
Cause inside the womb I was a foreign object
I'm like a new nigga walking through the project
Trouble, everywhere I turn
Damn its a struggle just being a sperm
cell, so I attempt to prevail
I guess the womb is the first stage of hell
Now here I am in the danger zone
My head and my tail, my 23 chromosomes
But then again yo it can't be that bad cause my dad
He could have used a body bag
And if so then my tomb would have been the trash can inside my moms bedroom
But they was fucking, they was true to this
And here a go on a mission to the uterus
A million mother fuckers tried to race ahead
But I was the one that fertilized the egg
Then I thought then I was safe
Because I reached home base
But oh no my job wasn't done
In fact my troubles had only begun life as a struggle
Life is the struggle
Life is the struggle

by Tha RZA from his album Birth of a Prince

Sudanese Westside Gangstaz

The news about egyptian soldiers shooting sudanese refugees while trying to cross the borders to Israel really pissed me off.
cuz during the last year hundereds of egyptians arrived to work in Khartoum, they took over small jobs like construction and resturants services..
those workers are not put in ghettoes, they are treted well, in simple words, they are having a good life. I don't remember seeing any sad egyptian motherfucka here in Khartoum, matter fact their stupid loud laughter on buses makes me sick when I remember the misrable lifes of Southern Sudanese construction workers who go drink cheap liqueur after they finish their shift burning their souls, I see egyptians finish their shifts and go have some cappuccino in Ozone or Afra mall.

well, they do have some trouples..
"Sudan Government apologizes for police assault on Egyptian workers" was a headline months ago, which is some funny shit cuz the same police that apologizes to the egyptians is the same one that been and still practice brutality on sudanese citizens, we never heared them apologize for us. but thats a diffrent story.

what about sudanese people in egypt?

I read this testimony from an egyptian blogger who is "Disgraced to be Egyptian" a while ago, talking bout the sudanese refugees situation in Cairo, and it's really shocking.

Refugees lined up and started warming up too but saying ‘allah akbar’, ‘la ilaha ella allah’ and ‘hasbona allah wa neama al wakil’ meaning there is no god but allah and only him we delegate to handle our injustice. The Christians chanted Halleluiah. And this set identity for the war players. The few civilian audience started cheering for the Egyptian army against the dirty / black / Christian parasites. Yes, there was no humanity in the scene.

egyptian civilians were cheering for the armed forces as they were beating the refugees is nothing new, egyptians are racist briks, anyone familiar with egyptian cinema would notice that, specially their "golden era", which is nothing but buillshit. and till this day, sudanese
people and nubians are a great sketch in egyptian comedy movies.
But sudanese immigrants in Cairo streets suffer something more than getting shot to death at the borders, or kicked by egyptian police force, or facing stupid egyptians racism.
they are also killing each other
yub, blieve it or not, sudanese immigrants started forming their own gangs in the streets of Cairo.

doesn't this remind you of something? it does ring a bell here, yub.. USA

you know how the US "suffer" from latin american gangs violance on its soil for many years. MS 13 (AKA Mara Salvatrucha) is the most known one, and its basically formed by a group of Salvadorian immigrants escaping the civil war in El Salvador in the 80s and youngsters who got sick of living "poor in a country that despise them".

Al-Jazeera People and Power article worth reading

Inspired by American hip-hop culture, these gangs provide identity and security to their members. Gangsters wear baggy clothes, have their own gang signs, carry knives and have turf wars. Gang life revolves around making music, fighting and holding parties.

anyone watched Blood Diamond? you saw them soldiers from RUF bumping Tupac's music right? what does revolution got to do with gangsta rap? can't answer that question better than Immortal Technique man, read his article Gangsta Rap is Hip Hop. these "Lost Boys" are violent, we can't argue that. thought they didn't receive them isreli Uzi's yet, but knives are they main tool for now.

Maliah Bekam, 24, came to Egypt to escape the civil war in southern Sudan, but he died in a pool of his own blood in a Cairo street.

man, somebody must do something about this before they get real guns, or the CIA decide to sell them crack.

Though these gangstas are on some fake copy/past shit (throwing westside signs and writing american cities names on their body is some fake ignorant shit), it's easy to understand their anger. and I think it's a good thing, cuz only anger motivate you to make a change. but they should stop directing anger on each other and use it in their struggle against all odds.

but why is that happenin? why we don't have egyptian gangstaz here in Khartoum? is it because they're not black? they came here and took our jobs and they having a good time, but my people go to egypt and be treated like shit and die for nothing.
I hope they realize that they are the roses 2Pac is talking about in his poem

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Provin nature's laws wrong

it learned to walk without havin feet
Funny it seems but, by keepin its dreams
it, learned to breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from the concrete
when no one else even cared
No one else even cared..
The rose that grew from concrete

The Joy and The Hurt

Sorry yall, I'm through my final exams these days, so I won't be blogging for a while..
I almost finished a long article about Sahih Bukhari, I'll post it here soon and on MidEastYouth. all later.
so yeah, till then, listen to a great poet from America. Killah Priest, The B.I.B.L.E.