Holiday Greetings From Angstville
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 18:50:04 EST
Reply-To: "Bluegrass music discussion."
Sender: "Bluegrass music discussion."
From: Dave [name and email redacted]
Subject: Santa Claus and Christmas
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
What is this world coming to?
Spending the night in an auction barn in Franklin, Indiana, I had plenty of
time to discuss Christmas and Santa Claus with the other people that were
stranded.
A shock to me was the reply that I got from a 13 year old boy, the son of the
auction owner, when I asked him what Christmas and Santa meant to him.
He was overjoyed with the things that Santa was bringing him. More expensive
toys than our entire family of 12 kids ever experienced in four or five
combined Christmas's.
I asked him what we were celebrating on the 25th of December.
His reply was that he thought it was the Boston Tea Party or something like
that.
What is this world coming to? A 13 year old boy that knows nothing about
Christ and that Jesus was born on the 25th of December, not the Boston Tea
Party??
Something else that I've noticed this year. I am an avid fan of Christmas
decorations on and around homes and drive around several times a year just
enjoying the beautiful lights and all the nativity scenes. What happened this
year? About one out of ten homes seems to have any decorations at all in our
city. Used to be that every home celebrated Jesus's birthday and Christmas the
whole month of December and even through much of January.
Who's to blame?
What's this world coming to? Xmas instead of Christmas. No Lord's prayer
anymore in most places.No pledge of allegiance...Government buildings, schools
and others being forced by the court's to take Christ out of our lives.
If I could only go back about 40 years and enjoy, once again, what made our
country so great......The pledge, Lord's prayer anytime and anyplace, Nativity
scenes......???????????????????
Bah humbug.
Dave
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 13:26:28 -0800
From: Brendan Skwire
Subject: Re: sant claus and christmas
Of all the twittery I have ever read, Dave rants
"What's this world coming to? Xmas instead of Christmas. No Lord's
prayer anymore in most places.No pledge of allegiance...Government
buildings, schools and others being forced by the court's to take Christ out of our
lives. If I could only go back about 40 years and enjoy, once again, what
made our country so great......The pledge, Lord's prayer anytime and anyplace, Nativity scenes......??????????????????? Bah humbug."
OK, first of all, you are familiar with the concept of democracy? The
rules, OUR rules as set down in our CONSTITUTION, say that because the taxpayers are a diverse lot of christians,
jews, muslims, hindus, etc etc you can't give preference to one religion
over the other. The government here is secular and everyone is treated
the same. The minute one group gets special rights, (all this whining
about Christian prayer in schools is nothing more than a plea for
special rights) the government ceases to represent everyone impartially. if
gay people can't have special rights, why should anyone else?
Like Dave however, i am very much in favor of prayer in school: kids
can pray to jesus on Monday, face east and offer prayers to Allah the
next, prayers to Ganesh next, etc etc. that's the only way it can be fair,
otherwise you get kids who are excluded.
This may be easy to forget when one is in the religious majority, but
countries with state-sanctioned religions are not fun places: think
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. Hell, if you consider US history, one
of the main reasons the puritans came over here to begin with was to
escape persecution from the anglican church.
By the way, do you know what the puritans, the original
fundamentalists, did when they got here? THEY BANNED CHRISTMAS from 1659 until 1681.
Christianity today is in some ways a victim of its own success.
Christmas and Christ will be here for a long time: the profit margin's too
damn good. This whole idea that christmas is being steadily excluded from
public life is bullplop of the stinkiest order: turn on your radio,
your tv, or open a newspaper anytime after halloween and you're
overwhelmed by holiday ads. For a lot of people, Christmas is the equivalent of
a president's day car sale. You never see Passover sales ("We're
slaying our competitors' first born and passing over the savings to you!
It's gonna be a plague of deals!") or Ramadan sales. Even my Jewish
friends exchange gifts and buy trees, calling it "fake Christmas." For many
of us, it's a meaningless orgy of gift-giving. The holiday has
superceded its original intent and has become something more similar to the
state holidays of imperial Greece and Rome: devoid of meaning. those of
us who aren't even the least bit religious are under extreme pressure
to participate in buying material goods (most made in secular communist
china) in celebration of the birth of a deity we don't believe in, lest
we get called "Scrooge". This deity, ironically enough, instructed
us to "sell all we have and give it to the poor," that it was "easier
for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the gates of heaven," that "what good does it do to gain the whole
world and lose your soul" yet the average American spends something
like $700 each Christmas buying unnecessary gifts for people who probably
don't need or deserve them.
The other day at work I was driving the delivery van, was scanning the
radio stations in a futile attempt to escape the Christmas juggernaut.
What I finally settled on if you can believe it was the Christian station, where a minister was decrying the materialism of the season and urging people to put the
Christ back in Christmas. Now, I agree with right-wing christians on oh... just
about nothing, but I found myself cheering this man on. I'm with the
Puritans and with the radio preacher: ban anyone from making money off
the holiday and put Christmas back in the churches where it belongs. The
same goes for Valentine's Day, Easter, and St. Patrick's day, three
other Christian holidays that everyone, regardless of religious belief, is
basically expected to participate in. Why isn't everyone expected to
take part in Passover or Eid?
"If I could only go back about 40 years and enjoy, once again, what
made our country so great"
Maybe if you read the constitution you'd enjoy what really makes our
country so great instead of your narrow-minded hallucination. And maybe
you'd stop whining about how persecuted you are. I don't shove my
religious beliefs down your throat: why is your religion always being
shoved down mine? WWJD?
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 18:50:04 EST
Reply-To: "Bluegrass music discussion."
Sender: "Bluegrass music discussion."
From: Dave [name and email redacted]
Subject: Santa Claus and Christmas
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
What is this world coming to?
Spending the night in an auction barn in Franklin, Indiana, I had plenty of
time to discuss Christmas and Santa Claus with the other people that were
stranded.
A shock to me was the reply that I got from a 13 year old boy, the son of the
auction owner, when I asked him what Christmas and Santa meant to him.
He was overjoyed with the things that Santa was bringing him. More expensive
toys than our entire family of 12 kids ever experienced in four or five
combined Christmas's.
I asked him what we were celebrating on the 25th of December.
His reply was that he thought it was the Boston Tea Party or something like
that.
What is this world coming to? A 13 year old boy that knows nothing about
Christ and that Jesus was born on the 25th of December, not the Boston Tea
Party??
Something else that I've noticed this year. I am an avid fan of Christmas
decorations on and around homes and drive around several times a year just
enjoying the beautiful lights and all the nativity scenes. What happened this
year? About one out of ten homes seems to have any decorations at all in our
city. Used to be that every home celebrated Jesus's birthday and Christmas the
whole month of December and even through much of January.
Who's to blame?
What's this world coming to? Xmas instead of Christmas. No Lord's prayer
anymore in most places.No pledge of allegiance...Government buildings, schools
and others being forced by the court's to take Christ out of our lives.
If I could only go back about 40 years and enjoy, once again, what made our
country so great......The pledge, Lord's prayer anytime and anyplace, Nativity
scenes......???????????????????
Bah humbug.
Dave
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 13:26:28 -0800
From: Brendan Skwire
Subject: Re: sant claus and christmas
Of all the twittery I have ever read, Dave rants
"What's this world coming to? Xmas instead of Christmas. No Lord's
prayer anymore in most places.No pledge of allegiance...Government
buildings, schools and others being forced by the court's to take Christ out of our
lives. If I could only go back about 40 years and enjoy, once again, what
made our country so great......The pledge, Lord's prayer anytime and anyplace, Nativity scenes......??????????????????? Bah humbug."
OK, first of all, you are familiar with the concept of democracy? The
rules, OUR rules as set down in our CONSTITUTION, say that because the taxpayers are a diverse lot of christians,
jews, muslims, hindus, etc etc you can't give preference to one religion
over the other. The government here is secular and everyone is treated
the same. The minute one group gets special rights, (all this whining
about Christian prayer in schools is nothing more than a plea for
special rights) the government ceases to represent everyone impartially. if
gay people can't have special rights, why should anyone else?
Like Dave however, i am very much in favor of prayer in school: kids
can pray to jesus on Monday, face east and offer prayers to Allah the
next, prayers to Ganesh next, etc etc. that's the only way it can be fair,
otherwise you get kids who are excluded.
This may be easy to forget when one is in the religious majority, but
countries with state-sanctioned religions are not fun places: think
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. Hell, if you consider US history, one
of the main reasons the puritans came over here to begin with was to
escape persecution from the anglican church.
By the way, do you know what the puritans, the original
fundamentalists, did when they got here? THEY BANNED CHRISTMAS from 1659 until 1681.
Christianity today is in some ways a victim of its own success.
Christmas and Christ will be here for a long time: the profit margin's too
damn good. This whole idea that christmas is being steadily excluded from
public life is bullplop of the stinkiest order: turn on your radio,
your tv, or open a newspaper anytime after halloween and you're
overwhelmed by holiday ads. For a lot of people, Christmas is the equivalent of
a president's day car sale. You never see Passover sales ("We're
slaying our competitors' first born and passing over the savings to you!
It's gonna be a plague of deals!") or Ramadan sales. Even my Jewish
friends exchange gifts and buy trees, calling it "fake Christmas." For many
of us, it's a meaningless orgy of gift-giving. The holiday has
superceded its original intent and has become something more similar to the
state holidays of imperial Greece and Rome: devoid of meaning. those of
us who aren't even the least bit religious are under extreme pressure
to participate in buying material goods (most made in secular communist
china) in celebration of the birth of a deity we don't believe in, lest
we get called "Scrooge". This deity, ironically enough, instructed
us to "sell all we have and give it to the poor," that it was "easier
for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the gates of heaven," that "what good does it do to gain the whole
world and lose your soul" yet the average American spends something
like $700 each Christmas buying unnecessary gifts for people who probably
don't need or deserve them.
The other day at work I was driving the delivery van, was scanning the
radio stations in a futile attempt to escape the Christmas juggernaut.
What I finally settled on if you can believe it was the Christian station, where a minister was decrying the materialism of the season and urging people to put the
Christ back in Christmas. Now, I agree with right-wing christians on oh... just
about nothing, but I found myself cheering this man on. I'm with the
Puritans and with the radio preacher: ban anyone from making money off
the holiday and put Christmas back in the churches where it belongs. The
same goes for Valentine's Day, Easter, and St. Patrick's day, three
other Christian holidays that everyone, regardless of religious belief, is
basically expected to participate in. Why isn't everyone expected to
take part in Passover or Eid?
"If I could only go back about 40 years and enjoy, once again, what
made our country so great"
Maybe if you read the constitution you'd enjoy what really makes our
country so great instead of your narrow-minded hallucination. And maybe
you'd stop whining about how persecuted you are. I don't shove my
religious beliefs down your throat: why is your religion always being
shoved down mine? WWJD?
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