Congratulations JoJo!
Stereodude said:
I thought it was all disillusioned liberals, who will quickly tell you that wishing someone a Merry Christmas is pushing your religious beliefs on them.
Weird...
Since I'm not a liberal
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Ranting to follow:
Lovely. As one of the aforementioned Liberals, I'm going to first of all tell you that not everyone celebrates Christmas. It's moronic to assume that just because someone doesn't look asian or middle-eastern must mean they'll be sharing in your holiday spirit. Hell, even if we just confine ourselves to Christians, Eastern-rite types will tell you christmas happens sometime in January.
Season's Greetings, fine. Happy Holidays, whatever. At least you aren't automatically assuming that I belong to your particular schizophrenic death cult. It's insensitive to not consider that someone MIGHT not believe the same things you do, yet this is the assumption you've chosen to make.
Y'know, no matter how you look at it, you aren't even celebrating anything real with the December 25th. If there were a baby Jebus in a manger 2000-odd years ago born in a stable in Israel, there sure as hell weren't shepherds tending their flocks in DECEMBER, nor an appropriately bright star in the sky for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
Nope, what December 25th is, is a pagan Holiday. Saturnalia, celebrated by the Romans (remember that your religion was inflicted at sword point on the Western world by the Roman Emperor Constantine, based solely on the fact that he wagered his personal faith on some battle or other), happened in late December, a time for all the guys to get together and schtup each other, or maybe the pagan Yule, a celebration of lengthening days following the shortest day of the year.
Either one of those things is of course a fine tradition (well, if you're OK with guys schtupping each other. I say to each his own), but the OTHER aspect of of Christmas - the tree and the illumination and presents and all that other bullshit really comes from popular vision perpetuated by Prince Albert (consort of Queen Victoria) - who sought to display some ancient german yuletime (again, the pagan thing) traditions at a high society Christmas party, essentially to emphasize that he was not, in fact, English. Charles Dickens picked up on that, wrote "A Christmas Story" and gave the world the popular and entirely secular traditions that seem associated now with the birth of everyone's favorite Liberal.
I don't have any problems with christians celebrating the birth of their demigod, I do think that the way they celebrate, and the TIME they celebrate are extremely mistaken. I really wish you all would stop pretending that December 25 had anything to do with said birth and allow the entire world to resume normal, secular behavior in the month of December.
Personally, I've taken to reminding people whenever I can that not every person in the world belongs to the same religion. People who tell me Merry Christmas get told "Merry Tet" or "Happy Kwanzaa" in response. It's an unctious, meaningless phrase on my part and theirs. For them, it's a brainless and empty sentiment, just as much as "Have a nice day". For me it's an opportunity to at least attempt to get someone to think something beside the most insipid thought possible (and if that doesn't happen, oh well, I tried).
I hate this time of year. I hate the automatic assumption that I wanna wish Jesus a happy birthday, and I am going to enjoy the passage of time and increasing secularism, commercialism, and multiculturalism that will no doubt continue to encroach on the tiny remaining sentiments of faith that remain in Spendmas while evangelical morons drive themselves to a froth over the loss of the "old time religion" that never existed to begin with.
Stereodude, I sincerely wish you a merry holiday that you celebrate because a bunch of Romans couldn't give up their "doing each other in the ass during December" party.
