I’m not a big fan, but I didn’t jump on her for her latest supposed politically correct faux pas. And it turned out that my judicious patience was correct, because she apparently loves Christmas.
I should add that, if I had jumped into the fray against her, I’d be apologizing now. I’m glad I don’t have to, but I’d still have done it with grace.
Oh dear, a “Chirstmas party”. I hope she wasn’t hurt. I hear those things can be crazy dangerous. They have cookies, you know.
With extra chocolate chips in them! Alert Michelle Obama and Mike Huckabee!
Oh God who cares. I read both articles and now I want to stab myself in the head to let the pettiness out. With each passing day political culture in this country is getting more and more like being stuck in the high school cafeteria between the dumb jock tables and the stuck-up preppie kid tables, only it’s more like hell because you’re chained to your seat and can NEVER EVER LEAVE.
Christmas isn’t even Christian, it goes back to pagan rituals.
You know, somewhere there is a note scribbled on parchment in a collection of old Puritan letters admitting that they really wanted to bad Christmas because “we have growne tiredde of ye endlesse & tiresome claimes thatte Christ Mass is but a Heathen Ritualle ye ‘dressed up’ in Christian garments. & we doe saye ‘Give it a reste already.'”
“ban Christmas,” I mean. Ban bad old Christmas. Whatever.
In case anyone misses my point above, if I had a nickel for every time someone popped into a conversation about Christmas with “it’s not really Christian it’s a pagan ritual Romans Saturnalia blah blah blah” I could buy the Vatican. I mean, so what if thousands of years ago some other people had a party for some other reason than Christians do? So it wasn’t “Christian” once. Well it is NOW. Deal with it.
I meant it was not Christian in an exclusive sense, many religions have solstice festivals. A little googling reveals that similar suspicions exist about Hanukkah. As an agnostic I don’t feel the least offended by the fact that Christmas is a public holiday.
So it wasn’t “Christian” once. Well it is NOW. Deal with it.
Amen! Woops… sorry……. not really!
Merry CHRISTmas everyone!!!!!!
QFT
“I meant it was not Christian in an exclusive sense, many religions have solstice festivals.”
Wow, really? I thought all humans hibernated in the winter like bears until Jesus came to free them from their frozen caves! You have truly opened my eyes, and now I realize that I was lied to in my childhood! I’ll bet there really isn’t a Santa either — or that he’s actually based on some old church guy who lived in Turkey a zillion years ago.
Andrea, WTF? I was agreeing it is silly to avoid the use of the word Christmas party and offering an additional argument as to why. My father is a vicar and a professor emeritus of theology so I think I know how important Christmas is to Christians. I wasn’t trying to take anything away from that if that’s what you thought.
Merry Christmas!
MPM: I think Andrea was gently trying to point out that you aren’t the first person to make the point that Christmas has pagan antecedents. We’ve heard, we know, it’s vapid point to make, and we’re bored with hearing it.
Oh yes, very gently. It’s far from a vapid point although it may be lost on your good self. Oh well. Merry Christmas to you too.
So she makes a private joke about a party only she, among the panel, attended and didn’t explain it until someone commented on it. If you have read or heard ANYTHING this crone produced, believing she was mocking Christmas should be pretty easy. That snarky piece by Modo wannabes at the Wapo is just icing on the cake.
MPM, just drop the shovel, dude
Merry Christmas to you as well, truly
I have no idea what you guys are on about. From your comments I get the impression you thought I was either defending Nina Totenberg (whom I had never heard of) or mocking Christmas when I was doing neither. I added a friendly remark, on a friendly blog, in support of Rand’s point and all of a sudden I’m taking deliberate friendly fire from all sides. Not the Christmas spirit I was expecting. Maybe it’s a transatlantic communication barrier. I have no idea what “Modo wannabe” means.
MPM,
Modo is New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. She snarks.
Regardless of your intentions, your words weren’t going to be interpreted as supportive of Rand’s point.
There is a four or more axis argument going on here in the USA.
One dimension: Christmas as a religious holiday vs Christmas as a secular holiday
2nd dimension: The nature of the 1st Amendment’s no establishment of religion clause – is there an implied wall of separation?
3rd dimension: Promote religion, be neutral on religion, discourage religion.
4th dimension: Christianity is special vs Christianity is just one of many religions which all say the same thing and it is ok to blur the differences, or to at least be inclusive so people of other faiths don’t feel left out.
The above is a very rough draft. It could be refined or improved, and I probably missed a whole bunch of additional nuances, and my biases were probably showing, but roughly speaking, there are 16 or more sides to the argument, so it was going to be difficult for you to avoid looking like you were taking sides, even if it was entirely by accident.
MPM,
Here’s one an example: Someone asked “why can’t the shop clerks at the big box store say “merry christmas”? Why must they say something vapid and generic like “happy holidays?”
My answer was “because then a devil worshipping clerk can cheerfully wish that the customers ‘burn in hell’, and he’d have just as much right as the Christian to share his merry religious sentiment. ” And for some reason, my answer led people to think that *I* was a devil worshipper, even though I was just trying to protect the shoppers from obnoxious religious sentiments like devil worship.
There are so many sides to the argument that people inevitably misidentify the participant’s position.
Thanks for the explanation Bob, it all feels slightly less Kafkaesque now that I realise I had innocently blundered into a four dimensional politico-religious minefield…
MPM, I have asked Santa to bring you a sense of humor, a bottle of chill pills, and a device to painlessly remove that stick up your posterior. I have given up my yearly present of a sack of coal for this.
Gee, that love thy neighbour thing is really catching on across the pond I see. I think I’ll stick to the language barrier explanation.
Besides which, the old “Christmas is just Saturnalia dressed up” is probably not true, but is a 12th century explanation that appealed to comparative religion scholars in the 18th and 19th.
http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp
Interesting article. I wonder if the conception-to-birth-to-crucufixion explanation was brushed off by 18the and 19th century scholars because it was too Catholic — all that icky stuff about the Virgin’s womb/graves, etc. Claiming Christmas as a former pagan holiday that the Christians took over sounds a lot more Protestant.
PS: I wasn’t raised Catholic, so I only know what I’ve read and observed, but it’s well-known that Catholics concentrate more on Jesus’ crucufixion and suffering and Protestants prefer to concentrate on his resurrection and “good works” and so on.
Bob-1 Says:
December 23rd, 2010 at 3:38 pm
‘Why must they say something vapid and generic like “happy holidays?”’
That one’s self-defeating, anyway. See Dictionary.com:
hol·i·day
/ˈhɒlɪˌdeɪ/ Show Spelled[hol-i-dey] Show IPA
–noun
Origin:
bef. 950; ME; OE hāligdæg. See holy, day