Sarah Palin wrote a book. Apparently, it is unintentionally funny. I don’t know that there is a more boring topic than the War on Christmas, unless maybe you want to talk about the true meaning of Christmas and how it has been perverted. The oldest gospel, the Gospel According to Mark, doesn’t even have anything about the birth of Jesus in it. That was tacked on much later. In fact, the Gospel According to Mark originally ended without a resurrected Jesus. His corpse was just missing. They added the ending you find in today’s New Testament later on. But none of that is important to the folks who keep wailing about how Christmas is being secularized and turned into a generic holiday season. I think it’s great that families get together once a year to share gifts with each other, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the birth of Jesus. I also don’t think that egg-laying rabbits and fake green grass have anything to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus. But I never hear people complain about the War on Easter.
Why is that?
Maybe it can be a subject for Palin’s next screed.
I dunno, Booman, bringing philology to a derp fight . . .
not just philology, New Testament text criticism – very very impressive! how do I nominate this post for the Koufax award, which it deserves
But none of that is important to the folks who keep wailing about how Christmas is being secularized and turned into a generic holiday season.
And who is doing that, if anyone? The corporations! The same people buying ads on BillO the Clown’s show. And Sean Insanity’s show. Or the same ones funding the bulk purchases of Princess Dumbass of the Northwood’s book.
When I was growing up, it was popular in some circles to bitch and moan about the commercialization of Christmas. Now the same groups bitch and moan if the person at the cash register doesn’t name-check Baby Jesus with every purchase.
Yeah, well, how do you think the old Romans felt about those newbie low-class/no-class christians taking over their hallowed traditional Saturnalia?
(Which, by the way, the modern american commercial 25 Dec has been moving a bit closer to, but needs more debauchery)
Taking over the tree decorating from the pagan germans? Unforgiveable!
The same ones trying to erase the holiday we call Thanksgiving so their sacred Xmas shopping season can begin a full day earlier.
Not exactly erase, but limit it to a four hour dinner respite from the “Christmas” that begins on November 5th. If retailers and their suppliers from China can do to Halloween what they have done to Thanksgiving, we’ll need new Christmas carols extolling the 92 days of Christmas.
No actually this year Target is opening at 8AM Thanksgiving Day ….. not long before their “competitors” claim the need to do the same.
As for Halloween, it is my younger daughters favourite holiday, and she gets quite vocal if she see Xmas decorations and sales pitches before Oct 31st.
As one-third grocery store, Target is only following the lead of other supermarkets. Once upon a time, all stores were closed on New Year’s Day, Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Back when there wasn’t surplus labor and so many working part-time that needed full-time.
Ten days of Christmas decor is nice. After that I begin to get sick of seeing it. Starbucks associates began wearing reindeer headgear last week and it’s going to look really tatty long before December 25th.
Once one does even a cursory look into the historical evolution of what is called “The Bible”, you realize that it is mostly just a hodge-podge of texts, some copied multiple times over the centuries, with stenographers mistakes, personal attributions and judgments added. And you quickly realize that there is nothing particularly eye-opening in terms of actual historical fact. And certainly no evidence that much of what is documented actually occurred or was inspired by anything resembling a “higher power”.
You can wrap it all up in the construct of “faith, and that’s fine; as far as it goes. That “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” But the fact is, Christianity shares much of the same historical evolution as a variety of the other world religions, many of which were telling what we know today as “Christian stories”, long before they were attributed as being inspired by what, in modern times, we commonly view as the “Christian god”.
Sarah Palin’s just a pure grifter. She seems to have nothing more than a superficial understanding of her own faith and simply uses it to justify her political ideology and biases. I’m a Christian but I usually keep it to myself as its really no one’s business what I believe or how I live my life. I’ve heard my share of stupid from the devoutly religious, those nominally so, atheists, and agnostics alike so I treat it all as theater now. I’m probably not going to accept theology from the likes of Sarah Palin or scriptural analysis of the Gospels from Booman. To each his own, in any case.
I think an openly atheist President would be an interesting experiment. I think Obama is functionally so but it really doesn’t matter to me. Secularism in government is the way to go.
I have had militant Jews complain to me that the Easter Bunny is a Christian symbol. I always point out that the Bunny is a pagan fertility symbol (Germanic in origin I believe) but they don’t believe me.
I personally have no problem with the gentle and beautiful rabbit being the symbol of Spring. Perhaps better than the brutal death of a religious reformer. The ancients knew that Spring is about life and Winter is death. The early Church should have chosen Spring for Christmas and Winter for Easter.
No because to the founders of the Christian Church, the birth of Jesus isn’t as important as the fact he rose from the dead. Combined with the promise that belief in him and following what ever the church leadership push for the believers to do will allow the faithful to cheat death also. It is that promise they were trying to posit most prominent in the Church.
Actually it varied among the various earliest groups and still does today. For some Easter/ resurrection is most important, for others birth of Jesus/ Christmas.
Yes, rabbits and eggs. I mean, how much more obvious can you make it that this is an event originally intended for spring fertility rights that was perverted by early Xtians trying to popularize their religion with pagans.
If that isn’t enough for you then research the algorithm for determining the annual date of Easter. No, the anniversary of Jesus’ death didn’t vary across a span of two months – the Easter calendar is based on complicated moon cycles that are perfectly consistent with the kind of planting calendars used in early times (especially before the Gregorian calendar corrected the deep flaw in the Julian calendar which caused the start of spring to be a little later each year).
well, it depends on Passover, (lunar calendar) except when the Jewish Calendar has a “leap month”. ( because according to the New Testament Jesus either was crucified on Passover (Gospel of John) or celebrated Passover with the disciples (Mark, etc) the night he was arrested
I can bite the heads off a boxful of marshmallow bunnies and next year there’s another stack of them at the grocery store. It’s sort of like the resurrection.
Booman: without comment http://dailycurrant.com/2013/10/23/sarah-palin-claims-jesus-celebrated-easter/
must be a joke
Yes, a satire, such as this bit:
So I am at my parents house for my sister’s birthday for the weekend. Today I went to the mall. But before I got in the car I noticed a bumper sticker on my moms car. Jesus Christ. It said “11:59 are you ready?” Then tells you to go to http://www.openyoureyespeople.com
I can’t…
is that number “zero hour” or the like, or is it a Bible verse reference?
Like time is up. Repent and kneel before Jesus comes and wipes us all out. The typhoon is just another sign.
sounds like a difficult weekend. hope the mall was a respite
Forgive me if I’m repeating myself. Just last week Princess Word Salad was pontificating (no pun intended), on the fact that she thought the new pope was a liberal. In here masterly linguistics (best I could tell), she qualified this by saying she couldn’t be sure if the pope was liberal because it was the liberal media that was telling her it was so. Within a few days, she was backing up the snowmobile as quickly as possible once it became apparent to her “consciousness” that she was basically making the argument that Catholic’s aren’t Christians. Soon thereafter one of the people she holds in high esteem, Pastor John Hagee came out with a screed claiming this: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42771_Hagee-_Jews_Will_Make_End_Times_Deal_With_Antichrist_9
-11_Was_Gods_Judgment
I’d love to hear the what the princess has to say about this.
Bill O’Reilly trial-ballooned a War on Easter this spring. I did a little piece on it at the time. Now it’s clear that he was just seeding the market for his big historical study demonstrating that Jesus was killed by the liberal, pro-pagan Sadducees.
The War on Christmas is old old old
“Drag out the Dickens!”