Christmas

We’ve passed another innocuous, non-religiously based holiday and are heading towards another one with pagan origins, providing fundamentalists yet another opportunity to be killjoys. But rest assured, all of our Christmas traditions are firmly rooted in the bible. Like Christmas stockings. Everybody knows that the Jesus family was so poor that they wore out their socks on the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem and that on Christmas morning the kindly innkeeper, regretting his infamous “no room at the inn” proclamation, quietly broke into their lodging and hung warm socks on the mantelpiece. Poinsettias are another venerable Christmas tradition with biblical foundations. According to ancient texts, Poinsett was the fourth wise man, running late due to camel problems. Distraught that all the good gifts (gold, frankincense and myrrh) were taken, he stopped at the local florist and began a new tradition.
Christmas trees also enjoy a biblical pedigree. The oft mentioned “cedars of Lebanon” is a mistranslation of a Hebrew phrase that means “plastic green tree with cheap lights”.
So don’t be dismayed when you hear your pagan, secular humanist or atheist neighbors claiming that your cherished Christmas traditions originate in paganism, just tell them that Ill-Gotten Booty said it ain’t so.

Blogging

Top Ten Complaints & Hard-Hitting Questions About Thanksgiving

10. Barely enough time to get the Halloween décor down before Christmas
9. Turkey takes too damn long to defrost & cook
8. Cranberries? Aren’t they grown in a bog?
7. Start the Christmas shopping season on Halloween, it’s good for the economy.
6. Night Crew
5. Do we really need two end-of-the-year holidays where we make gluttony an art form?
4. What was the deal with Pocahontas anyway?
3. Buckles on hats are Satanic.
2. Does anyone really know what giblets are?
1. Pumpkin pies do not resemble pumpkins in any way. Just what are they trying to pull?

Politics Corner

Vindicating countless racists, Islamophobes and conspiracy theorists, President Barack Obama, pictured above in some of his many disguises, admitted today that he is indeed a Muslim, a terrorist, gay, a Unitarian, and that yes, he plans to take your guns. Laughing maniacally as he considered that 72% of those reading this article would not know what a Unitarian was, Obama outlined his plans to take all of your money and give it to who can spell the word “redistribute”. Further evil schemes include outlawing heterosexual marriage, Christianity and college football.

Do You Believe Everything You Read?

Do you believe everything that you hear? It’s in the paper (or on the internet) so it must be true! One of the things that you hear about this time of year is that the day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year. According to statistics from the International Council of Shopping Centers, the busiest day varies from year to year and ranges from December 18th to December 23rd, with the day after Thanksgiving being anywhere from the 4th to the 8th busiest day. This is easily accessible information, and you’d think that in this age of instant fact checking more people would know this, yet you still hear, year after year, that “Black Friday” is the busiest shopping day of the year. In my opinion, most people just don’t want to think, it’s a lot easier to simply spout what they heard around the water cooler, on their favorite radio talk show, in church, or in that “This Is Real!!!!” forwarded email. This tendency to credulousness is widespread during political races, where potential voters hear all kinds of dirt about candidates and make their decisions based upon information of dubious veracity.
So what do you do? I just assume that everything that I hear is a big basket of horse crap and look for evidence to back it up, rather than just assuming everything is true and waiting for it to be debunked. This is why I am no longer in anyone’s email address book; I kept replying with evidence that the “true stories” were made up.
Choose to think! You might not have many friends, but the ones you have won’t be as stupid.

Quote of the Week

"She Needs Some Tough Woman-to-Woman Love"

Words of Wisdom

Well, after what seems like eight years of campaigning, the election is finally over. No matter whose politics you more closely identify with, it is undeniable that this has been an historic election. It’s also been an election where mud-slinging has been the rule rather than the exception, where each side demonized the other and misrepresented and exaggerated the other’s positions. One of the things that disturbed me the most is the ongoing suggestion that one candidate wasn’t a “real” American, or that Americans who held certain political views weren’t “real” Americans. Retired General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell stated a related problem very clearly when he addressed the rumor that one of the candidates was a Muslim. He stated that the rumor was false, that the candidate was in fact a Christian, but then asked why it was anyone’s business, why it mattered. One candidate for Vice President suggested to voters in one section of Virginia that voters in another section of the state, who were on the other end of the political spectrum where not “real Virginians”. Who gets to decide who among us are the “real” Americans?