War on Christmas
gregladen | December 22, 2012I remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday, even though it happened years ago, even before you were born. I screamed silently, pinned on my back by the massive weight of a cotton blanket, legs frozen, the dark lights flickering as the human-like form approached, its arms raised in front like The Mummy or Frankenstein's Monster, hands ready to grab, closing in. A strange net-like pattern covered the featureless humanoid shape, moving around on its surface like Saint Elmo's fire dancing on Jacob's Ladder, undulating, letting off light, disintegrating and reforming and making a crackling…
gregladen | November 18, 2011Tradition. Not just a song from Fiddler on the Roof.
You know the refrain: "The Papa, the Papa! Tradition." It's a great play but it is firmly rooted in the patriarchy, as "tradition" often is.
There are many ways to define "tradition" and we can look it up somewhere and have a flameware over dictionary meanings if you want. But instead I'll tell you what I think the word means, roughly, generally, and subject to revision.
First, "tradition" is a feature of culture that simply refers to practices that are habitual. A subset of "traditions" are formalized or regularized, like holidays in…
gregladen | December 26, 2010... will focus on Christmas.
Actually, he's wrong in comparing his ability, or yours or mine, to trace back a genealogy with Luke and his buddies. Back in those days, and in that culture, people did indeed walk around with pretty deep genealogies attached to them (though the extensive and intensive study of genealogies in anthropology tells us that those genealogies are not expected to be accurate).
(Sorry, I meant for this to come out yesterday but forget to hit the "publish" button)
gregladen | December 7, 2010I did a little (very little, very short) newsroom debate on Fox 9 with a guy named Tom who appears to represent conservative Christians regarding the question of "Does Christmas have place in schools?" I quickly add that even though that was the planned focus of the discussion, it was quickly revised to be "Oh, no, not just Christmas, but Kwanza and Hanuka and stuff too." That particular bit of backpedaling is, of course, ingenuous and annoying, because nobody from Hanuka or Kwanza is trying to force their religious holidays into public schools, only the conservative Christians. So if we…
gregladen | December 7, 2010Yes, there is a connection ...
The Imperial Japanese of World War II and the Nazi Germans of the same era held one thing in common: You were with them or you were nothing. Non-Japanese prisoners were treated very poorly. The lives of non Japanese who did not swear allegiance to the emperor were not valued at all. For instance, when the Japanese exited Manila near the end of the war, they killed hundreds of thousands of Philippine people. The Nazi's slaughtered millions of Russian prisoners, those they considered "unfit" or otherwise different from them, and of course, attempted to…
gregladen | December 6, 2010Is this thing on? Hello? Hello? ....
Ah, thats better. Comcast, which every day seems to do something to piss me off, had a major sub-regional outage for the last several hours, it would seem. So, we've been floating free of the Internet and a few things have accumulated.
First, this: Remember the rape charges brought against WikiLeak's Julian Assange? It would seem that with the latest Wikileaks leaks, the nature of and the stakes related to these accusations are taking on a new form, and we are starting to see conspiracy theories with a misogynist slant emerging to excuse Mr. Assange…
gregladen | December 21, 2009People are very on edge today. More short and ill tempered than usual. I was walking along in Target and had that sense of tension and angst all around me, the feeling that everyone in the store would be happier if everyone else in the store was not there. As I was walking along I had the feeling that if I stopped walking the person behind me would just run into me.
So I stopped in my tracks next to an endcap.
Whump.
Just as I expected.
So for the rest of the day while I was doing errands I kept doing that. In Target a few more times. In the grocery store. In the parking lot.…
gregladen | November 22, 2009This week is Thanksgiving in the United States. This means that over the coming weekend many Americans will be putting up Christmas decorations in and outside their houses. Many children will be putting finishing touches on their letters to Santa. The shopping malls will start to fill and while economists examine and measure the retail sales bump for signs that the world will not end, we, as a nation, will come together to incrementally crank up the material contents stored in our homes and the corresponding mass of our public landfills.
But what do Atheists do on Christmas?
We declare…
gregladen | December 8, 2008Remember the Atheist Sign that ruined everything for everybody up in Washington State? Well, now those damn free thinkers are going to impose their freedom of speech on the god fearing (or should that be "atheist fearing") people of Illinois.
Here's the sign being provided by the Freedom from Religion Foundation:
And it will be placed in the Illinois City Hall in Springfield. Right down from Homer and Marge's place.
Hat tip: The Friendly Atheist.
gregladen | December 8, 2008The atheists ... this time disguised as hedonistic sun worshipers ... are at it again. A "Winter Solstice" sign bought and paid for by the Freedom from Religion Foundation identifying religion as "Myth and supersition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds" was put up at a holiday display.
A whole bunch of religious yahoos got really mad. They claim that the sign is offensive and should be suppresses. So much for tolerance.
The Freedom From Thinking Independantly Foundation (I'm making that part up) held a big-ol' rally at the State Capitol. (Details here.)
Also at the capitol were…
gregladen | December 7, 2008Welcome to the War on Christmas.
As I think it was Mike who pointed out for himself, "Happy Holidays" is what I learned to say when I was a kid because it was inclusive of New Years. Later, it continued to make sense because I discovered Jewish People. Eventually, by the time I was ten or so, it became apparent that there were actually a number of other religions. Then, eventually, it became clear that there were people (like me, it turns out) who do not affiliate with any relgion but still like to sing Christmas carols. OK, I perwsonally do not sing the chrismas carols, but I do EAT THE…
gregladen | November 24, 2008Season's greetings from the secular side
by
August Berkshire
Minnesota Atheists
'Tis the season. With winter coming, some members of the religious right have begun bracing themselves for the so-called annual atheists' "war on Christmas." While we think that the government and public schools should remain neutral when it comes to religious celebrations, we have no interest in depriving anyone of whatever private celebrations they wish to conduct.
Nevertheless, in case you were wondering, here are the plans some of us have for December....
Read the rest here.