Bah Humbug#1

I’m not known as the most festive person around the holiday season. This year, I think I’ll try and diagnose why. Item number one, and it’s a doozy, is the never ending scandal over Christmas terminology. Every year there are a million stories about one business or another foregoing the word “Christmas” in favour of “holiday” or some other mild version.

For example:

Via Instapundit comes the news that Amazon has now banned the term “Christmas” from one of its advertising campaigns. It is now, on Amazon, “12 Days of Holiday,” rather than “12 Days of Christmas.”

Well, this Jew objects. I mean, for Christ’s sake, it’s Christmas. Can’t we call a thing by its name? Hannukah is a minor holiday of a minority religion. New Year’s Day is merely a day on the calendar. It’s a holiday season because it’s Christmas.

I agree. Christmas is only fun to a point and it can be annoying and, for god’s sake, I hate the bloody music. But it is Christmas. I have two problems with this whole issue.

Number one: People take one or two or even three company’s dimwitted initiative as a cue that Christmas, religious values, etc. are going to be destroyed in a blaze of flaming hellfire. That’s not going to happen because most people who can afford to buy presents for their 46 closest relatives and friends, particularly in the United States, are Christmas and businesses are not going to want to piss off their customers. Still, people get outraged and listening to outraged, unreasoning people with Jingle Bells playing in the background is my idea of hell.

Number two: The whole Christmas boycott damages secularism because it forces religious, traditional and, heck, just plain rational folks to think that secularists are crazed on killing Christmas. It basically turns secularists into scrooges when, in fact, individual decisions by individual businesses are merely the result of some stupid executive who thinks the word Christmas doesn’t play to their customer base. But really, he’s just being stupid.

People need to start asking themselves, “Who hates Christmas?”

Nobody.

I joke I hate Christmas when in fact, I just hate this never-ending stupid debate. (Maybe that and the million different versions of the four Christmas carols malls play over and over).

Leaping nuns and quarterback kings (photos)

I might as well supplement any previous blasphemous posts with photographic evidence. So here goes.

Photo above, caption below.

An interesting nativity scene outside the publicity-seeking church at the Catholic University. What the wooden guy is doing with the tin saxophone is beyond me. Note the pharmacy bag. It’s in every photo of this thing and it pisses Magda right off. And if you look close enough you will see…

In the midst of all the wooden actors, a camera pointing straight at Baby Jesus, or at least his crib.

A nice looking ass. Spare me your groans.

And presiding over the madness a nun, who looks real and about to jump from the church’s bell tower. Meanwhile, across town…

The King Sobieski throws long, although one suspects his receivers have hands of stone.

Tomorrow (maybe), less wit, more actual photos.

Thank God

John Lennon can rest easy.

The Vatican’s newspaper has finally forgiven John Lennon for declaring that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, calling the remark a “boast” by a young man grappling with sudden fame.

To which Lennon, if he were alive, would probably respond: “But we WERE bigger than Jesus. Have you seen how many CDs we’ve released in the 38 years since we’ve broken up? How many books have been written about us. Now multiply that over 2000 years, fer Chrissakes.” One would also imagine he’d have something to say about the Catholic Church changing its mind. How can a church change its mind? Doesn’t that contradict the basis of the church’s authority? Just curious.

Not THOSE All Saints

Yesterday was All Saints and Magda and I, along with her aunt, uncle and two cousins, visited the grave of her grandparents. I’ll keep my summation of All Saints experience brief, because I hope to write about it in the future and don’t want to spill all my notes.

All Saints day is a national holiday and has religious roots. But the main feature of the day are Poles flocking to cemeteries around the country to visit graves. Flowers and candles are placed. We visited a cemetery in Zgierz (a suburb of Lodz) during the day and another cemetery in Lodz in the evening. During the day there were almost as many people in the cemetery as graves, which easily number in the thousands. It is not necessarily a sombre occasion. As Magda explained it, it’s more of a celebration of the deceaseds’ lives.

During the night the candles light up the cemetery. It’s a beautiful sight and not at all spooky. It really brings home that each grave houses a real person, rather than just a name.

Of course, any holiday has its curious aspects and one that gets an observer, rather than a true participant thinking.

People have different strategies for decorating graves. Magda’s family carefully arranged a few lamps and a few bundles of flowers on the family grave. Most take a similar tact and many times the candles and the flowers on the grave are placed by successions of visitors, be they friends, acquaintances or admirers (certain graves or memorials to war heroes attract hundreds of candles). But other graves have quite obviously been purposely bombarded with as many flowers and candles as possible. Those people, it would seem, take the look-how-many-flowers-my-family-grave-has!!! approach.

Which, come to think about it, isn’t that dissimilar from the huge gothic family tomb of an obviously wealthy industrialist in the centre of the Lodz cemetery. It’s mighty impressive, and there were about 20-30 candles arranged at its base (it’s probably 30-feet-high and looks like a small gothic church). I hope that the candles were lit by family members and not people just impressed with the tomb. That, it would seem, would prove that money can buy prayers, if, like many, those who place a candle at the tomb also say a prayer.

And those annoyed about the commercialism of Christmas should take note that, in post-communist Poland, All Saints isn’t immune either. It’s clearly the make-or-break day for the flower and candle sellers that line the street outside the cemetery. I saw a guy selling blow up balloons in the shape of dalmations and other animals and priests take the opportunity to solicit money for their churches.

Still, all those minor gripes aside. It’s a mighty impressive day and its basic theme – remembering the deceased, seems as good an excuse for a public holiday as any.

Not that the holiday makes everybody happy. It seems it results in a good deal of carnage too.

“Police reported 334 serious road accidents with 32 dead and 421 injured in 48 hours, on what is the annual carnage on Poland’s accompanying one of the most widely observed Roman Catholic holidays, All Souls Day, otherwise known as the day of the Dead.” – Polskie Radio

Not everyone’s a Catholic here

Just ninety-six per cent of the population. But there are Muslims too, according to this story. I’ll have to look into this.