Christmas, Post 2

Just a quick shout, because I found someone who sort of agrees with me re: giving December 25 back to the pagans and celebrating Christ's birth another time. I still like January 6 (even though that's dangerously close to my birthday), but Rev. James Martin suggests June.

Here's my plan. First, we hand over December 25 to the corporations and let them have their way with it. Let Macy's, for example, tell us that the Christmas season starts not with Advent, but right after Halloween, since that's when they start decorating their stores anyway. Let Kohl's tell us that the appropriate way to begin Advent is not with the traditional evergreen wreath with four candles, but by camping out with surly crowds at 3 a.m. in front of their stores, so that you can buy an iPhone, or some other techno gadget you don't really need.

Give the corporations December 25. It will be our final Christmas present to them.

Reading the rest of the column, I can see some potential in this. No major holidays to compete with, so no "Happy Holidays" greetings that irritate so many people. And the idea of a Christmas barbecue is intriguing, to say the least. Christmas outside, presents under a real tree -- and not even an evergreen. Maybe a dogwood tree.

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Happy Holi ... Merry Chri ... whatever.

It is written in the Godblogger's Manual that every Godblogger has to post something about the "War On Christmas." I slacked off last year; in fact, there was only one post from me the entire month. The year before, I ranted about the commercialization of Christmas and the Feast of St. Nicholas. My very first year of blogging, I wrote this, which I still think is pretty good.

This year, I'm going to talk about the whole Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas deal. Because it's getting tiresome, and old, and I think we need to get over the notion that we own the month of December, holiday-wise.
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Interesting take on Golden Compass

Hanna Rosen of The Atlantic has something interesting to say about Hollywood's latest "blockbuster," The Golden Compass.

Given enough time and effort, Hollywood can tweak and polish and recast even the darkest message until it would seem at home in a Fourth of July parade. In the end, the religious meaning of the book was obscured so thoroughly as to be essentially indecipherable. ... With $180 million at stake, the studio opted to kidnap the bookÂ’s body and leave behind its soul.

I haven't read the books (and don't really plan to, considering what the author's stated purpose in writing them is), and I doubt I'll see the movie. But I do think it's interesting, and a bit telling, that the books are so anti-religion in general and anti-Christian in particular that Hollywood has had to sanitize them to create the movie.

Read Rosen's full article here. Sounds to me like they made a movie about a little kid who fights totalitarianism and wins, when the books were (to quote the author)"about killing God."

(hat tip to the Dallas News' Religion blog)

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