Random Holiday Thoughts
Posted on | December 13, 2005 at 10:39 pm | 14 Comments
December always seems to end up being a very busy time at work. There’s lots of special processing that has to happen by the end of the year, and lots of unexpected problems crop up. Combined with all the holiday events and shopping and such, that doesn’t leave as much time as I’d like for updating this thing or to “enjoy the spirit of the holiday”. I tend to retreat into an impenetrable cocoon for most of the holiday season anyway. But I’m looking forward to the time off I have coming around Christmas, and maybe I’ll actually be able to get some things done then. Nah.
I’ll have to see if I can cut down on my Christmas spending this year, just so I can afford to pay my Xcel Energy bill. Yowzer. Now I’m regretting having a gas dryer and range. There was a time (like when I had the house built) when gas used to be cheaper than electricity. Maybe it’s time to dry my clothes on a clothesline and cook my food on a hotplate. Or I could try one of them newfangled microwave oven things I’ve been hearing so much about.
My opinion on the whole “Christmas” vs. “Holidays” linguistic debate? I don’t give a sugarplum what you call it. I think that every year sometime around Halloween, each religion (and the atheists) should choose one champion. The champions would fight each other in a boxing tournament (possibly while inside Japanese robots), and whoever wins gets to name the holiday for that year. That would make the season actually interesting for me. Hmmm, you’d probably have to stage the tournament in the summer sometime instead of Halloween, so it gives Hallmark enough time to come up with some appropriate cards.
Latre.
Comments
14 Responses to “Random Holiday Thoughts”
December 14th, 2005 @ 8:42 am
Yuletide Smackdown Evangelion, w00t!
December 14th, 2005 @ 8:45 am
I’m totally with you on the Giant Robot thing, especially if one is a Max robot. Though I suspect the Japanese would have the edge, and we’d all be celebrating Kurisumasu from here on out.
December 14th, 2005 @ 11:29 am
100 years from now, we’ll all just be celebrating Festivus.
December 14th, 2005 @ 12:11 pm
I was reading yesterday that the religious right was threatening to sue anyone who changes the name of their celebration/parade/50% off sale from “Christmas” to “Holiday”.
I say we get a bunch of Pagans together (that shouldn’t be too hard around here…) and file a suit against anyone who has usurped our winter solstice celebration. We could get a piece of all the holiday spending – doncha think?
Class Action, baby!
December 14th, 2005 @ 12:15 pm
Weird formating on that second line there! What gives Senor Fla-shay??
December 14th, 2005 @ 12:58 pm
?? Weird formatting where? Looks okay to me.
I’m all for the pagans taking back the winter solstice celebration. They really know how to party.
December 14th, 2005 @ 3:14 pm
Doug’s second line simply demonstrates auto-spacing between the words to fit the margins. The next “word” has 22 characters & couldn’t be crammed on the same line. I’m sure all this could be translated into technical layout terms, but not by me.
December 14th, 2005 @ 5:19 pm
Damn style sheets!
December 14th, 2005 @ 5:55 pm
Ahh, Ms. J is correct.
I should have realized that. I was afraid that y’all would think I was trying to over-emphasize the “sue anyone who changes the name” bit.
Can we add tags to these little salvos?
[b]bold[/b]
[color=red]red[/color]
December 14th, 2005 @ 6:36 pm
No tags, but HTML mostly works. (i.e. “b” in angle brackets instead of square ones, for example).
December 14th, 2005 @ 8:30 pm
In the long term you value your choice of ‘gas’….but then again…in the ‘long term’…we’re dead. Don’t sweat the choice to go to ‘gas’.
December 14th, 2005 @ 9:39 pm
What gets me is the weird equivalence taken by some “objective” journalists on this. Although it is true that some militant folks have insisted that things not be called “Christmas” (and when they’re talking about governmental things, they’re utterly correct), for the most part no one’s given a rat’s ass about what it’s called. But alla sudden, a handful of fundies gets its undies all bunchy, and (in a truly inspiring example of Christian piety and forgiveness) threatens to sue people for not pretending to be Christian when they’re not. Y’know, “holidays” includes “Christmas” (and in fact ultimately includes the word “holy” – so I guess those atheists ain’t so militant after all) whereas “Christmas” does not include anyone else’s holiday. The truly ridiculous thing about all this is Christmas trees, Christmas sales, parades, etc., have The Right Rev. John C. “Jack” Schitt Esq. to do with Christ. (For that matter, Christmas itself was often ignored by a lot of Christians historically.) But there I go again, trying to use logic against the fundies. And of course, while I normally wouldn’t pay much attention to whether I say “Christmas” or “holidays” (unless I know I’m talking to Jews or Muslims, etc.), now, in reaction, I’m going to be slightly in-your-face about saying “holidays” alla time. Sigh…
December 14th, 2005 @ 11:05 pm
They had an interesting bit on The Daily Show last night with a clip of Bill O’Reilly saying that non-Christians should not be offended by the innocuous little phrase “Merry Christmas”. Okay, that’s reasonable. But then he turned right around and said that Christians are offended by “Seasons Greetings” or “Happy Holidays”. Huh? What planet is this, now?
December 15th, 2005 @ 1:02 pm
It’s Bill O’Reilly’s planet. Just be happy that he lets Stephen Colbert live on it.