i woke up about 10am, and got online to type my x-mas rant
tho to b honest, there isnt much u can get pissed about 5 minutes after u wake up
so the rant isnt as god as it could have been, but for once i'm not grumpy and "scrooge-y" about christmas, so i think it's a decent trade off
anyway.. after that it was do some stuff around the house, whitch really justr consisted of me getting the mail, then i ate lunch and then me and bob played magic
then everyone went into town and went to the bank to cash bob's check, from my grandma (she gave him his x-mas card today since he was ovre there doing something, idk what)
anyway... after that, me and bob went to wallyworld, and we walked around for a bit, then we ate at taco bell and headed to geek out, then we came home and cleaned some more, i did the dishes and swept the floor
then i played magic with bob again and then i got on my comp, and here i've been since
anyway.. here is my x-mas rant: http://mindofamadman666.blogspot.com/2009/12/364-days-of-christmas-o-and-christmas.html
and now the song of the day:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTGlUMvbhSw&NR=1
it's the night santa went crazy by weird al, i saw it randomly in the related vids section on utube and it's a good song in my opinion, so i put it
and the bonus song of the day:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEPhGrErQ3Q
and "god rest ye, mery gentlemen" sang by someone i dont really know
to b honest i like it better when it is sung by a guy with a deeper voice, not cause i'm sexist, cause i like singing alog with the deeper voices
lol
anyway, a quick question cause it's comin up on 1:30 :/
what r u hoping to get this christmas?
thought of the day
"Santa Claus has the right idea.
Visit people once a year."
~~Victor Borg~~
freedom
ReplyDeleteYou don't allow anonymous commenting on your mind of a mad-man blog so I'm going to put this here.
ReplyDeleteYou raise some good points but get other things wrong.
First off putting the religious criticisms aside you seem to have more of a problem with the rampant consumer-culture of America than anything else.
Next you have the origin of Christmas story wrong.
Originally Christmas was celebrated as Yule. Yule was a Pagan holiday which a good description of the practices follows below.
"It was ancient custom that when sacrifice was to be made, all farmers were to come to the heathen temple and bring along with them the food they needed while the feast lasted. At this feast all were to take part of the drinking of ale. Also all kinds of livestock were killed in connection with it, horses also; and all the blood from them was called hlaut [ sacrificial blood ], and hlautbolli, the vessel holding the blood; and hlautteinar, the sacrificial twigs [ aspergills ]. These were fashioned like sprinklers, and with them were to be smeared all over with blood the pedestals of the idols and also the walls of the temple within and without; and likewise the men present were to be sprinkled with blood. But the meat of the animals was to be boiled and served as food at the banquet. Fires were to be lighted in the middle of the temple floor, and kettles hung over them. The sacrificial beaker was to be borne around the fire, and he who made the feast and was chieftain, was to bless the beaker as well as all the sacrificial meat"
As for Santa Claus he was also part of this ancient pagan tradition but in a different way.
The tradition of Santa came from many different figures that were all merged into the modern day Santa Claus. These range from Odin to a incubus demon that accompanied St. Nick in later times.
This is where the gift giving came from children would leave food items for him as a sign of faith and Odin being pleased with that would turn them into candy for the young children.
The incubus demon comes up when the practices became somewhat Christianized he would accompany St Nick and as a companion to St Nick's gifts he would chastise the naughty children with various measures. (Most often this included whipping young females with a birch branch).
Then finally sometime in the 300s the current pope proclaimed that Christmas would be celebrated on December 25th instead of the actual date when it was assumed Jesus was born. (This is assumed to have came sometime between April and September)
December 25th was chosen as it was the same day as the celebrations of Yule and Sol Invictus both of which have roots in ancient celebrations of the winter solstice.
This was done in order to ease the forced conversion of Pagans to Christianity.
Finally we get more to the topic of your rant the second hijacking of Christmas away from the plagiarized Christian ideas to the ideas of consumerism and capitalism.
Unfortunately I have to agree with you that any meaning of Christmas has been lost due to those last two reasons. But I don't really see this as a bad thing as the true meanings of the holiday were just shadows of their former selves anyway. Yule and Sol Invictius would coincide with the harvest rituals of All Hallow's Eve and symbolize the rebirth of the sun during the next year and the days getting longer. During this time families would gather together for actual reasons after the sacrifice is over and not just to get in a room and secretly insult and bitch at each other.
In this way I don't feel bad about Christmas becoming this sort of holiday at all as its just another hijacking of the long dead real meanings.
As for the rampant consumerism all it has done is accelerate the second hijacking of the customs. The whole idea that the more you love someone the more you have to spend on a gift for them really isn't that far off from the rest of the year anyway. Everytime I walk past a television and see a commercial for something like diamonds by de beers it's the same ideas. Showing that the only way to display affection is made with a transfer of a large amount of money in order to get a worthless rock mined under gun point by poor kids in Africa anyway.
ReplyDeleteAnyway I really didn't mean to hijack your rant like this I agree with you a lot more than it sounds like above just wanted to input some things.
Have a good solstice.
lol ok...
ReplyDeleteand i didnt know all that but i knew that christmas started as a pagan holiday, and santa was also not a christian thing... and ya... technically it wasnt christmas when it was the pagan holiday, it wasn't until the church became a huge power and took everything from the pagans and gave it christian themes did it really become christmas
but ya.. thanks for ur input, and the history lesson.. it was very nice :)