Friday, December 23, 2011

'Tis the Season

For "Crimes Against Christmas."

Because apparently that's a thing now.

ABC News even has a blog dedicated to detailing these offenses, or "offenses" as the case may be.

I think my favorite "crime" is the one where residents in Michigan who had put up Christmas lights received a letter informing them of the pagan roots of some of today's Christmas traditions. Specifically, the letter said:

"Hi neighbor, You have a nice display of lights and this love note explains how that pagan tradition began. For thousands of years Sun worshippers have celebrated the Sungod's rebirth after solstice. Pagans honored the birth of the 'invincible sun' with a 'festival of lights.' They used big bonfires, pigs fat tallow candle lights, and today, billions of colored christmass lights. Rome's seven-day December Saturnalia was religious revelry with decadent drunkenness outrageous adultery and giving Saturn's nativity birth gifts to the children...."

You know. Lots of people like to talk about how people are too afraid to speak truth in today's PC GONE TOO FAR society. But, I think it's pretty sad when people can't even be informed of pagan traditions that actually exist/existed in the real world without framing that education as a "crime against Christmas." Or, as a "sin," as one homeowner claimed, totally missing the point:

“It’s a sin to judge other people and to tell people that if they have Christmas lights they are pagans. We’re not pagans, we go to church regularly, my kids go to the Christian school. I think next year we should put on a huge display!”

It's amazing to me that people display little to no curiosity about the roots of their most revered traditions and holidays, or of that funny coincidence where Christmas occurs right around Winter Solstice all the time.

Anyway, speaking of displays, I know what I'm putting up next year.

No comments: