the list of now

Dear Everyone,

Happy Holidays!  It’s Christmas Eve and I have had a wonderful month celebrating this season and what it represents for me.  A couple of days ago, I attended a Solstice dinner party with lovely friends.   I’ve been making treats, watching my favorite holiday movies and now I am in the Midwest, preparing to celebrate tomorrow surrounded by my beautiful family by extension – my partner’s family.

Because of all of this and how much I look forward to this time of year, it’s especially disheartening to hear the annual complaints about the supposed “War on Christmas” – the yearly whining by some Christians who seem to be stuck in a permanent victim mentally about how people who do not practice their religion are trying to co-opt their traditions.  Since when is it appropriate to express entitlement over genuine practices of inclusiveness, peace, love, joy and well-wishing in the community during the winter season?  How is that a Christian value?

Even the gentler “reminders” or insistence that “Jesus is the reason for the season” are actually offensive and misguided, even if more benign.  Because one religion does not dominate the multitude of ways to celebrate anything, especially not an actual Season that includes many religious observances, not just Christmas.  And really, the origins of a lot of the modern Christmas celebrations and symbols pre-date Christ.

So this is my major argument here, and many people are going to want to say I’m being anti-christian, but I’m really not.  I’m against the way that some christians behave about this,  I’m against all the christian ignorance and mega entitlement issues.  Because this is the truth of the matter in a nutshell:

Christmas, the way it has come to be celebrated recently (let’s say within the last century or so) is a giant amalgamation of pagan and christian mythology and folklore.  It has evolved into one big secular holiday pluralistic tradition that happens to be inclusive of many different ways to be involved if one wishes to do so  without having to be a practitioner of any organized religion.

And this is a GOOD thing. This is what makes it so beautiful.

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So this is kind of a guest post. My good buddy Jay has been listing these on facebook.  I enjoyed them so much that I asked him if I could make them into a post to share with all of you.  These are the first ten.  I will post the rest sometime next week, because he’s still going strong!

Helpful Holiday Hint #1: Is holiday shopping stressing you out? You can save time and money by simply walking out of the store with everything in your cart.

Helpful Holiday Hint #2: Can’t find the perfect gift for that special person in your life? Simply avoid them until sometime in late February.

Helpful Holiday Hint #3: Family can be tough to deal with, but you can put your best foot forward by inviting everyone over to your house for the holidays. You should prepare for their arrival by locking your door and staying in a hotel.

Helpful Holiday Hint #4: Adding tinsel to your tree makes for a festive holiday decoration and a great way to make sure your vacuum cleaner never works again.

Helpful Holiday Hint #5: You can relieve stress this year by playing with the awesome gifts you’ve bought for others. If you can’t get it back in the box in reasonable shape, be sure to return it to the store for a fresh one.

Helpful Holiday Hint #6: It’s important to not let the display of Christmas lights turn into a competition…unless your neighbor wants a taste. In that case, it’s important to crush him. Celebrate your victory by leaving them up until March.

Helpful Holiday Hint #7: It really is the thought that counts, even if the thought is “Jesus Christ, I don’t want to spend the next year hearing about how I ruined Christmas.”

Helpful Holiday Hint #8: You know those Halloween decorations you never took down? They’re just a couple of sheets away from turning into a Nativity scene.

Helpful Holiday Hint #9: Amidst all the materialism, attending midnight mass is a great way to get in touch with the real reason for the season. It also helps to reassure your heathen neighbors that you won’t be home for a few hours, so they should help themselves to that 3DTV you just got. When you get home, be sure to turn the other cheek and love thy neighbor.

Helpful Holiday Hint #10: Go green this holiday season by not wrapping your presents. Maintain the element of surprise by opening all the gifts and putting them back in different boxes.

Call me crazy, but I think Bob Dylan’s Christmas album is totally wonderful.

I feel like everyone is missing the point and that it’s supposed to be campy and a bit ridiculous.  I mean, look at the picture he chose for the album cover!  I feel like he knows how he sounds on these songs and doesn’t care or did the arrangements intentionally to clash a bit or poke fun.  I also feel like none of that really matters because when I listen to it, I giggle and feel happy and Christmas-y and that’s the point isn’t it?

Listen to this great 5 minute critique from Ken Tucker on NPR’s Fresh Air.  You can hear some of the tracks and Tucker pretty much agrees with me, but says it with perfect balance of mocking/love:

Among those criticisms is the odd complaint that Dylan’s voice sounds awful. I’m sorry, have you not been listening to Dylan for the past decade — or for his entire career? An imperfect vocal instrument is at once characteristic of Dylan and a limitation he’s frequently turned to his advantage. And as far as the idea that covering songs such as “Christmas Island” and “Here Comes Santa Claus” is cornball, well, the flip-side of cornball is amusement in context. Dylan, producing himself under the name “Jack Frost,” is surrounding himself with sweet choral voices and arrangements straight out of a 1960s middle-of-the-road or “countrypolitan” album. It’s just that instead of hearing Johnny Mathis or Eddy Arnold crooning, you have Dylan croaking with both solemnity and a wink.
.
Come on — that’s fun, in the manner of other Christmas songs ranging from Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” to the Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping.”

…

And Dylan does make his slow, deliberate version of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” sound more like a threat than a promise.

(that’s accurate and hilarious)

And yet I love it.   Darcy loves it too, although I suspect more ironically.

She had this to say about the album:

Someone needs to take the microphone away from Grandpa Dylan.

I can’t wait for the day after Thanksgiving when I am “allowed” to break out all the Christmas music and movies.  I will be sharing this album with (or inflicting this album on)  all my loved ones!

1.  Decorating!

We got our Christmas tree and put up most of our decorations.  Now that we have a house to decorate instead of a tiny one-bedroom apartment, our sparse amount of decorations look even sparser.   We are working on adding to the collection, but here are some pictures of what’s up so far!

To ogle more holiday decor-porn, go to Joe’s blog and see his pretty vintage tree ornaments and homemade crafty paper decorations.

2.  So that you don’t wake up on December 25th and miss it.

My brother Jonathan brought the delightfully blunt website Is it Christmas? to my attention a couple of months ago.   Darcy noticed a couple of days ago, that the answer to the question is a feed link.   So you can subscribe to it and it will let you know daily that it is not yet Christmas. (Until it is Christmas and then we aren’t entirely sure what will happen.  Can’t wait to find out.)

3.  Good Advice: Don’t spread those hate-germs!

I happen to loathe when large amounts of celebrities get together to do a “message” song recording.  (Heal the World, Voices that Care, Do They Know It’s Christmastime?  That’s What Friends Are For etc).   I think it is great when the profits go to a worthy cause and all, but the resulting songs are truly truly awful.

So I was pleased to see a well-done mockery of this concept holiday song, with a general message that I can get behind (and lots of awesome people making appearances!  Serenity fans wait until nearly the very end to see Nathan Fillion dancing.  It makes me very happy.)

Please Don’t Bomb Nobody This Holiday