Merry Christmas

I'm off to visit the fam... I hope you all have the ability to spend the holidays with the ones who mean the most to you: even if those are friends like Solid Snake or Rikku, or actual family. Merry Christmas to you all, if you made a good haul this year from the fatman, feel free to share.

Comments

I'll be working for 12 hours.

[AdamJ]

The moral of this story? Go to college.

Re:Merry Christmas to all

[Jucius Maximus]

Since many folks here are talking about what they got for Christmas ... I'll do something different and say what I gave.

1. A photon light for my mom. It was a turquoise photon II.

2. A Sarah Brightman CD for my dad as well as a micro-tapemeasure so he won't have to lug one of his big ones around anymore when he wants to measure something at a store. I can hear the CD playing right now.

3. A set of nice gel pens for my sister as well as this really fancy popcorn she'd been eyeing. She was more pleased with the popcorn, haha.

4. Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed for my brother. He was more thrilled by the new drum set our parents got him ;-)

Solstice, Christians, Pagans, and good music

[namespan]

A couple of years ago I ran across this song by Dar Williams called "Christians and Pagans". It's hilarious (+1) and insightful (+1), and it's been my favorite "Christmas" song ever since (except, perhaps, for John McCutcheon's "Christmas in the Trenches").

So back in 1998 my brother and I started to throw "solstice" parties. We looked into various holiday and solstice traditions around the world. No real attempts at sorcery, bachannals, or blood, which I suppose some might expect. We wassail an apple tree, we make radish and butter carvings, we light and extinguish and light candles and talk about what we've done the last year and what we hope to do again. We have the "Urn of Fate" assign friends for the year. We sing "here comes the sun" and "christians and pagans". I'm sure any serious pagan would laugh at us, but it's our little chance to do things a little bit differently, remember there's other cultures and traditions in the world, and perhaps find magic/life/spirit in an unexpected place or two.

I'm still a reasonably solid Christian. OK, I occasionally go for bouts of rational agnosticism, but for the most part, I've found that Christianity as a spiritual practice seems to have something to it. So still I'm a little uncomfortable singing that line from Dar's song "sending hope for peace on earth to all their Gods and Goddesses". But I like this new tradition of looking at other traditions and fashioning new ones from it, and we're going to keep it up, as well as gathering on Christmas day and reading Luke 2 (stopping before we have to explain circumcision to the kids :). Plus, what's not to celebrate about the days getting longer.