Slashdot Mirror
Children Turn On Santa
nullspace writes "I know this is a little late for Christmas, but in Chile several children stoned Santa when he refused to throw them candy from a truck. In the end the children climbed on the truck and stole several toys from Santa's bag. The story is found on Yahoo!. "
you know, that subject could be misconstrued...
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Celebrate the finer things in life
How about this one this one where santa is taken away by security guards - although I can't say I blame him - I think the mom was evil ....
Ok, this story is amusing and sad, but does is it really entitled to such passionate responses?
IMHO these kids are merely reacting in a manner consistant with what I call the "the Spirit of Xmas" (Christmas without Christ) that is consistant with the level of commercialism attached to this season of oh-so-many-dollars-spent.
While I realize that the anti-religous zealots may be offended by my association of Jesus w/ Christmas *boggle*, the "spirit of christmas" spoken of in most of the previous posts died long ago...
-@d
So, here are your options:
a)Ignore articles you don't feel fulfill the mission of slashdot.
b)Ignore article posters that you don't like (You have to be logged in to do this, but hey... that has a lot of other benifits too)
c)petition rob to change the title of the main page to "Slashdot:News for Nerds And Other Stuff that Matters."
I went to some frisbee throwing tournament in San Diego (where I live) in '92.. some radio station that had a big Penguin as their mascot (I have to wonder about their inspiration :) attracted the attention of several 6 year old kids... They started kicking the Penguin and stuff.. one of em kept spitting on the little mesh screen that the guy in the suit was breathing through.. At the time it seemed funny.
:D
Of course, it must have been Doom's fault.
-Warren
Apparently, these children never got the point of Christmas... And the Santa missed it, too.
Well I have always had a difference of opinion about that. Christians believe that Christ was born that night citing the bible on that. I just this year decided to call it gift day. I mean if you don't have any family at all or anyone you really care about dosn't buying presents for yourself seem rather silly? Don't holidays just get rather superficial?
What kind of a Santa ignores a child?
Ever seen Married with Children? They had an episode on once where Al was ropped in to getting presents for his wife and children by them singing him up for odd jobs for 12 days before christhmas. The last was a Santa. Basically children are rude and usually not that interesting to be around.
What kind of child then gangs up and beats Santa into submission, and then steals toys and candy?
A child who was gipped by santa and then decided to get revenge. A great deal of the problems we have as a society can be attributed to jealousy and revenge.
This is a case where everybody was in the wrong. heck, Santa even used some kind of caustic glue for his fake beard! (not to bright, eh?)
Maybe so but I think that anyone who works with children and individuals who plan such events should have strategically placed "elves" to deal with such problems.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
These kids might be smarter than we give them credit for.
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
IIRC, December 25th was the start of the Roman Saturnalia, a holiday that was deliberately set a few days after the solstice and notorious for its "debauchery" since it was a brief period when certain laws were not enforced. So, it acted as a pressure release valve by allowing the controlled violation of certain morality laws.
In Christianity, it goes without saying that God never blinks and a Saturnalia isn't permitted. Like all zero-tolerance laws, you can make a strong argument that it's been a disaster. (E.g., is it better to suffer adultery one week per year, but otherwise have a solid marriage, or have a sham marriage because the straying spouse figures that Hell won't get any hotter if the marriage vows are broken 1000 times instead of just once?) But our "secular" society is still so chi-centric that most people look at you like you have truly lost your mind if you suggest that there's historical precedence for a one-week "get drunk, get stoned, get laid, gamble, lie and cheat!" break from the normal rules of society.
Finally, your "Jesus was born on the sixth of January" sounds like a very odd distortion of the Orthodox Church's calendar. The Catholic and Protestant churches follow the Gregorian calendar, but the Orthodox and Coptic(?) churches still follow the Julian calendar. The difference is almost 2 weeks, so 25 December (Julian) = 6 January (Gregorian). That's also why the Russian "October Revolution" occured in early November - Czarist Russia was Orthodox, but atheist communists ultimately switched to the Gregorian calendar.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken