Christians need to stop co-opting our secular holidays. I've noticed this trend in recent months, it being, you know, the "holiday season." And I find it distressing.
I was miffed when I noticed the massive (read: scary) lutheran evangelical church down the street was holding Thanksgiving services. Thanksgiving is on a Thursday. So it wasn't like it was a regular Sunday service. It was a service FOR Thanksgiving.
NOTE: Thanksgiving is about honoring the pilgrims by making 'hand turkeys' and watching football and eating oneself into a coma. It's not about religious figures being born, dying, or do whatever else religious figures do...performing miracles and making the grass grow or whatever.
So leave it alone.
You christians have your own holidays - they are called Christmas, Easter, various and sundry saint-related ones (Catholics only), lent, Good Friday, advent, and a really weird one that I have yet to figure out what it's all about: Mandy Tuesday? Monday Wednesday? (I didn't feel like looking it up in Wikipedia. It shows up around Easter, I think).
But okay, I'll cut you a little--not a lot, mind you--slack on Thanksgiving since it's about giving thanks and all, and christians like to do that by congratulating themselves on stuff like Proposition 8 and the rapture.
However, my ire was very much raised by driving past a different evangelical church that was holding New Year's Eve/Day services. WTF? I ask you: how in the HELL is New Year's Day a religious thing? It marks the beginning of a new calendar year. How is there any sort of religious connotation to that?! For pity sake - let the poor parishoners have a break! Let them go out and have fun and watch football and nurse hangovers.
There aren't a lot of secular holidays we can lay claim to. Thanksgiving was one. New Year's was another. And you've taken them from us.
It'll be Fouth of July and Casual Friday next.
7 comments:
Fat Tuesday?
Of course, there is a long history of this. Heck, they co-opted winter solstice to create Christmas.
I'm also annoyed by the whole "Save Christmas" campaign. Yes, please save Christmas by focusing your advertising dollars on buying lots of shit as Christmas presents, rather than buying lots of shit for generic holiday presents. That's the Jesus spirit.
When I was a junior high Catholic schoolboy, one of the last "going to church" fights I had with my mom was on New Year's Day.
She told me we had to go to mass, and I said, "What? On New Year's? It's not a holy day!"
But apparently it is.
We had just gone to church on Xmas, and then again on Sunday, and now I had to go for some made-up holiday? This was like being told I had to go to the dentist three times in one week. Seriously, WTF??
Soon after I moved in with my dad and never went to mass again.
Ugh. I didn't realize that there was a "Save Christmas" campaign. Now I hate that, too.
I love Thanksgiving for a number of reasons. It's an American holiday. It revolves around food. But mostly the central theme is about being happy, and well, thankful. It's been argued that thankfulness in a vague sense implies that you are thankful to someone or some deity. If you're thankful for a bountiful harvest, it sort of implies that you're thankful to God. Or Demeter. Or the Mighty Brando.
I think that thankfulness in general is a good thing, and doesn't have to mean Christianity. I'm glad we have a holiday that helps up pause and be thankful.
You say "hate" a lot. Can we get a post about something you love? Or moderately enjoy? Like Reese Witherspoon movies or something.
Brando,
Okay, okay - less negativity in the new year, I promise! Even though I'm a glass-half-empty type of person and do hate a lot of things.
And I did like "Walk the Line." I can't really think of anything else Reese Witherspoon has been in except Legally Blond, which I didn't see.
Witherspoon movies are pretty emblamatic of cotton candy films. Full of puppies, kittens, and sappy love stories.
Oh, when there's mass on July 4th, I'll know something's up.
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