Hey readers! We got ourselves a twofer! First, a FANTASTIC letter to the editor of the Kingsport Times-News – below is the text of the full letter. This is my pick for Random Awesomeness of the Week:
Jesus isn’t the reason for the season
Published December 2nd, 2009 |
Christmas originated as a celebration of Christ’s birth. Really? Christians spend most of their time, money, and energy trying to honor Christ. Really? Children identify Jesus with Christmas, not Santa. Really? Adults fret over not giving Christ enough praise, not gift debt. Really? Decorated trees represent the life Christ offers. Really? Historical facts suggest Jesus was born in December. Really? People rarely experience post-Christmas blahs or depression because they spent their time focusing on the Savior! Really?
Over 1,500 years before Christ’s birth, people celebrated winter solstice festivals around Dec. 25. Their focus was on their respective sun gods (Mithra, Saturn, etc.). It was only during the fourth century that military and religious leaders began strategically slipping Jesus into the yearly winter shindigs. Jesus became a token add-on, an afterthought, a pawn used to achieve their goals of controlling the masses. This would be like us declaring from now on going clubbing will represent our fight against world hunger.
Discovering that Jesus is not the reason for the season confused me. Some of my greatest memories revolve around Christmas as a child. Perhaps not all is lost. Christ was big on love, family, and friends, but also on honesty. Maybe some of our Christmas traditions wouldn’t continue to insult Him if we’d stop publicly insisting it’s all about Him while privately doing everything but focusing on Him. As counterintuitive and as religiously incorrect as this may sound to Christ followers, if we participate in holiday traditions maybe we should leave Christ out of it, rather than pretending He is the catalyst. He deserves better.
Mark Johnson
Church Hill
Kudos to you, Mr. Johnson.
And, of course, an online letter to the editor such as this is bound to gather some uber-fails of comments. Without further ado, I present you the SFL Fail of the Week:
I’m not even touching this one. Amazing that people call us morons because they cannot except the simple premise of a Son was born of a virgin, HE died on a cross at the hands of man to save all humanity, and HE’S COMING AGAIN! BUT, you can believe in something so stupid as environmentalism, carbon footprints, the ice is melting, and the big bang theory, Darwinism, and other such myths. Betcha believe in big foot and the abominable snowman too. You people just amaze me. So you know what, you keep believe in all the falsehoods and leave me and my Christian Christmas alone. If you don’t want to celebrate it, then stay by yourself in your cold old dirty apartment and leave me alone! MERRY CHRISTmas!
This has it all: first, the pretend superiority of “I’m not even touching this one.” Then we move on to the reverse-insult. Then some ALLCAPS proselytizing!!! Then some more nastiness for the MORANS who believe in science. Then a little offensive defense – STAND FOR CHRISTMAS!!! – some weird insults, then, of course, the mandatory reference to !!!!!CHRIST!!!!!!!. signed, ResQLady B
Get a grip, anonymous harpy.
More of MY PERSONAL reasons for the season:
Birds are nice
SouthernFemaleLawyer 