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Spaff

sexy failures

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Oh, didn't mean to say I favoured renaming Christmas to Sparkle Season. It's the corruption of all such nonsense that I :tup: to.

I will generally listen very attentively to anyone who lectures me on why it's important to rename a particular thing so as not to offend anyone, then gleefully steamroller their values with the first sentence out of my mouth.

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Yeah, I know you weren't in favor. Just I heard about this too many times all over the U.S. to not instinctively grit my teeth.

Last year retail stores didn't want to say they were selling "Christmas trees," only "family trees."

And some public schools apparently were wanting Halloween to be called things like "Black and Orange day."

I'm confused on where this P.C. stuff even starts. Is it the crazy left or the crazy right? Is it just crazy?

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Much as I lean left myself, it's a part of the left where it seems to start. It's just fucking mental, and really really gay too.

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It's just fucking crazy and I'll never that shit like this REALLY happens until I see for myself -- no offs gerbil -- there's a load of horseshit in the newspapers, for example, which only make things worse.

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Fun fact: Since writing that first reply, I've actually begun referring to my genitals as Arthur, Conan, and Doyle. The girlfriend is not pleased.

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It's just fucking crazy and I'll never that shit like this REALLY happens until I see for myself -- no offs gerbil -- there's a load of horseshit in the newspapers, for example, which only make things worse.

Haha, well here's the family trees thing:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/christmas/familytree.asp

Boy did they make a big deal on right wing radio last year though. There's also similar cases on the same site with Target and Best Buy. I mean they are private retailers, and they can do what they want whether they want when they say "happy holidays" to gain more sales instead of Christmas, which is what most of their displays, design, and items are aimed at anyways.

I guess I don't really see Christmas as a secular holiday. Most people here will celebrate Christmas one way or another whether they are Christian or not, or dangerous Atheists like my girlfriend and I. I think it's more of an American tradition involving Santa Claus and presents (not to mention time off) than our pal Jesus. Same thing with Halloween and it's "questionable roots." But that's just me on my soapbox, a guy who is all for separation of church and state (and business and state) yet feels these holidays are an integral part of our culture, although someone else will tell you different in Texas.

Also it turns out Black and Orange day happened to a school in Toronto, so it's not a U.S. thing. Oops!

And I found this hilarious Hanukkah message that was in a Party City catalog:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/hateflier.asp

Happy holidays indeed!

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Same thing with Halloween and it's "questionable roots."

Christmas has the same roots as Halloween; they are both pagan bonfire festivals. I do enjoy informing hardline christians where 90% of their christmas traditions come from (Santa is Odin!)

And that's kinda my take on it. I'm an eclectic agnostic. I see these holidays as something that is, above all, human. They speak to a deep unconcious part of our instinct about marking the times of the year.

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Haha, well here's the family trees thing:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/christmas/familytree.asp

Precisely my point: It has fuck to do with religion/left wing/right wing nonsense. The bullshit that sprang into people's minds because some idiots were claiming it was something against Christianity and/or having an opinion gone mad... When all it was was a printing error in one shop's catalogue!

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Santa Claus has its origins in the Dutch Sinterklaas figure, I believe. He was a Turkish bishop (now seen as Spanish for whatever reason) who gave gifts to poor children. Now he visits Holland every 5th of December. Santa Claus bears an uncanny resemblance to him and most likely originated with the Dutch immigrants in early America celebrating their feast.

Meet Sinterklaas!

sinterklaas.jpg

He rides a white horse, holds a golden staff and has a book in which all the children's behaviour and wishes are listed. It's pretty easy to see how this shaped into Santa Claus's reindeer usage, book, candy cane symbolism and other stuff.

But it surely has pagan origins as well. In any case, it's all mixed up.

(Also, Sinterklaas has an army of black slaves called 'Zwarte Piet' (Black Pete) who are really playful, goofy and funny. They got replaced by politically more correct elves on the North pole. But what's a good celebration without some racist roots?)

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Well that sounds a lot more like it... Maybe the paganism is only involved in the timing of the festival? (It's the Winter Solstice or Equinox or something, isn't it?)

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Yeah the Saint Nicholas connection is well known, and the one that the church promotes. But you have to ask yourself where the Sinterklaas figure traditions themselves came from. There are conflicting stories about the real historical figure and, as with Jean d'Arc and others, most of them were pre-existing before becoming attached to the christian saint.

Christian saints tend to become conflated with their pagan god predecessors. Wherever you find a church dedicated to saint Michael, it is almost always on the site of a temple to a sun god like Lugh or Bran or Balder. Churches of the virgin Mary are on the sites of earth and fertility goddess associated areas. This list goes on, and Saint Nicholas happened to be conflated with Odin-type figures. The horse, the rod and the book are all Odin symbols, and the Zwarte Piets correspond to the Svartálfar ('dark elves') of Norse lore.

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If you believe in that type of thing, a lot of Christian places of worship were built on points where so-called ley-lines cross too.

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If you believe in that type of thing, a lot of Christian places of worship were built on points where so-called ley-lines cross too.

Heh, that is fairly provable up to a point. Of course it becomes less believable depending on what you think ley lines are supposed to be. While the general understanding is that they are meant to be 'lines of force', there are other theories that they were simply ancient roads or water courses. And in that case it is logical that ancient worship sites would be well connected to any travel routes.

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800px-Sinterklaas_zwarte_piet.jpg

zwarte_piet_pedro_groot.jpgBlack-Peters.jpg

If you dressed like that in England, The Sun readers would insta-lynch you, but they wouldnt understand why they did it.

man i seriously need to get some new christmas decorations

70248527_ef0c0bf45f.jpg?v=0

someone needs to plot the thread de-railment course of this thread, it's gone off somewhere completley insane.

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Heh, that is fairly provable up to a point. Of course it becomes less believable depending on what you think ley lines are supposed to be. While the general understanding is that they are meant to be 'lines of force', there are other theories that they were simply ancient roads or water courses. And in that case it is logical that ancient worship sites would be well connected to any travel routes.

I think the most generally acceptable description I've read is that they act as kind of arteries or veins. Apparently.

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