As you may have heard, Sarah Palin and others at Fox News have complained about the Obamas' holiday Christmas card.

 

 

The Daily Kos commented:

 

To you or I it may look like Thomas Kinkade ate a box of candy canes and pooped out a tranquil interior scene, but to the forces of Christmas Outrage it is deeply suspicious because there is a dog in the scene when there should have been a Jesus, and there is a poinsettia instead of a Christmas tree, and there's just something off about it, in their minds. A suspicious number of books, perhaps, or maybe one of the chairs is facing towards Mecca. I don't know, because I am not fucking insane.

 

Mr. Kos went on to note that Fox News' own card features a fox "winning a sheep-driven sled race over fellow participants ABC, NBC and CBS. There are no Christmas trees: The only decoration is a bit of holiday bunting." He goes on to say, "Not to be outdone, the Fox Business card features two anthropomorphic foxes roasting the dead, plucked and skewered NBC peacock over an open fire. The cartoonish murder of your perceived enemies? Now that's the Christmas spirit!" 

 

In other ridiculousness, this time about people I hang out with - tho not these guys specifically, gods forbid:  An American woman involved in a threesome in England avoided deportation by claiming their Pagan faith (Asatru/Nordic in this case) forbids divorce between husband and the other wife.  (Roll eyes.) Story is illustrated with photo of Druids, a totally different kind of Pagan, celebrating at Stonehenge.

 

In other news, I read about Pagans on Vancouver Island celebrating Yule by jumping through giant evergreen hoops.  Also "bowing to stag antlers [and] revering pentangles". Well, whatever. The article also refers to "Pagans, often known as Wiccans", which is in the same league as the previous article not distinguishing between Odinists and Druids.  Pagan is the over-all term, like "Christian", or even "monotheist", under which are various groups who are quite different.

 

Illustrated by another Druid shot (despite the white robes, they tend to the colorful), is another U.K. article entitled GOD SAVE US FROM THE CRAZY RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGES IN JAILS THAT COST THE TAXPAYER MILLIONS ... especially the few pounds involved in accommodating the handful of Pagan inmates.  The paper is especially indignant because free people's religious beliefs are not similarly accommodated, as in the case of a B&B that is now allowed to refuse gay patrons and another bigoted example.  I have some knowledge of religious accommodation in Canadian prisons - it costs little for the fringe religions, with most of the cost, of course, going towards providing full-time Christian chaplains.  And presumably (this I'm not going out on a limb about) religious participation helps inmates in their rehabilitation.

 

In a parallel lament from this side of the ocean, "In Colorado, the Air Force Academy has spent millions of dollars on a chapel, but also spent $80,000 for a worship center to be used by self-identified pagans cadets. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), a right-wing freshman congresswoman, told the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins that this is “crazy.”"  She worries about "marginalization" of Christianity, but I think the figures quoted don't warrant such fear.  (Even tho $80,000 for a stone circle seems a bit excessive; mostly we Pagans find a free spot for our ceremonies.  However, maybe things need to be more regularized in the armed forces.) 

 

Okay, there's another article, American this time, that says:  The original Pagan Yule holiday was a 12 day celebration of sacrifice and worship of the god Yule. Over a 12 day period, worshippers would make blood sacrifices in fire to Yule and burn a huge log—a Yule log. Sometimes those blood sacrifices were human! Well, those Odinists...tho I've never heard of the "god Yule" (Yule is a term possibly meaning wheel or yodel [disputed]).  But the author does make the point that Jesus wasn't a Christian, which I'll leave to others to worry about...  (From comedian Andy Borowitz:  Christmas would never have caught on if it had been called "Celebrate a Jew's Birthday.")

 

Haha - not seasonally related - some super-sized Republican congresscrittur is apologizing to Michelle Obama for referring in public to her commodious caboose.  What he was really indignant about was the First Lady's campaign to get kids to eat healthy - the horror, the horror. 

 

Tho that reminds me of somebody on Facebook saying "Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they're serving rumballs." There's also some trailer running on the Comedy Channel where the comic says that the meal is not finished when he's no longer hungry - the meal is finished when he hates himself.

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL.  Eat, drink...and repent in January.