Thursday, December 25, 2014
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas, Gregorian, from Unforeseen Contingencies! I'm taking a break from cooking Christmas dinner to crank out a quick Christmas post.
We're in Montana, having successfully crossed the wilds of Michigan's UP, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. Except for an inch or two of new snow that fell on us in the UP, there was no snow at all. Christmas Eve a storm blew across Montana, leaving us a Christmas present of enough snow to permit a couple of hours of XC skiing today. (Photos to be added soon.)
Something I've noticed this year... there seems to be a much greater tendency for people to wish "Merry Christmas," including (and maybe especially) people working in stores and other businesses. My impression is that this has been a growing trend in the last couple of years. I hope so. I don't have anything like a random sample, I know, but I'm wondering if people aren't fed up with the multiculturalist intolerance that the leftist intelligentsia wants to cram down our throats. As I have often argued, one doesn't need to be Christian to celebrate Christmas. If someone wishes you a Merry Christmas, it's a wish for you to be happy and to be blessed; that's a good thing regardless of whether you share their particular theological views -- and the appropriate thing is to wish them the same.
Every year, Walter Russell Mead posts 13 reflections on Christmas, and this year is no exception. I'm looking forward to his posts. As he observes,
The meaning of Christmas is much bigger than the trite clichés that usually come up in this context; I won’t just be writing about the Importance of Giving and the Desirability of Being Nice... For Christians....Christmas is the hinge of the world’s fate, the turning point of life. It is the most important thing that ever happened, or at least the beginning of it, and we celebrate it every year because it is still happening now. Whether we know it or not, whether we appreciate it or not, we are part of the Christmas Event that has turned history upside down. There’s a reason why we date the birth of Christ as the year 1 and why traditionally the world’s history was divided into BC, before Christ, and AD, anno domini, the year of the Lord.
At a time when civilization itself is under attack, it's important to reflect on its roots. I may have something to say about this myself soon.
But meanwhile, a hungry crew is starting to wonder where dinner is, so I'm off to make gravy. Merry Christmas!
We're in Montana, having successfully crossed the wilds of Michigan's UP, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. Except for an inch or two of new snow that fell on us in the UP, there was no snow at all. Christmas Eve a storm blew across Montana, leaving us a Christmas present of enough snow to permit a couple of hours of XC skiing today. (Photos to be added soon.)
Something I've noticed this year... there seems to be a much greater tendency for people to wish "Merry Christmas," including (and maybe especially) people working in stores and other businesses. My impression is that this has been a growing trend in the last couple of years. I hope so. I don't have anything like a random sample, I know, but I'm wondering if people aren't fed up with the multiculturalist intolerance that the leftist intelligentsia wants to cram down our throats. As I have often argued, one doesn't need to be Christian to celebrate Christmas. If someone wishes you a Merry Christmas, it's a wish for you to be happy and to be blessed; that's a good thing regardless of whether you share their particular theological views -- and the appropriate thing is to wish them the same.
Every year, Walter Russell Mead posts 13 reflections on Christmas, and this year is no exception. I'm looking forward to his posts. As he observes,
The meaning of Christmas is much bigger than the trite clichés that usually come up in this context; I won’t just be writing about the Importance of Giving and the Desirability of Being Nice... For Christians....Christmas is the hinge of the world’s fate, the turning point of life. It is the most important thing that ever happened, or at least the beginning of it, and we celebrate it every year because it is still happening now. Whether we know it or not, whether we appreciate it or not, we are part of the Christmas Event that has turned history upside down. There’s a reason why we date the birth of Christ as the year 1 and why traditionally the world’s history was divided into BC, before Christ, and AD, anno domini, the year of the Lord.
At a time when civilization itself is under attack, it's important to reflect on its roots. I may have something to say about this myself soon.
But meanwhile, a hungry crew is starting to wonder where dinner is, so I'm off to make gravy. Merry Christmas!
