tekHedd – the blog

There’s something that bothers me about the Christian idea of Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, I like the carols, the tree, Santa Claus, all of the rampant materialism…I have no problem at all with all of the previously-pagan traditions. Some Christians think that these pagan themes are bad and distract from the core values of Christianity. But the reality is worse than that. Instead of making these pagan holidays Christian, what it has really accomplished is to make Christianity pagan.

Is that an angel?

When I say “pagan” here, I mean that in the way that Christians mean it: empty idol worship. It seems like there is a “real” side to Christianity, and a “idol worship” side.  The real side is based on the teachings of Jesus, or at least on the writings of a handful of people who claimed to know what he would have written if he had known how to write. The idol worship side is the worship of Baby Jesus. You’ve seen it in action. The way some Christians defend the nativity display on the courthouse lawn, you might as well put a golden calf in the manger. It doesn’t have to stand for anything, they worship the thing itself.

And then, a miracle happens!

What makes the Christian religion tolerable is that it has elements of ethics built into it. Jesus said more than just “Obey.” Oh yes, he very much did say “Believe and Obey.” But, he also said “for God’s sake think about what you’re doing, and how it will affect others!” A seed of rationality in a sea of blind obedience, hooray! Do unto others? You mean I have to actually think about what they might like? Wow, what a lovely change of pace from “worship me and make sacrifices.”

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I couldn’t help noticing that the Jan 2012 Good Housekeeping cover reminded me of this scene from Total Recall. It’s wrong but I couldn’t stop myself. A little contrast adjustment and …

TWO WEEKS

For those who haven’t seen Total Recall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXEK4XqL5rw#t=52s

(Embedding disabled for some reason.)

http://youtu.be/m8sifpUxFwQ

I don’t remember exactly where I saw it, but I recently saw a clip of someone complaining about the wasteful spending of the US government, where one of the examples of waste was how we we are going to waste money restoring the Statue of Liberty. And I’m thinking to myself “yeah, what do we need that thing for…wait a minute, did you just say the Statue of Liberty?”

The Statue of Liberty! Sure, it’s just a huge bronze statue, and it’s technically wasteful to spend money restoring it when we could just… not restore it. But come on, The Statue of Liberty is like–it’s like the hood ornament on the United States of America, which I guess would make New York the hood. Which seems kind of appropriate. But anyway… We have to keep that thing in good condition. Have you ever seen a car where someone has ripped off the hood ornament, and where the owner never bothered to replace it? It looks trashy! You expect a car like that to be rusting out and have bald tires too. Even if it’s a nice car, your imagination adds rust and dirty oil when that hood ornament is missing, with the special plastic hole where it used to be, and the spring safety tension release wire inside… if you’re old enough to have seen a hood ornament you know what I’m talking about.

While “beater car” might be a fairly decent analogy for the current state of financial affairs here in the US, the least we can do is have some pride and basic maintenance. Or maybe we just don’t like that she came from France and welcomes foreigners? Maybe.