Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays

This time of year brings the constant barrage of angry Christians every time they run across a Happy Holiday expression. In the current days of Facebook preaching, it typically takes the form of something to the effect of, “I don’t care who I piss off, I am tired of people taking the Christ out of Christmas.”

I am one of those people who will say Happy Holidays and I can tell you emphatically, that I am not trying to take the Christ out of Christmas. I have many friends and family that are devout Christians and I respect their celebration of their savior this time of year and will warmly greet them with Merry Christmas as an acknowledgement of their faith and my respect for it.

Where I use Happy Holidays is in an environment where I know there are people of other faiths or if I am not sure of their faith, I will greet folks this time of year with a Happy Holidays.  You see Christianity isn’t the only faith in the world and there are other people of other faiths that have different traditions. Heck even people who are traditionally lumped in together with Christians with the term Judeo-Christians, Jews, don’t celebrate Christmas. And that doesn’t even address the Muslims, Buddhists and Hindu’s of the world. As a real world, everyday example in my department at work, all four of the religions mentioned above are represented on our team. To treat them all as if they are all celebrating Christmas just doesn’t wash for me.

I have no issue with people or businesses that wish to acknowledge that there are other religions besides Christianity celebrating this time of year by the use of Happy Holidays. You do know that Hanukkah for example is celebrated in December right? Not to mention the secular New Years celebration.

So Christians, I am not trying to take the Christ out of your Christmas. Keep him there, but get past the idea that you are the only faith recognized and respect the people who have a different path to connect with their spirituality. Someone who thinks differently than you should not be a threat, they should be embraced.

My Two Cents

What We Did on Our Summer Vacation

Irena and I just got back from our honeysun (a honeymoon done before your wedding) in which we traveled to Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland. We finished off our two weeks joining Jamie Kiguchi at Dundas Caslte in Edinburgh to celebrate her 50th birthdy. We had a great time exploring this beautiful part of the wold, where we focused primarily on ancient spiritual sites. Here are some pics from our travels. Enjoy

Northern Ireland Sunset

Our Travel Monkey Spazz at Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland

Cliffs of Moher

Abbey Ruins Ireland

The Standing Stones of Calanais

Dundas Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland

Thank You

Have I

Yes

How do I know

Cuz

I like who I am when I am around you

You encourage, support and inspire me to grow

You get me like no one else

I don’t have to think about loving you, I just do

Thank You

Live it Forward and Review it Backward

I am reading Hitch-22: A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens and using a quote from Kierkegaard, Hitchens eloquently captures in words something I think all of us have experienced, the difficulty of appreciating what you have or are experiencing at that moment. Teaching us to appreciate the present is also the primary goal of Tolle’s book, The Power of Now. Here is the passage from Hitch-22.

‘But this is very much like the rest of life, where, as Kierkegaard so shrewdly observes, one is condemned to live it forward and review it backward. If you are going to sleep with Thatcher’s future ministers and toy with a future president’s lesbian girlfriend, in other words, you will not be able to savor it fully at the time and will have to content yourself with recollecting it in some kind of tranquility.’

A Profound Perspective

We have all had to deal with death, losing someone close to us. I personally have had some recent interactions with the passing of my father-in-law, Cecil and my life is forever changed because of it. But death shines an interesting light on our world, because you can not have death unless you have lived. To avoid death would be to have never lived. Here is a quote from Richard Dawkins, which captures this concept so very well.

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you an I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow

Ferry Tales #20

Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Sunset

PSNS at Dusk

 

Full Moon over Bremerton Harbor

Always Take a Second and Appreciate Your World

Thanksgiving Snow – 2010

Finally getting around to posting pictures from our snow on Monday of Thanksgiving week. Enjoy.

Frozen Fusion

Our Snowy Street

Our Snowy Street - Looking the other way

Pristine Driveway

'Fire' Pit

Front Deck

Cold Gargoyle

Peaceful Meditation

Rice God

Snowy St Francis

 

Wedding Site Created

To give people a one stop shop for information on our wedding coming up, Irena and I have created a website, so go check it out.

Bill Makes Irena An Honest Woman

The Lacuna – By Barbara Kingsolver

The Lacuna was my first foray into the storytelling mind of Barbara Kingsolver and I was completely enthralled. She is the real deal, bringing all of the elements of a good book together. Great story/plot, interesting characters, social significance and an intelligent almost poetic writing style, that had me eager to experience each new passage. For any of you that also follow me on Facebook, you know that I would regularly post passages from my daily morning reading wanting to share with my friends the incredible way Kingsolver describes the world around her. I think this was the first passage I shared from the book.

“Inside the cathedral you have to pass the great Altar of Perdon, all golden with angels flying about. The black Christ of the Venom hangs there dead in his black skirt, surrounded by little balconies, maybe for the angels to land on when they get tired. It was such a monument of accusation, even Mother had to bow her head a little as she crept past it, sins dripping from her shoes as we walked around the nave, leaving invisible puddles on the clean tiles.”

The book follows the extraordinary life of William Shepherd, who spent time as a cook and personal assistant to Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky before becoming a best-selling author. Shepherd is a great character with extreme highs and lows in his life. He has the kind of outlook on life that made me wish he was a real friend of mine.

Beyond her incredible ability to paint a picture with words (much like one of my other favorite authors, Clive Barker), Kingsolver doesn’t shy away from social issues, tackling head on the type of Fox News fear mongering so prevalent today wrapped up in the context of the fear of communism in the McCarthy era. I don’t want to give the ending away, but she clearly doesn’t adhere to Hollywood endings.

I have already added my next Kingsolver sampling to my list of books to read and I fully expect that when all is said and done I will have read everything she chooses to write.

Peace Out

Bill

Ferry Tales #19

This morning the powers that be put on quite a show. Enjoy!

Purple Haze