Part of what the neighbors had to put up with this year.

I did something today that I always hate doing and yet I do it every year: I took down the outside Christmas decorations.

I’m not much of a romantic, but I am very, very sentimental. Part of the reason I’m a huge . . . → Read More: You know you’re getting older when your pragmatism overrides your sentimentality.]]>

Part of what the neighbors had to put up with this year.

I did something today that I always hate doing and yet I do it every year: I took down the outside Christmas decorations.

I’m not much of a romantic, but I am very, very sentimental. Part of the reason I’m a huge fan of the holiday season despite being an atheist is because of all the wonderful memories I have of it from my childhood. The religious aspects of the holiday took a backseat to the whole Santa thing and the cliche that it’s the one time of the year when people are a little more decent to each other. A cliche I bought into as a child with each Christmas special that I watched. It really did seem magical to me as a kid and I reveled in it. When I was finally old enough to participate in putting up the decorations it only added to the excitement each year.

As with most things you highly anticipate, there’s a minor feeling of loss that occurs once it has come and gone. It’s kind of like riding a roller coaster. All that excitement and build-up and then it’s suddenly over with the memory already starting to fade along with your heart rate. When it comes time to take down the decorations and pack them away for the year it brings a definite finality to the events. You can’t even pretend that Christmas was just yesterday anymore by turning on the lights just one more time. In years past I’ve so dreaded this day that it wasn’t unusual for my decorations to stay up until into February. For years I’ve had a standing agreement with my wife that they come done by her Birthday, which is January 30th.

Of course as you get older you don’t get as excited about the same things you did as a kid and thus the let down afterwards isn’t as strong as in the past. Eventually you get to a point where your pragmatism starts to override your sentimentality. Or at least I do. Today when I woke up the sky was clear and almost cloudless with a outdoor temp of 33° – practically a heat wave for a Michigan January — so I went outside and took down all the lights I had put up back in November along with the other miscellaneous decorations.  Didn’t even bother to put on a jacket.  I felt the old familiar pang as I did so, but it wasn’t as bad as in years past. My reasons for doing so were definitely pragmatic. There’s no snow on the ground, as unusual as the temperature for this time of year, and I know that if I let the opportunity pass that the next time I get up the gumption to do it before the birthday deadline will probably be after it has snowed six feet and the temps are sub-zero. Better to get it done now than once the winter finally catches up with us.

But I was still a little bummed while doing it. The only lights still outside are the lanterns that have the fake LED candles in them. We thought they’d make excellent lights for the path to the back door and they aren’t particularly seasonal so they’ll stay up. My Christmas tree is still up and I’m trying to decide whether to take it down today or wait until Courtney visits us next weekend. It’s looking a little sad as the cats have gotten most of the plastic ornaments on the bottom half of the tree off to play with, but if I use the excuse of Courtney’s visit to keep it up then I could at least pretend that the holidays haven’t fully passed for one more week. It’s definitely tempting.

I think this is part of why religion has such a tenacious hold on people. We don’t like letting go of things that make us feel good. We become irrational in trying to hold onto those memories and emotions. We want to keep those warm feelings regardless of the date (or the truth). It can lead us to do foolish things like ignore global climate change or, as I did the first year I lived in my apartment in Canton back in my early 30′s, leave a Christmas tree up all year long*.

Don’t know if any of that makes sense, but I wrote it down anyway.

^{*In my defense I was traveling a lot for a job with GMAC dealing with upgrading computers to prevent problems with Y2K and was rarely home long enough to mess up the apartment let alone put the tree away.}

From the creator:

35,000 LED lights 64 Light O Rama channels

All done by me, a 16 year old, and my dad. Come see it in Meridian, Idaho! Or visit our website at www.cornellchristmas.webs.com

ALSO…. No, . . . → Read More: For my nephew: “The Cadger Dubstep Christmas House”]]> It was only a matter of time before someone applied Dubstep to a Christmas light display:

From the creator:

35,000 LED lights
64 Light O Rama channels

All done by me, a 16 year old, and my dad. Come see it in Meridian, Idaho!
Or visit our website at www.cornellchristmas.webs.com

ALSO…. No, my electric bill isn’t that high, I’m on level pay all year for it so it’s cheaper. And no, my neighbors don’t hate me, in fact, almost everybody within a 10 mile radius LOVE the light show, And no, I don’t have anything against people with epilepsy…. I just enjoy making my lights flash a lot

I’m always amused when Christians ask me why I celebrate Christmas. Given how much of it has nothing to do with Christ the real question is why they celebrate it.

Via someecards.com

To help you get in the mood, here’s a video from YouTuber KJ92508′s 2011 Halloween Light show. He did a great job last year and it appears they’ve added to it this year:

Don't you want to be a Weener too?

I’ve ranted before on how there always seems to be a group of Christians out there who feel the best way to recruit new believers is by trying to co-opt something popular and slapping Jesus all over it. There’s the Christian Wrestling Federation and the Fight 4 Christ . . . → Read More: Jesus Ween – Once again some Christians try to take the fun out of something popular.]]>

Don't you want to be a Weener too?

I’ve ranted before on how there always seems to be a group of Christians out there who feel the best way to recruit new believers is by trying to co-opt something popular and slapping Jesus all over it. There’s the Christian Wrestling Federation and the Fight 4 Christ Mixed Martial Arts leagues,  various video games (Halo, World of Warcraft, etc.) have been adopted for Christian outreach efforts or recreated to be Christian like Guitar Praise (Christian Guitar Hero), Heavy Metal and Rock and Roll music, and so on.

Of course their biggest successes in this regard are Christmas, formally known as Yuletide or any of a number of other pagan solstice celebrations, and Easter, co-opted for similar reasons. And now they’re after Halloween, considered by many Christians to be a reprehensible and evil holiday. So what do you get when you Christianize Halloween?

You get Jesus Ween!

JesusWeen is a God-given vision which was born as an answer to the cry of many every October 31st. The dictionary meaning of Ween is to expect, believe or think. We therefore see October 31st as a day to expect a gift of salvation and re-think receiving Jesus.

Every year, the world and its system have a day set aside (October 31st) to celebrate ungodly images and evil characters while Christians all over the world participate, hide or just stay quiet on Halloween day. Being a day that is widely acceptable to solicit and knock on doors, God inspired us to encourage Christians to use this day as an opportunity to spread the gospel. The days of hiding are over and we choose to take a stand for Jesus. “Evil prevails when good people do nothing”. JesusWeen is expected to become the most effective Christian outreach day ever and that is why we also call it” World Evangelism Day”.

And to think we used to be annoyed by that one neighbor who handed out Chick Tracts instead of candy.

Here’s the thing that cracks me up about this whole effort: Halloween is already the result of a previous attempt by Christians to usurp the Celtic festival of Samhain by replacing it with All Saints’ Day (both on November 1st), a day to celebrate saints and martyrs established by Pope Gregory III. The evening before was labeled All Hallow’s Eve which eventually got shortened to Halloween.

The holiday here in America took quite awhile to catch on. In the early colonial period of New England it wasn’t particularly popular due to it being mostly a Catholic invention and the colonials being largely Protestant. It didn’t go nation-wide until the second half of the 19th century with the huge influx of immigrants from Europe, especially the Irish, spreading the tradition. The early 20th century is roughly when it morphed into the mostly secular holiday we know it as today and the baby boom of the 1950′s is when the modern traditions really solidified, but all throughout it’s history here it has changed with some traditions (e.g. trick or treating) falling out of favor only to make a comeback later.

Halloween is the one Christian holiday that got away from them and took on a life of its own. Which, of course, doesn’t sit well with a some folks who should really get over it. The thing they should be asking themselves is if this is a battle really worth fighting?

Halloween as it exists today in America is really pretty tame. None of the kids dressed up as witches or demons or ghosts are doing so because they think these caricatures are something to emulate. It’s a night to dress up and get free candy for no other reason than you took the time to get made up and yell out a catchphrase. Dressing up as a demon is not going to turn your kids into Satan worshipers any more than playing Cops and Robbers will make your kids into mass-murdering bank robbers. (I don’t know about you guys, but the car-chase shoot-outs we imagined as we fled the bank would’ve left a helluva lot of collateral damage in its wake.) You could argue that with the childhood obesity rates these days there is real harm in giving kids a shitload of candy to eat, but spiritually there’s not much about the holiday that’ll put their souls at risk.

But hey, if you really have a problem with the holiday then don’t participate. There’s two more major Christian holidays that haven’t been totally secularized yet that you can look forward to. Both of which are arguably a more suitable platform for evangelizing from if you really feel you must do so. Ask yourselves: Do you really think that a kid who’s expecting to get a couple pieces of candy from you is really going to be all that excited when you drop a Bible in his sack? What about the parents that aren’t Christian and really don’t want you evangelizing to their kids? Do you think this will make you more or less popular with your neighbors? Do you enjoy having massive amounts of toilet paper hanging from the trees in your yard?

And, lastly, do you really think “Jesus Ween” was a good branding choice?