A rerun from Christmases past from my other blog:
I promise new posts will be coming….
In the meantime, if you need a little bit of the Ghosts of Christmas past to help you appreciate your Holidays, here are two of my Christmas posts from last year:
Tag Archives: Holidays
A Temple Terrace Christmas | My Southern Gothic Life
Filed under Uncategorized
The Worst Christmas Song Ever
Every year I dread it….
I know no matter how hard I try, there is no avoiding it…
At some point, this song will be played on the radio and it will stick in my head all day.
Today was the day….
I can’t tell you how much I hate this song. It’s like someone set out to write the worst Christmas song ever…
Manipulative, full of cheap sentiment, leveraging religion, children and Mothers….
I TRULY HATE THIS SONG!!!
This song just brings out the worst in me.
I start getting catty and snarky.
I start wondering..
“Is he really a budding cross-dresser and trying to get some man to buy the shoes for himself?”
” Is Moma meeting Jesus or some man named Jesus (pronounced: Hay-Sus) later tonight?”
” I bet they are really hooker heels…”
“His Mother is dying and he goes shopping? Has to be a little gay boy….”
I detest cheap sentiment and this song just reeks of of it….
It suffocates you in it….
I am past due for making a list of people I currently believe are going to hell and the people who wrote and sing this song will be on the next one….
Along with the radio stations that play it…..
And now you probably can’t get it out of your head either and are cursing me for that!
Filed under Holidays, Uncategorized
Workers Lose Thanksgiving As Stores Extend Black Friday Shopping
This just infuriates me….
Let me qualify my comments by saying that, even though I do consider recreational shopping a legitimate sport, there are limits. It does seem we should be able to stop for a couple of days a year…
Hell would freeze over before I would leave my house to join this fracas. It’s always struck me as a kind of like Christians vs Lions in the Roman Coliseum type thing. But there is nothing Christian about this…And I’m sure these shoppers probably see themselves more as gladiators.
This is the height of inconsideration. These poor workers, who aren’t making any money to begin with, will have to give up their Thanksgiving so Americans can buy more crap they don’t need so stores can make more money to pay a few top executives ridiculous salaries for failing…
I always thought Thanksgiving was a day to stop and spend time with people you care about and reflect on your blessings…and eat a lot of things you really shouldn’t eat.
Not a day to run over some stranger for a DVD player or TV you could probably order just as cheaply, or cheaper, on-line….
Get a grip, people…..
Come join my Black Friday Boycott…..
From ThinkProgress.org:
In the race for holiday season profits, stores are moving up their hours for the biggest shopping day of the year to cut into the Thanksgiving holiday. One of the more aggressive companies is Kmart, which will keep its stores open at 6 a.m on Thanksgiving, although Macy’s, Kohl’s, and others have also bumped up their hours.
Kmart and its defenders point to the fact that no one is being forced to work on Thanksgiving and stores will be staffed mostly with seasonal hires. However, the reality is that few workers have much of an option when it comes to holiday scheduling, both because the U.S. lacks benefits like guaranteed paid vacation and the reliance on a temp or part-time workforce is growing.
via Workers Lose Thanksgiving As Stores Extend Black Friday Shopping | ThinkProgress.
Filed under Entertainment, Holidays
Merry Christmas, I mean Easter, from Maria Shriver
I’m glad to know there is someone taking longer to take down their Christmas Lights than us. We didn’t get the chance, due to weather and schedules to take ours down until late January.
I don’t quite see Maria Shriver hanging her own lights, so she really has no excuse- unless she’s too cheap to pay the Help to take them down….
At this point, she might as well just leave them up and turn them all year. Maybe that is her intent…..
Maybe she is trying to be too politically correct and just considers them Holiday Lights and means to use them for all Holidays all year long…..
From TMZ.com:
On the 94th day of Christmas … MARIA SHRIVER STILL HASN’T TAKEN DOWN HER CHRISTMAS LIGHTS … and her Brentwood neighbors are starting to go all Ebenezer Scrooge … TMZ has learned.
Sources in Maria’s super fancy Brentwood community tell TMZ, the neighbors have been clucking about Maria’s ultra-bright Xmas light display for weeks now … because Christmas is long over, and the lights on the trees around her property have become an eyesore.
In fact, TMZ shot video (below) on Maria’s street Tuesday night … and her house was the ONLY ONE still sportin’ the Clark Griswold treatment.
We’re told the neighbors haven’t approached Maria directly yet because they like her and don’t want to hurt her feelings … but in typical passive aggressive neighborly fashion, they’re hoping word will make its way back to her.
If not … she can just keep the decorations up until December — after all, it’s only another 271 days until Santa comes back to town.
via Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Celebrity News | TMZ.com.
Filed under Entertainment, Holidays, Uncategorized
Fireworks Blow Off Part Of Man’s Genitals
Today seems to be weird news day….
I hate fireworks. Probably because my Mother always screamed about the possibility of them blowing off your fingers…
Somehow, she didn’t cover this risk…..
Back in those days, well-breed Southern Ladies did not discuss penises, so that was probably the reason.
But this would have really been a deterrent!
From Huffington Post:
Let this be a warning to those who take firework safety lightly.
Authorities told MLive that a Michigan man blew off part of his genitals with fireworks last Monday.
Assistant Chief Terry Flynn of the Grand Traverse Metro Fire Department told The Huffington Post that his men responded to the scene and discovered the unidentified man “bleeding profusely from the genitals.”
Flynn said the man lit a mortar and, when it didn’t go off, he walked towards it only to have it blow up between his legs.
Flynn declined to give the man’s name or release his medical condition, citing medical privacy laws.
Filed under Entertainment
A Little Easter Diversity Lesson….
I’m always fascinated by the Pagan roots of most of the Christian Holidays as well as how aspects of these holidays are shared by different religions.
I can’t decide if this was the cause of or the result of me being a history major in college….
Anyway, here is today’s lesson…
A little information to ponder from ReligiousTolerance.org:
Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a consort, Attis, who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. Attis was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period MAR-22 to MAR-25.
Gerald L. Berry, author of “Religions of the World,” wrote:
“About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill …Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection.” 3
Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians:
“… used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation.”
Many religious historians and liberal theologians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus’ life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus’ life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternative explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. 4 Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value with no connection to Jesus. They regard Jesus’ death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.
Wiccans and other modern-day Neopagans continue to celebrate the Spring Equinox as one of their 8 yearly Sabbats (holy days of celebration). Near the Mediterranean, this is a time of sprouting of the summer’s crop; farther north, it is the time for seeding. Their rituals at the Spring Equinox are related primarily to the fertility of the crops and to the balance of the day and night times. In those places where Wiccans can safely celebrate the Sabbat out of doors without threat of religious persecution, they often incorporate a bonfire into their rituals, jumping over the dying embers is believed to assure fertility of people and crops.
Another interesting article in The Guradian (UK) by Heather McDougall:
All the fun things about Easter are pagan. Bunnies are a leftover from the pagan festival of Eostre, a great northern goddess whose symbol was a rabbit or hare. Exchange of eggs is an ancient custom, celebrated by many cultures. Hot cross buns are very ancient too. In the Old Testament we see the Israelites baking sweet buns for an idol, and religious leaders trying to put a stop to it. The early church clergy also tried to put a stop to sacred cakes being baked at Easter. In the end, in the face of defiant cake-baking pagan women, they gave up and blessed the cake instead.
Easter is essentially a pagan festival which is celebrated with cards, gifts and novelty Easter products, because it’s fun and the ancient symbolism still works. It’s always struck me that the power of nature and the longer days are often most felt in modern towns and cities, where we set off to work without putting on our car headlights and when our alarm clock goes off in the mornings, the streetlights outside are not still on because of the darkness.
What better way to celebrate, than to bite the head off the bunny goddess, go to a “sunrise service”, get yourself a sticky-footed fluffy chick and stick it on your TV, whilst helping yourself to a hefty slice of pagan simnel cake? Happy Easter everyone!
via The pagan roots of Easter | Heather McDougall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Easter Parade
Easter always brings out the bitch in me….
It’s a strange holiday for me…
Part of me resents that the whole world- at least in the USA and at my gym- stops for a purely Christian holiday when we should be living in a multi-cultural world. I mean, it’s not a federal holiday, but you still can’t escape the secular recognition of a Christian holiday. Or go to the gym or get a decent chinese meal.
Even though Passover starts the same day as Good Friday this year, it’s all about Easter.
To me, Easter was always about shopping and new outfits. As far as I knew, Jesus died so you could shop at Belk-Leggetts.
Part of my problem may be the fact that I was raised a Social Christian. When I watch “GCB”, aka “Good Christian Bitches”, on television, it reminds me of the church where I grew up. Admittedly, our Church was not in Dallas and not as wealthy, but there seem to be two kinds of Southern Baptist Churches: Crazy Right Wing Christian Almost Snake Handlers and Social.
Ours was Social Christian. At our Church, most of the Easter Sunday Service was spent looking over your shoulder to see who was wearing what and hearing things like “She wore that hat last year.” or “Poor thing, I bet she made that…”
We were not well trained in liturgy or theology, but then, neither were our ministers….
That’s why I spent most of my time in the Church balcony reading the collective works of Jacqueline Susann.
I realized the depth of my ignorance this year when we went to Maundy Thursday services.
We went to services at a “modern” church where it was a totally musical service. Admittedly, I was concerned before we went.
I live in fear of “Praise Bands”. I think one day God or the Goddess will strike them all down for creating boring, pedestrian, self-indulgent music.
I was pleasantly surprised. The music at this Church used old English hymns with new lyrics. It was actually very nice. I love anything Olde English and it also had a kind of American mountain feel that made me appreciate it in a sociological/anthropological way.
I was also very much aware of how much my Baptist Christian upbringing was lacking. I didn’t have any idea what Maundy Thursday meant and the music was about the Stations of the Cross. For all I knew, the Stations of the Cross meant Jesus took the train to Calvary….
This type of service was a revelation for me. Usually, if I go to a Church it’s to hear a classical music program and wear nice clothes….
If I’m going to subject myself to Christianity, I generally want it to be High Church…
But that may be baggage I carry…
I’m convinced Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell ruined Christianity for several generations. Thanks to them, I can’t escape the feeling that when I go to Church, I’m going undercover in the enemy camp.
But when I do go to a new church, I am amazed at my ignorance…
I figure the Baptist didn’t want us to know too much or think about it all too much. That’s why they are generally Republicans.
That makes me think I need to look into this a little more…
I know more about Passover than I know about Easter…
And I don’t think that’s a bad thing….
I think we all need to stop, think and study what others are celebrating and thinking about on these holidays….
And I think we also need to recognize the pagan holidays they usurped….
I want us to be able to comfortably settle on the acceptance that all these holidays have values and that we chose what to take from each of them…
I can’t accept closing doors and minds to celebrate only one way of life….
I want to try to appreciate all at the views, beliefs and seasons we are celebrating….
And still go shopping….
Filed under Holidays
Happy Valentine’s Day!
If you haven’t gotten your loved one a gift yet, here is some timeless advice from the Goddess of Valentine’s Day…
Filed under Holidays, Movies, Uncategorized
Lost in the 21st Century 
New Years Resolutions-2012
I don’t normally make New Years Resolutions. It’s just too mainstream….
I mean, if everyone else is doing it, I normally refuse to do so.
Same with Popular Culture. I refuse to watch or do whatever is “in” now.
I prefer to sit on the sidelines and do my own thing. I am a Libra….
But this year, after not making New Years Resolutions for more than 20 years, I will break precedent.
That means I may have a few more than the average person….
Here are my resolutions for 2012:
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Filed under Holidays, Scott's Commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged as Holidays, New Years, New Years Eve, Resolutions