-

Holidayism


Over at the Posthuman Blues blog [link] Mac Tonnies mentioned that he wasn't a big fan of Xmas. A few comments from his readers also reflected this POV.

One of the commenters, Paul Kimball, who was probably making an observation in jest, caused me to write a knee-jerk reaction comment. Anyway, for those who don't frequent Mac's blog, here's my observation today on this so-called Holiest of Holidays.


= = =


Racism. Sexism.

Well, I love Christmas you grinches and Scrooges.

And let me coin a new term: holidayism.

If someone enjoys the holidays, that's fine by me. But don't criticize anyone who doesn't share your enthusiasm. Individuals are entitled to like, not like, hate, or love anything they want -- assuming that they're not infringing upon someone else's rights.

This Grinch-Scrooge label, even in jest, smacks of one thing I hate the most: conformism. It's not funny or annoying: just tiresome.

Ray


= = =


Comments via email: rayxr@yahoo.com

Comments

Paul Kimball said…
Ray:

If someone enjoys the holidays, that's fine by me. But don't criticize anyone who doesn't share your enthusiasm. Individuals are entitled to like, not like, hate, or love anything they want -- assuming that they're not infringing upon someone else's rights.

And my response would be - this is about as banal as it gets, i.e. well d'uh.

Further...

When you write:

But don't criticize anyone who doesn't share your enthusiasm.

That can easily be flipped around the other way - "don't criticize anyone who doesn't share your lack of enthusiam", which, to my mind, was exactly what you guys were indulging in, in the usual Scrooge-ist way (see how easy it is to coin a term).

I say these things not to be mean, but to provide... er, the other side of the truth. ;-)

Your faithful reader,
Paul
11:38 PM
Ray Palm (Ray X) said…
Paul:

Do you get tired of hearing the same narrow-minded labels? OK, maybe you haven't been called an "UFO kook" or "flying saucer nut" that often. Me, I'm tired of the Grinch/Scrooge label. I've heard it too many times. (That and the comment, "Oh, you're Jewish?)

Go back to the comments section at Mac's blog under his post about Xmas and you'll notice the word "depression" mentioned by a couple of people. Depression has been described as anger turned inward. Obviously I'm not one to keep my anger inside.

You mentioned at Mac's blog you like the holiday shopping hustle and bustle. Not all of us are Type A personalities; I've been in enough rat races, thank you. But what I think is a "rat race" is your recreational activity. So please enjoy; me, I avoid the malls until the hustle and bustle is over.

You also stated that you thought we "guys" at Mac' blog were criticizing your enthusiasm. I don't think that's true. In my case, I was only criticizing your comment that implied (even in jest) people who don't like Xmas easily fall into the shallow Grinch/Scrooge stereotype. People who don't like - or even hate - the holidays are not all evil or petty or narrow-minded. It's like the term "UFO kook" - it implies that anyone interested in ufology is crazy or stupid or both. Of course, there are a few "kooks" out there in the UFO field; but we shouldn't allow any fundamentalist skeptic barnbrush us all with that label.

If you enjoy Xmas, don't let me or anyone else who doesn't care about it ruin it for you. (Gee, that sounds banal, but I want to make that point, even though it might smack of "duhness.”) But keep in mind there are individuals who are honest enough not to put on a false smile just to appease the public at large. And let me make this observation which I can't prove but is probably true: a lot of people go along with the crowd, they might bitch a little and feel the same way as I do about Xmas, but in the end they would rather fit in and pretend instead of expressing their true feelings.

I wish more people wouldn't be afraid of saying what they feel. In the process they might find out they really aren't alone. And after a while Xmas might be regarded in proper perspective.

If you notice, in the comments section at Mac's blog, you were the only pro-Xmas voice. A rare event: I was in the majority. In fact, it's the only thing that made me happy this holiday season. [G]

Speaking From Another Side,

Ray
5:50 AM
Doug said…
No one over the age of about 12 really likes Xmas. From 13 - 18 one kinda puts up with it for material gain. Once one is a full-fledged adult it's a pain in the keester. However, many adults really want to pretend it doesn't suck, and that relies on everyone being "in the spirit" to maintain the delusion. It's weakness when you get down to it.

But the lights are pretty, I will admit.
2:17 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
Jim Moseley: Flying Saucer Farewell I'll miss my late night phone conversations with Jim Moseley. Despite trying to track how he was doing in his fight against cancer I didn't hear the bad news until yesterday. Jim died on November 16, 2012. One of my regrets that I never had the opportunity to visit him in Key West and spend a day with him. Even though we never met in person, he was a friend. I mainly knew Jim as a voice on the phone -- and, of course, as the writer-editor of the zine Saucer Smear (and also as the author of postcards he sent to me marked PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL). Jim was around at the dawn of ufology -- or as the topic was called way back then, flying saucers. Parts of the field he couldn't accept, personalities way out there without anything real to back them up. For example, George Adamski. Jim was critical of "ufoology." Through his writings Jim made friends and enemies. His humor and tell-it-like-it-is attitude didn...
Read more
-
Image
Jesus Photo Jesus Christ died in 33 CE. French physicist Joseph Nicephore Niepce created the first known permanent photograph on metal in 1826 CE. Ergo, there are no photos of the living Jesus. But not when it comes to supernaturalism, especially of the New Age kind. After reading the non-fiction work When Prophecy Fails , I wanted to find out more about the people described in the book. Their names had been changed but with some Googling I discovered that the actual appellation of “Mrs. Marion Keech,” the leader of the doomsday flying saucer cult in the 1950s, was Dorothy Martin. After her prophecies failed in Chicago, Dorothy Martin moved on but kept channeling Jesus Christ – or the being whose real name, she believed, was Sananda. She ended up in South America, living in the Yucatan, with a new name: Sister Thedra. Jesus (AKA the Ascended Master Sananda) appeared to Thedra and cured her of terminal cancer. To prove that she hadn’t been dreaming, Jesus appeared in tangible form ...
Read more
-
Image
But It Probably Wasn't The Ghost Of An Angry Santa So what was banging away at night on the roof where Steve Volk lived when he was young? Was a ghost terrifying his family, trying to hack its way it, the same entity that yanked the covers off the beds of his sisters? I don't know. Volk describes the incident in his non-fiction book, FRINGE-OLOGY: How I Tried To Explain Away the Unexplainable —And Couldn't . As a reporter he couldn't write the typical joke article that laughed off the supernatural as the crazy delusions of fringe types. While tagging along with ghost-hunters, he could see that while many cases had earthly explanations, there were a few incidents that couldn't be dismissed so easily. Unlike hard-core skeptics who create scientific justifications to dispel any paranormal ideas, Volk thinks some things are simply unexplainable. Volk says that the supernatural and the paranormal are not the same. The supernatural is “of or relating to an order of ex...
Read more