Folks around here have started decorating for Christmas. I, being who I am, have hung pictures of Scrooge and the Grinch on the outside wall of my cube. I’ve also added a picture of a Santa Claus hat with a big diagonal slash through it.
This morning I added a stuffed Santa Claus that makes Scrooge like comments when he is squeezed. He has a Christmas tree with a slash through it as part of his outfit. Some anonymous person hung this on my cube wall last year.
My boss got a call at home last night complaining about my decorations. My boss declined to identify the caller. The caller told my boss, “You know that David is not of our belief.”
“What belief is that?”
“Well… he does not believe in Santa Claus”
To which my boss replied, “You are 40 some years old and you believe in Santa Claus?”
“Well… I… he is just not of our belief.”
Again my boss asked, “So you believe in Santa Claus.”
Apparently that ended the conversation.
Of course, receiving a call at home, he initially thought there was trouble at work.
He did tell me this morning that he was going to bring in some coal to add to my collection.
In this person’s defense I do not make any bones about being an agnostic trending toward atheism. But Santa Claus and Christmas is really about commercialism. It has very little to do with religion anymore for the vast majority of folks. Yeah, some lip service is paid to it, but the retailers have pretty much co-opted it. On the positive side Christmas can be about family and connections and that part is good.
Bah, Humbug.
You know a bundle of sticks works just as well as coal. You could also remind those ‘others’ that the Christmas tree is a druid tradition.
Good Point…
YOU ARE RIGHT SANTA CLAUS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CHRISTMAS, AND CHRISTMAS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CHRIS.
Go David!
I saw a picture last year of a plastic Santa on the edge a roof with a string of white lights coming from him to the ground. It looked like he was taking a leak off the roof. I thought that would go good on my roof and run it to my seven foot tall cross in my yard.
Santa Claus pissing on the cross.
My way of protesting the commercialization of this holiday. I bounced it off two of my accountability guys and they both thought it would be a bad idea.
Being financially challenged has brought me closer to the spirit of this day of remembrance of the birth of Christ. And for that I am thankful.
All right, David! Some traffic on your website. You are now 100,000th in popularity on the internet.
P. S. – People take themselves too seriously (including me too many times).
Yes, the commercialization of Christmas has pretty much ruined it, but at least they are starting to say merry christmas again instead of happy holidays. Yes, I yearn for the olden times when you could count the major holidays on one hand, but then the money grubbers kept coming up with new “holidays” “special occasions to keep digging deep into your pockets and like a bunch of lemmings the masses followed them right into the stores and the poor house.
++
Not buying stuff I do NOT need.
After all I survived so far without it.
SGB
You can never explain to others your “different” beliefs, thoughts, “traditions”, or (simply put) differences.
We tend NOT to see beyond our own beliefs. We rarely, if ever, take others’ beliefs into consideration, unless those beliefs are negative (and then we have something to disagree about!).
If all of our different “wrappings” (reference to Xmas gifts) were taken out of the equation, and we were simply HUMANS, we could treat each other respectively.
You’ve got to give respect to recieve respect.