|
|
Old Saint Nick’s got Bourbon breath
It’s so cold you could catch your death
A cop sold me some crystal meth
It’s a merry f**kin’ Christmas
Everything’s so Criss-muss-ee
The streets are twinkling with frozen pee
My priest just sat on Santa’s knee
It’s a merry f**kin’ Christmas
All the kids go to bed each night
To dream what Santa brings ‘em
Unless they’re Jewish or Muslim
Or some other gyp religion
Crappy toys flyin’ off the shelves
Midgets dressed up to look like elves
Spread good cheer or burn in Hell
It’s a merry f**kin’ Christmas
Cracklin’ fires to keep me warm
And my collection of Asian porn
Cradle my bells and work my horn
It’s a keep-on-truckin’
Last-year-suckin’
Midget-chuckin’
Slap-the-puckin’
How-much-wood-could-a-woodchuck-chuckin’
Merrrry fuuuuckin’ Christmaaaaaas
— Dennis Leary
Christmas is an awfulness that compares favorably with the great London plague and fire of 1665-66. No one escapes the feelings of mortal dejection, inadequacy, frustration, loneliness, guilt and pity. No one escapes feeling used by society, by religion, by friends and relatives, by the utterly artifical responsiblities of extending false greetings, sending banal cards, reciprocating unsolicated gifts, going to dull parties, putting up with acquaintances and family one avoids all the rest of the year…in short, of being brutalized by a “holiday” that has lost virtually all of its original meanings and has become a merchandising ploy for color tv set manufacturers and ravagers of the woodlands.
– Harlan Ellison
Why Dec. 25th? Church settled on ‘Christ’s birth day’ centuries later
By Joseph Kelly
12/13/2006
The gospel accounts of the Nativity (Matthew 1-2, Luke 1-2) do not say what day Jesus was born. There were attempts to calculate the day, but by the third century Christians realized this was impossible.
So they tried other ways to determine a date for Jesus’ birth:
- Many people believed the world was re-created on the first day of spring (March 25 of the Julian calendar followed in ancient Rome). How appropriate, then, for the world’s redeemer to become incarnate that day!
- Other scholars argued that Jesus became incarnate not at his birth but at his conception. If Jesus was conceived March 25, he would be born nine months later, Dec. 25.
This date didn’t catch on immediately, especially in the Eastern Mediterranean region where people believed Jesus was born Jan. 6. But in the West Dec. 25 had much appeal. Why?
Many Romans venerated the sun, whose birthday was Dec. 25, or a virility god named Mithra with the same birthday. Also, the Romans observed a raucous celebration called Saturnalia Dec. 17-23. Thus, Dec. 25 offered a date with a good theological basis that also would counter several pagan holidays.
Although we don’t know the final steps, in 336 the church at Rome officially observed the “birth day of Christ” Dec. 25. This tradition spread. But what about Jan. 6? The church decided to use that day for Jesus’ manifestation to the whole world, symbolized by the Magi.
The Magi were three kings, Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar, right? Not really. Matthew’s Gospel speaks only of Magi; it doesn’t call them kings, or say they rode camels or give their names.
The early Christians looked to the Old Testament for prophecies relating to Jesus. One prophecy in Isaiah said that foreigners traveling on camels would bring gold and frankincense to the Messiah, while a psalm spoke of kings coming.
Naturally the Christians interpreted the Messiah as Jesus, and the only foreigners who brought him gifts were the Magi. So by the third century we find Christians speaking of the Magi as kings riding camels.
How many Magi were there?
A great Egyptian scholar, Origen, found a Genesis passage in which three pagans honored the Hebrew patriarch Isaac. Origen said the three symbolized the Magi, but didn’t say why.
Names for the Magi do not appear until the sixth century; all are fictional. “Balthasar” may be a corruption of Belteshazzar, a Babylonian king in the Book of Daniel. “Melchior” may be a combination of two Hebrew words for “king” and “light.” And “Caspar” may derive from the name of an Indian king converted by early Christians.
These names first appear in the West in a sixth-century mosaic in the church of St. Apollinaris Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy.
The date for Christmas may have been settled by the fourth century, but legends of the Magi grew throughout the Middle Ages.
—
Joseph Kelly, the chair of the Department of Religious Studies at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, is the author of The Origins of Christmas.
(from the I will not ruin the humor by nitpicking dept.)
OK - this has been around since, like forever, but I’m posting it anyway.
Consider the following:
- No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
- There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.
- Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).
This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.
This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
- The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight.
On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that ‘flying reindeer’ (see point 1.) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine.
We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh — to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison — this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
- 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance — this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each.
In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second.
Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. In conclusion — If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.
– Spy Magazine, January 1990
I’ve come to the conclusion that Santa Claus, as portrayed in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, is a jerk.
Here’s why:
- Santa’s elves don’t even have a dental plan. One has to wonder in what other ways Santa is exploiting the elves.
- At the very least, Santa tolerates Rudolph’s exclusion from the reindeer games by all of the other reindeer.
- At the first sign of bad weather, Santa’s reaction is to cancel his Christmas ride - why not simply postpone it?
- When it becomes clear Rudolph’s red nose may be useful, Santa lets him join his sleigh team. Why didn’t Santa just accept him unconditionally?
- Santa goes ahead and gives away a bunch of crappy toys nobody wanted in the first place. If anyone wanted those toys, they wouldn’t have been on the Island of Misfit Toys.
While eight flying reindeer are a hard pill to swallow, our Christmas
story remains relatively simple. Santa lives with his wife in a remote
polar village and spends one night a year traveling around the world. If
you’re bad, he leaves you coal. If you’re good and live in America,
he’ll give you just about anything you want. We tell our children to be
good and send them off to bed, where they lie awake, anticipating their
great bounty. A Dutch parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate,
telling his children, “Listen, you might want to pack a few of your
things together before you go to bed. The former bishop from Turkey will
be coming along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy
in your shoes, they might stuff you in a sack and take you to Spain, or
they might just pretend to kick you. We don’t know for sure, but we want
you to be prepared.” This is the reward for living in Holland. As a
child you get to hear this story, and as an adult you get to turn around
and repeat it. As an added bonus, the government has thrown in legalized
drugs and prostitution–so what’s not to love about being Dutch?
– David Sedaris (Esquire, December 2002)
Every time you say “Happy Holidays,” an angel gets AIDS.
– Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
The Korean War must have been fun.
|
|
