To Be Thankful Again

Its eight days until Christmas and this year we have a lot to look back on and a lot to be thankful for. This year we faced a lot of hardships, not only as a country but as a species. We face the 2012 election with high hopes and expectations and thankfully our man came out the winner. We faced the Benghazi issue and tried to remember all those who died during the war. We even face the threat of extinction in the next few days, as many people believe that the world will end on the twenty first of December (BTW: all of those who made a bet with me that the world would end owe me fifty dollars. That may not b the amount we agreed on, but it’s the amount I will come searching for).

We even saw great triumphs as we saw a man sky dive from the edge of space, the first photos of DNA were taken, water was found on Mars, and many others.  

But we saw some great losses as well this year, and the shooting that occurred in Connecticut last Friday was the most tragic. Twenty school children ages six to seven and six other adults were slain by Adam Lanza, a 20 year old troubled young man who many people claim was highly intelligent.

This tragic event all happened just days before Christmas and everyone in America is heart broken. We think about how these people won’t be able to spend the holidays with their children and how this will affect them in the long term. There will not be a Christmas for the families of twenty children and six adults in Newtown Connecticut. There may never be another Christmas again for some of those families now, and yet we get to go on celebrating, yet being mindful and thankful for what we have.

What’s a real shame is that according to reports this Adam Lanza kid was actually pretty intelligent; however there were also many reports that he was pretty weird and prone to outbursts. He attended college at the age of sixteen at Western Connecticut State University where he got a 3.26 GPA. Many described him as introverted and weird but overall a nice kid. I guess it’s true what they say; it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.

So how does this happen? What happens to a kid like this to make him steal his mother’s firearms and murder her then force his way into an elementary school to kill more innocent children before taking his own life? What was going through the mind of Adam Lanza days or even months before he committed this horrible act? Did he plan this, and if he did then why? What connection did he have to that school other than the fact that he attended that school? Was he out for revenge of some kind? Did he feel like he was slighted as a child when he attended? Such a brash series of choices he made…did he know he would end up offing himself in the end? Was he trying to copycat some other school shooting event?

This kind of thinking will drive you crazy. I honestly don’t want to care about why he did it because in the end the act was still committed and lives were not only lost but destroyed.

So this Christmas, while you sit warm in your house with your family, just remember those who we lost and the Christmases that will not be for some people this year. This affects our children too, so hug’em if ya got’em.

(How will you be celebrating Christmas this year after the terrible events that occurred in Connecticut this year? Post your thoughts below.)

SOURCES:

YAHOO! NEWS ARTICLE

The Santa Lie

Remember when you were young and Santa was real? Oh my, those were magical times weren’t they? When we were kids and we were told that a magical man dressed in red would deliver us gifts from the North Pole? We waited anxiously the night before, barely able to get to sleep, and sometimes you would be in bed thinking, “maybe I can catch him.” But alas you never could, unless of course you got out of bed only to find your presents being left under the tree by your parents. What awful timing.

I was in the third grade when I found out that Santa wasn’t real, despite having been told that he wasn’t real in the second grade from a cynical bully. I stilled believed that Santa was real for a whole other year before making the realization that he wasn’t. I don’t remember how I came to the realization; it just sort of popped into my mind from what I remember. I was in my fathers car and he was taking me to school when I just said, “Santa isn’t real, is he?” My father said, “No, he is not.” I then replied, “Neither is the tooth fairy, or the Easter bunny?” My father came clean on them too.

It wasn’t until I became older that I became cynical of the idea of Santa. When I was younger I thought everyone knew he wasn’t real because I did and I told my friend who at the time stilled believed. My reaction to finding out that he still believed was very minimal. I just felt like, “Oh well he is fake, can’t be mad at me for telling him the truth.” Since then I have changed my tone a bit as I wouldn’t want to make a child not believe if they do believe. I just felt like I wouldn’t tell my kids a lie that a man dressed in red with magic powers come down our chimney once a year to leave gifts behind and eat your baked goods and drink your dairy products.

But I guess I had it all wrong really. After talking to a lot of people about I started to think what my childhood would be like if I never believed in Santa. I guess we tell the Santa lie to our children because we want their first years to be magical. The world can be a very scary, tough place, so why have it start out like that? Magic doesn’t exist and the happy ending never really comes true but would you really want to have your child experience something like that before they are emotionally capable of handling such ugly facts? Shouldn’t the beginning of their lives be full of magic and mystery? Sure once they find out the truth it will be a sad day, but for who? For the child growing up to realize the truths of the world or for the parents who are realizing that their kids are starting to understand that life isn’t always a happy place.

 I’m guessing it may be harder for parents then children. For humans there are certain things we realize when we are growing up and the truth isn’t as hard for kids to accept as you would think. I think it’s harder on the adults because they realize that their child is started to connect the dots to discover that magic doesn’t exist and they are growing up and not the little cute kid they used to be who got excited at the thought of Santa coming to bring them presents.

So in closing I think I would tell my kids about Santa when I have them. I think they deserve some magic in their lives even if the magic isn’t real. As long as they think it is real then it is real to them and that’s all that matters. When they discover the truth I don’t think they will take it as hard as I will.

The Christmas Wars

It’s Christmas time again, my favorite time of the year. Something about Christmas just brings out the joy and happiness and makes me want to get together with friends and celebrate by handing out gifts, drinking booze and wishing them a new hopefully prosperous new year. The house being decorated and a tree located in my living room filling my house up with the aroma of pine brings back old memories of Christmas’ s passed now and reminds me of the thrill and joy I had each night before and after Santa’s visit.

Even as an atheist, or rather as a person who doesn’t believe in religions, I love this holiday season. But does that mean I celebrate it as a time to worship or celebrate the birth of a deity? No, not at all I just want to celebrate the great year I had and try to stay happy as the amount of daylight we receive is incredibly reduced placing me in what seems like a dark and dreary world where things all around me are dying.

It becomes more and more funny to me when I look around and see Christians getting upset over the fact the Christmas is celebrated by secular people who don’t say ‘merry Christmas’ to you when you walk by but instead say ‘happy holidays’. To Christians this is an attack on their religion and their holiday, and to them we are ‘taking the Christ out of Christmas’.

This month I have prepared a few blogs (not very long ones) dedicated to Christmas, each one a different idea or thought on a single or few aspects of the holiday. This first one is about Christmas and how it is not a Christian holiday and the conservative right-wingers in this nation (and around the globe) are very wrong in believing and perpetuating the idea that there is an all out war being waged against Christmas.

The idea of Christmas, like many other ideas, came from the Pagans who celebrated this period of time as a period of death and rebirth. As we approach winter the ancient pagans noticed something (what must have been something scary for them back then) about the sun; it got lower and lower as it got closer to winter. By December 21^st their worst fear was realized when the sun peaked at it’s lowest point during the entire year, making it looks as if the sun was in fact dying and the earth would be plunged into this eternal darkness. But three days after the 21^st the ancient humans noticed that the sun started to get higher in sky, thus saving them from certain doom. To them this was the birth of the sun and their salvation, for the sun would remove the darkness and provide warmth and give plants the necessary nutrients to grow and product fruit, etc.

Throughout history this prototype for Christmas has been used by many other cultures, and now it is being most popularized by the recent solar savior, Jesus Christ (Christ isn’t his name by the way, Christ is a title meaning anointed one). In fact the holiday wasn’t even recognized by the church until circa 300AD. People like to also say that America is a Christian nation but the holiday wasn’t adopted as a national holiday until 1870. You would think that a Christian founded nation would have made that a priority.

You see, this is not a Christian holiday, nor is this a Christian nation. It’s an ancient human tradition and you don’t have to be a Christian to celebrate it. The idea of celebrating around the winter, to pray for better times, to surround yourself with friends an loved ones is actually a very ancient notion that predates Christianity and any other organized religion (although a bunch of ancient people worshiping the sun may in fact be interpreted as the first organized religion).

But now that we are all adults now and can make our own choices why are we being chastised for it? I don’t believe in the Christian god or any god for that matter, but I like to celebrate this time of darkness and death with friends in hope for light and prosperity. How am I launching a war against Christmas by not worshipping Christ? I haven’t gone into your church and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa this isn’t right. Stop all of this right now or I’ll complain.” I think you have a right to believe in whatever god you believe in, worship whatever holiday you want, so why are you attacking me because I don’t believe in Christmas yet I celebrate this season with my friends?  

You may be reading this and be a Christian. If so I want to say that first off I really don’t care if I have offended you. People from your church offend me on a daily basis so if what I say annoys you then comment and debate this with me. You most likely think that since God has been around even before Christianity was an idea to humans that that must constitute for something. You may think, “Well the reason he is so happy and filled with joy is because its God’s doing and he just doesn’t realize that. Because Jesus is in all of our hearts and he puts that feeling there.” That just isn’t so. Since I was a kid we celebrated Christmas and I didn’t even know it was a religious holiday until I got older. It wasn’t Jesus’ magical powers making me feel joyous and wonderful on Christmas. It was being around my family and friends and knowing that the sun may never start going up again and we all may be on constant darkness, but at least we all have each other. And I don’t think that we can’t have that feeling unless there is some god to make it happen.