A Few Words About Tonight and Tomorrow

[howeird]

I'll be on the Amtrak Coast Starlight tonight and most of tomorrow, which will take me out of the realm of Christmas. I'll regret missing some of the football games, but not the inane commercials, of which there will be about twice as many as there are during the regular season.

My favorite two Christmases were 1975 and 76, when I was living in Buddhist Thailand. It's all messed up now, with malls going ape with the winter decorations, but back then there was only one department store in the country which catered to farangs, and they didn't do Christmas.

Many of my readers know the truth about the winter holiday, which goes something like this:

- Jesus was born around April or May. It's very easy to trace this based on the description in the New Testament of which holiday Joseph and Mary went to Jerusalem for, and matching it with the Old Testament's very detailed descriptions of tithing holidays. Bethlehem, for those who joined us late, is a suburb of Jerusalem.

- It may snow in Jerusalem every 20 years or so. Bethlehem, which is down the hill a ways, gets even less snow.

- Fir trees are not indigenous to Bethlehem

- There may have been fireplaces in Bethlehem in Jesus' day, but they were for baking bread, Bethlehem is Hebrew for "house of bread". No yule logs...

- The Messiah is supposed to being world peace. 2,000 years after Jesus was born, there has always been a war going on somewhere.

I could go on for days, but I'm only posting this to establish my basic bah humbugging. Comments disabled - you can post your own views on your own sites.