"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas....And We Ain't Kiddin', Man...."

Christmas is for kids.

We've all heard it. Some of us have said it.

All of us can, to a point, agree with it.

That's not, though, the same thing as acting like children.

I've been watching with, alternately, amusement and aggravation for the past few weeks as folks on Facebook have been batting the badminton birdie of Xmas back and forth.

For the most part, I've stayed out of it.

Mostly because, I'm one of those people who just naturally piss other people off with my opinions.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But somewhere around the age of eighteen months, right after I learned to pee in the pot and not in my pants, I learned that politics and religion are, at the very least, the two conversational topics that would never result in a finding of common ground.

And I'm not known for spending a lot of time puttering around the common ground part of the playpen anyway.

Meanwhile, there ain't another time of year when the tender tootsies of religion get tickled and/or pricked more than November 30 through December 26th.

So, I just MYOB'd and focused my holiday energies on more complex and intricate questions related to the season.

Like "...why would anyone want four calling birds, let alone seven swans a swimming..?"

As usual, though, it was only a matter of time before my "faux" self imposed exile was ended and the temptation to jump into the fray was too strong to resist.

This year's clarion call came in capital letters.

A chat thread on FB amongst FB friends blew on the little flame that never dies at this time of the year and it flared up into a fair to middlin sized firestorm.

"Merry CHRISTmas..." it said, amongst other things it said.

The other things are really academic because even the heathen among us can guess what the gist of the jingle was.

Three things in this life that must occur, in no particular order, for the season celebrating the birth of Jesus to officially begin:

Halloween has to have, give or take three days either way, just happened.

Major department stores have to take down the swimwear displays and put up the holiday displays.

And somebody needs to pull the "Keep CHRIST in your Christmas" trigger.

Check. Check.

And bang.

A few days back, I wrote a piece on the "Jesus is the reason..." thing, so I'm not gonna wander down that path of ramble here.

I'll just share two things.

The first is a quick synopsis of the remarkable Christmas of 1914. The Christmas that saw troops literally at war with each other stop and celebrate the season together.


The first truce began on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1914, when German troops began decorating the area around their trenches in the region of Ypres, Belgium, for Christmas. They began by placing candles on trees, then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols, most notably Stille Nacht (Silent Night). The British troops in the trenches across from them responded by singing English carols.

The two sides continued by shouting Christmas greetings to each other. Soon thereafter, there were calls for visits across the "No Man's Land" where small gifts, were exchanged, such as whisky, jam, cigarettes, and chocolate. The artillery in the region fell silent that night. The truce also allowed a breathing spell where recently-fallen soldiers could be brought back behind their lines by burial parties. Proper burials took place as soldiers from both sides mourned the dead together and paid their respects.

In many sectors, the truce lasted through Christmas night, but in some areas, it continued until New Year's Day.

The second of the two gifts I bring (pa rum pa pum pum) is the two cents I threw into the FB chat thread after watching some folks bitchslapping each other around as regards proudly professing one's belief in Jesus, keeping Jesus the focus at this time of year, etc.

And, by the way, I was really committed to continue the MYOB approach until I saw the word I personally find totally inappropriate to use at a time of peace and love and good will.

Petition.

A wise man once said that we all, in our own ways, agree in our hearts about where it is we all want to go in the next life...and we've been hating and killing each other for generations arguing over the best way to get there....I read part of Marianne's point to be that there is an excruciatingly fine line between sharing one's personal beliefs with others, in a spirit of joy, with the hope of showing others how that spirit of joy feels... and expressing those beliefs in a judgemental way, as in, I believe in Jesus Christ and you better get your head on right, too, fool....the Jesus that I envision is one who beckons...not one who hustles or coerces or kidnaps....and "disciples" who hold the "yet to see the light" in contempt are not only missing the point, but they're through the looking glass...being a self serving Christian is not the same thing as serving Christ....show a man how to fish...don't stone him or her because he or she isn't yet convinced that fishing is the best option.......

I'm a grown man with grown children who have children.

I don't live in denial or harbor any illusions.

I don't believe in Santa Claus. That stopped at about age 10.

I've never stopped believing in the spirit of what Santa Claus represents.

I've made no secret about the fact that my relationship with Jesus is a work in progress.

But I've never denied, nor rejected, the spirit of what Jesus Christ represents.

What I don't know could fill libraries.

What I do know is that in 1914, people who were literally killing one another put down their guns and shared common ground.

It's Christmas morning, 2009 as I write this, so I've missed the cutoff for this year's list...

But if I can make a wish for next Christmas, it will be this.

That, if at no other time during the year, we can all put down our guns and share the common ground.

Christmas is, after all, only one day. Twenty four hours. Not a long time to ask that we all rise above our shortcomings and, more importantly, forgive those who trespass around us.

We can all go back to acting like children first thing Dec 26th.

"When Television Was Black and White...But Mostly White..."

Racism is an ugly, profane quality in any human being.

It's ugliness is obvious to anyone with a brain that functions as the warranty guarantees.

The profanity comes in knowing that racism is not genetic, a physical pre-disposition, nor is it the tragic result of some malfunction of our physicality, a disease or virus.

In other words, it can't be "inherited".

But it can most surely be passed down.

Find a copy of the song "Carefully Taught" from "South Pacific" and give it a listen.

Back story bordering on editorializing aside, here's what I'm thinking today.

I am not a racist.

I grew up in a home that did not perpetuate the stereotypes or prejuidices that provide a fully functional petrie dish of hatred/stupidity that almost inevitably spawns a contempt for one race, creed, color or another.

I do not consider myself superior in any way to anyone.

And I think, as I have thought all of my life, that Amos and Andy is some funny shit.

Check out Wilkipedia for the full history, but, in a nutshell...

The program was created by two white guys and was a big hit in the pre-TV heyday of radio.

In the early 50's, with the arrival of television, the show, like many other popular radio shows, made the transition from little box to big box, where it became even more popular than it had been to date.

Sometime during the early to mid 60's when the civil rights movement was burning white hot (pun noted and conceded), the decision was made, in one of those offices where those kinds of decisions are made, that the program was offensive, perpetuated racial stereotypes and needed to be banned from the airwaves.

It was.

Banned, that is.

There is a particularly well done doc on the subject "Amos and Andy-Anatomy of A Controversy". You can find it on You Tube. Check it out.

Since that day in the 60's, despite the evolution of television into a medium with thousands of channels and, literally, twenty four hours of programming per day, the program remains available only online and/or for sale in various incarnations at places like Amazon or Ebay.

I think the time has come to let Amos, Andy, Kingfish, Sapphire, Mama, et al out of the box and, well, back on the box.

Naysayers will center the saying of their nays by offering that the show was/is lightweight, slapstick, even juvenile in its humor and/or presentation.

Damn right.

But no more so than at least half the movies Will Ferrell has done.

And as far as that insidious "RS" factor is concerned?

Racial stereotype?

Illusion.

Do some/most of the black people in this series (all black, by the way, which if you stretch the point makes it a landmark historical event given the times in which it appeared) act like idiots and/or clowns?

Uh, yeah.

Pop in your copy of Eddie Murphy's "The Nutty Professor" and enjoy, once again, the five minutes of farting at dinner that makes us all laugh without fail.

Or just about everything and anything that Tyler Perry produces.

Juvenile? Idiotic? Buffoonish?

Ya, you betcha.

The common thread in all of this is that Eddie and Tyler, et al, live and work and create their characters, stories, etc in a time in our history when most of us see the humor in the juvenile, idiotic, buffoonish behavior.

But we don't see the color.

They're not black idiots.

They're just idiots.

Amos and Andy was banned in a time when blacks were trying to get a large chunk of white America to wake the fuck up and realize that we are all, underneath it all, created equal.

And they didn't need the additional burden of easing the concerns of whites who feared that letting blacks sit next to them at the lunch counters would result in having to put up with that buffoon who was "part of da bruthahood of da Mystic Knights of da Sea..."

But that was a long time ago.

And a world that isn't offended by farting Klumps or jive talkin Medeas isn't likely to take to the streets in protest of the buffoonish behavior of Andrew H. Brown.

If they do, so be it.

That doesn't make them white idiots.

It just makes them idiots.