{"id":576,"date":"2005-12-14T04:31:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-14T04:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=576"},"modified":"2005-12-14T04:31:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-14T04:31:00","slug":"576","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=576","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

I still call them “Christmas cards”<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was new to the Pagan movement, I was militant about saying “Yule” instead of “Christmas.” I managed to train one of my sisters to employ the same usage when speaking to me; the other one never really noticed.<\/p>\n

This year, we are enjoying this hyped-up controversy over the “war against Christmas<\/a>,” in which elements of the nation’s religious majority strike the pose of persecuted victims.<\/p>\n

One voice of reason is Ed Quillen, the only Denver Post<\/em> op-ed columnist who lives outside the Denver metroplex. In today’s column<\/a> he writes:<\/p>\n

The impulse not to say “Merry Christmas” comes from good intentions. The theory is that non-Christians might feel offended. I’ve yet to encounter a Jew, Buddhist, Wiccan, Unitarian, atheist, agnostic or humanist who does feel offended by the sentiment, but then again, I live in the boondocks, and people might be more easily offended in civilized metropolitan areas where they have diversity trainers.<\/em> [Link may expire.]<\/p>\n

Considering that I might be one of the Wiccans that he has in mind, I couldn’t agree more. I’m not offended. If I drop a few dollars in the Salvation Army kettle, I expect the bellringer to say “Merry Christmas.” After all, the Salvation Army<\/a> is in fact a Christian denomination.<\/p>\n

It is a little funny that President and Mrs. Bush are criticized<\/a> for sending out cards saying “Happy Holidays.” I’m not on their mailing list, but I did receive my own mass-produced card today from Senator Ken Salazar<\/a>, and guess what it said: “Happy Holidays.” But then he’s a Democraft, so he must be an evil secularist, some on the far right would say. The president, on the other hand, is supposed to wave the banner of Christ, if you listen to some of his more extreme supporters.<\/p>\n

Although I myself only send cards that don’t say “Christmas” but rather “Season’s Greetings” or the like, I still find myself calling down to where M. is sitting at her desk, “Did you use up all the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation<\/a> Christmas cards?”<\/p>\n

Maybe that’s syncretism or bricolage or something. May the Great Elk bring you Yule stockings of Christmas joy. That’s how we do it in the boondocks.<\/p>\n

Tags: Wicca<\/a>, Paganism<\/a>, War against Christmas<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I still call them “Christmas cards” When I was new to the Pagan movement, I was militant about saying “Yule” instead of “Christmas.” I managed to train one of my sisters to employ the same usage when speaking to me; the other one never really noticed. This year, we are enjoying this hyped-up controversy over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-576","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12059,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12059","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":0},"title":"Christmas, When the Veil is Thin","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In December (yeah, this is late) I was tapped by a public library in Oregon to give an hour's Zoom lecture on the \"Pagan origins of Christmas.\" I did it, but that format is still pretty weird. How many people are watching? Three? Thirty? Three hundred? And are they awake?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ancestors\"","block_context":{"text":"ancestors","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ancestors"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Christmas-eve-lantern-1-238x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":330,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=330","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":1},"title":"\"Those poor pagans\" A meandering\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Those poor pagans\" A meandering Denver Post opinion column has a lot of Colorado Pagans upset, mainly because Paganism is invoked rather pointlessly just to color yet another rant about secular government and religious observances. Some sample comments from the e-mail lists: --He responded to me also, just to say,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1273,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1273","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":2},"title":"One Night during the Cold War","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 23, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I was walking around today in Manitou Springs, once a spa-resort town, located in the foothills west of Colorado Springs. You should know that there are no springs in Colorado Springs--real-estate developers lied in the 1870s too. The springs are in Manitou. But Colorado Springs has several important military installations:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":337,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=337","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":3},"title":"Seasonal confusion, hard feelings, and\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Seasonal confusion, hard feelings, and so on. Evidently the struggle over who gets to define the solsticial holiday continues. The Bureaucratic Mind, confronted with competing claims, tends to retreat to blanket negativity . . . and is then accused of promoting \"secularism.\" Punditry ranges from ramblings about \"druids\" to curmudgeonly\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3622,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3622","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":4},"title":"Last Yuletide News Bits","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 This is your brain. This is your brain on Christmas. \u2022 \"How the Lawyers Stole Winter\"\u00a0 \u2014 are we raising kids who can't cope? No, it's not Yule-related, directly. Indirectly, yes, I would argue. You have to embrace all of the wheel. \u2022 No matter how \"imagistic\" it may\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"childhood\"","block_context":{"text":"childhood","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=childhood"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/SantaPickuptruck1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7671,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7671","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":5},"title":"The Complicated History of Santa Claus and American Christmas","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 25, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Ah, Christmas traditions. So complicated, so misunderstood. Take Santa Claus, American version. Not a survival of colonial New Amsterdam except in a literary sense, he was pretty well invented by the prolific writer Washington Irving in the early 19th century. And he was connected with Dec. 6th, St. Nicholas' Day,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Yule\"","block_context":{"text":"Yule","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=yule"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}