Christmas By The Numbers 2
This is “the second day of Christmas (related blogs) and we’re not giving you any turtle doves which are. Of course a breed of pigeons and pigeons are generally full of well…you know… We are, however, giving a brief follow-up as eluded to in the previous entry. Oh and before we dive into the snow bank on this, please understand that the irreverence here is not a slam on the faith anyone chooses to practice. Maybe we all might lighten up enough to observe that almost all facts (miracle related or not) taken out of context can seem odd. For example, it is one thing to believe in the fact that a lot of people. Could feel the spirit of giving gifts that the receiver has no clue they are about to get or where those gifts come from. If a certain portion of the population wants to claim it’s an elf-powered assembly line…then we say judge not lest ye be judged. Conversely, if we point out some of the magical theories we all promote maybe we can allow for a little fun in the lives of most of us okay?
Alright… back as suggested in the last entry.. to the festival of lights. Now one day’s worth of oil in the. Temple burned for eight days worth of time. Now one modern fluorescent vapor bulb burns at least five and sometimes ten times longer than a bulb from 30 years ago… and one set of 8 (another 8?) Tiny reindeer—sometimes nine when the fog rolls in—pulls a roof-landing sleigh around the world in one night… is it at least reasonable to think we’ve got a belief in the hope of alternative fuels and forms of transportation? Remember not more than a handful of centuries ago it took weeks to cross the ocean (including sending messages).. now it’s a long afternoon flight or a 3 second text to cross the pond. So let’s be a little open-minded….and more important.. a lot open-hearted shall we?
Getting back to holidays… so during the festival of lights there is the “dreidel spinning.” By the next yule I promise to learn more facts behind this tradition because as of now spinning is associated with choosing letters for a glitzy hangman show and hoping not to land on bankrupt. So it seems like one spins the top and can win coins or candy, however can you let a fun sized Milkyway ride hoping to double down for a Snickers? Or can the spin land on “left hand red” and send three teen-aged bodies falling in a fortunate pile on a plastic floor covering? It seems like the dreidel life is full of events with uncertain outcomes that will require some adjustments.
Now… in the entry after this we are going to explore the candy cane, however let’s take a few lines to think about the tree. The tree wasn’t really a Christmas thing here in the United States up until about 150 years ago. It is sort of surprising that the whole thing ever caught on. Did it happen this way? Hey Frank? Yes Milly…Frank it’s going to get cold in here the next couple of weeks can you bring in more wood? “Look Milly … How much freakin’ wood do you think we are going to need? “Never mind Milly I’ve got it.” So frank being a smart Alec goes out and cuts down a smallish pine tree and throws it into the corner till it dries out enough to burn? Now maybe it didn’t happen that way and yet I haven’t seen a Fox News report on how we have arrived at a place where we bring in a dead tree or use a plastic tree as a focal point while we sit on our couch eating candy out of a sock.
The Peace and Joy slant on the lights and the tree boils down to this… Maybe anything that provides a place where we gather together to share gifts together whether we are eating potato pancakes or marshmallow filled residents of the NorthPole, is in fact worth exploring for at least one more year… and now tomorrow..because there aren’t many shopping days left…we’ll be back with the checkered (no wait striped) history of the candy cane…
No comments:
Post a Comment