Is this incredibly tacky, or am I just being overly critical?
You are invited to a birthday party. Each year, Hobart businessman Nino Bruscemi gives a birthday party for Jesus on the first Saturday in December.
At noon Saturday at the gazebo in back of Hobart City Hall, there will be a parade with about 100 children in angel costumes, a live manger scene and guest singers. Santa Claus will pass out birthday cake.
Bruscemi started these birthday parties about 25 years ago as a way to remind everyone that Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birth and not the commercialized frenzy.
Yessir, Santa Claus passing out the birthday cake. That'll really let people know the holiday is about Jesus and not the "commercialized frenzy." The story also notes that the upcoming Hobart mayor's Christmas brunch for senior citizens, during which "Hobart Councilman Jerry Herzog will perform a magic show." Watch him make your money disappear!
Comments
Leo:
The short answer is:
Yes...and NO.
I didn't even KNOW they HAD cake in those days...
I woulda been ALL over that...lol.
I thought back then, it was all about the whole UNLEAVENED bread thing...
(can't really put candles on THAT now, can you?)
Heckuva magic act tossed in to boot...suh-weet!
(fleecing the populace...how novel)
For his NEXT trick, he'll try to get BLOOD from a ROCK.
I'm just sayin'...I mean if Jesus can get WINE from water...right?
Good luck with that.
And, you know, nobody has the foggiest idea of when Jesus' birthday actually was. Early Christians apparently picked the winter solstice time period to piggy back on pagan solstice celebrations (similar to Easter coinciding with vernal equinox fertility/rebirth traditions.)
Doug is right. And he beat me to it, dang it.
Besides, if Christmas really is the celebration of Jesus' birthday, why not have a birthday party? Isn't that, basically, what Christmas is?
Here at the littlejohn household, we always manage to set something on fire, what with the 2,000 or so candles.
Lighten up, Leo. Christmas has always been tacky. Have some eggnog and open some presents.
If you want to get technical, there is no convincing evidence that Jesus ever even existed. And I have my doubts about Santa.
But that won't stop me from having a good time.
Happy holidays! (I'm talking to you, Glenn Beck.)
Littlejohn sez: "If you want to get technical, there is no convincing evidence that Jesus ever even existed."
Uhhh, well that would certainly make for the "mother" of all conspiracy theories now wouldn't it? A world-wide hoax for thousands of years requiring the complicit cooperation of billions of people and millions of pages of erroneously written history.
Sure, that makes sense.
Tim, Tim, Tim. So many of us believe what we learned at our mother's knee, but laugh at other people's comparable beliefs. More than a billion people believe Mohammed flew to Heaven aboard a winged horse. Is that a "conspiracy theory"?
Billions of Hindus and Buddhists believe they will be reborn on Earth, possibly as a cow. Do you reject that belief?
Why is it that one's own religion is the only one that seems obviously true?
I doubt that you've ever read any serious biblical criticism, but you might start with "Age of Reason," written by Founding Father(TM) and patriot Thomas Paine. It's in the library.
Then for a more modern view, you might move on to "Did Jesus Exist?" by Professor G.A. Wells. Dr. Wells is no crank, and I'm going to make a wild guess he knows a little more about the subject than either one of us.
You won't find that in the library, but you may borrow my copy.
Trust me, there is no consensus among the experts that Jesus existed. There is no account of Jesus written by anyone who knew him, or even lived in the first century. There is no detailed account outside the Bible itself. Jesus, if he existed, wrote nothing that we're aware of. Was he illiterate? All accounts of him are second-hand at best.
As H.L. Mencken wrote: "One man's religion is another man's belly laugh."
Consider all the various religions that you reject as ridiculous before assuming there's nothing questionable about your own. Do you worship Zeus? Why not?