You Can't Make Mistakes

I am never celebrating Christmas again.

This is the second year in a row in which I have spent the Christmas holiday essentially by myself. Last year, I was still sort of laid-up from having just had surgery, and didn’t feel like traveling. This year, of course, I am in Egypt.

Now—so that we are all on the same page—I don’t celebrate Christmas anyway. Years ago, as a child, I decided that I didn’t understand why we celebrated this holiday. My family isn’t religious at all, and I saw this a religious holiday. If you don’t think it is a religious holiday, go to a midnight mass. The other side of the holiday—the secular expression of consumerist glee—disgusts me. Not to mention that this holiday provides everyone who does celebrate it with a month-long nightmare of stress, fighting with relatives who think that they know better than you, generally rude and angry public behavior, and more!

When given all these data:

1. Non-religious family
2. Disgust for consumerism and wasteful behavior
3. Stress, patronizing family, hateful, anti-social behavior = negatives

I conclude:

• I shouldn’t partake in the celebration of this Holiday, because I will never be in the “spirit,” as they say.

I feel like this is a totally reasonable conclusion to reach. However, this holiday will be enforced regardless. I did partake in its celebration while my Grandmother was still alive, because it was her favorite holiday. However, after her passing two years ago, I have felt no obligation whatsoever. It feels great.

Last year I practically forgot. Being drugged up from surgery addles your brain a little bit. I was reminded because my parents and grandfather came to see me and we went out for Jewish Christmas. It was nice for a change. I had delicious Kosher spring rolls and mixed vegetables in spicy black bean sauce.

This year I did forget and had to be reminded that it was Christmas the next day by a Muslim friend. I had mused that it seemed really busy as we walked by a Coptic church.

We were on our way to a Chinese restaurant, where they played Christmas carols on a maniacal loop. I had fried rice and spicy seafood soup.

Ahhhh.

I hope that everyone enjoyed Christmas. I sure did.

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Yah, elves really exist. Seriously.

In this report on NPR’s All Things Considered this week, we learned that elves exist—in Iceland at least.

Icelandic Elves – All Things Considered

Merry Christmas, if you’re into that. Otherwise, I hope that everyone is having a nice Tuesday: I know I am.

I am not going to actually write today. Rather, I will just refer you all on to an interesting article by one of my favorite bloggers, Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic series.

Link to “Why We Should All Become Muslims”

Enjoy.

Again, as I attempt to get back into my own groove after months and months of being a one-track monkey, I will be writing relatively frequently. So, that said, please bear with me as I bore even myself with the minutiae and details of my daily wheelings and dealings.

Things are coming together for this fall’s adventure to Alexandria. Each day I get a little more anxious and a little more prepared for the trip. It is going to be possibly the most academically beneficial experience of my career so far. Not to mention fun. I really look forward to being there again. I feel at home there, even though it might not always be the easiest place to live for an American student—or anyone for that matter. Plus, this site will afford me an opportunity to broadcast what I am doing and to share my experiences with everyone on this side of the ocean. I will also possibly be launching a podcast on this site to further augment that sharing, so stay tuned.

In other news, I—along with Kalamazoo author W. Donta Andrews and the Rev. Ericka Parkinson, Associate Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Richland—will be appearing on Just Friendly Advice with Shalini on Kalamazoo TalkRadio 1360AM this Sunday at 3:00pm. They are doing a series on modern spirituality and I get to go talk about what I actually know something about for a change. Very exciting. It is the first step to my ultimate goal to be a public radio expert on religion someday. I have always wanted to be one of the folks that the Diane Rehm Show or Talk of the Nation staff calls up to have appear on the show to talk about religion, Islam, or whatever. I can’t wait.

For now, however, there are errands to run and there is work to be done on other fronts.

Earlier today, I felt it inappropriate to write about Jerry Falwell’s death because of the nature of the feelings and thoughts that I have on his life and career. Then, I started to hear more and more folks on the radio (NPR) talking about his life an career, lauding him for being a great, compassionate, caring man who loved his family and his savior.

I changed my mind.

Jerry Falwell was a mean-spirited bigot. He may have been a kind man when he was baptizing your grandson or consoling you after your mother’s death, and you can cry about his untimely death on the radio all you want, but he was not a good man when he claimed: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’” with regard to the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001. He was also not a good man when he pointed out that the AIDS epidemic was an example of “God’s wrath against homosexuals.” When he said these things and many others, he was a hateful, cruel bigot, and his death is only as untimely as any other hateful, cruel man.

Thankfully, the leaders of movements like the one that Falwell started are usually the charismatic, motivated individuals involved and the followers are not so energetic in their bigotry. They need someone to listen to, someone to look up to, someone to follow. Now that their leader is gone, perhaps those who supported Falwell’s mission will get distracted by some other hateful discipline and move on to that instead.

While it would also be shameful to celebrate the death of any man, it has been said that we should never lament the death of an old man, because he has lived a full life. We certainly shouldn’t lament the death of a man like Falwell. Rather, we should take pity on him, because if he truly believed in the doctrine which he purported to, then it is most likely that he is burning in the hell that he promised would be the inevitable home of so many good people the world over.

So, here’s to you Jerry, keep that fire stoked. I am going to go have a nice cold beer in your memory.