10,000 Reasons to Doubt the Fish has an interesting story about a neighborhood where people decorate their homes with lights this time of year. One neighbor decorated his yard with a lighted pentacle. His fundie neighbor went ballistic.
Fundy: "I'm so tired of you people, thinking you can just hijack the Lord's holiday for your own agenda. Don't you get it? This is about the birth of JESUS! That's what it's for! I don't need your satanic agenda shoved down my throat when you should be showing respect for Christ!"
If we want to have a discussion about one religion shoving its agenda down everyone else's throat, I know a good place we could start. (And if the fundie thinks that his neighbor erecting a light display on his own property is "shoving" the neighbor's religious agenda down the fundie's throat, whoa boy, I wonder what he'd think about living in a world where the Pagan holiday of Yule was a national holiday?)
It's funny, because one of the few things I enjoy about this holiday is the colored lights, although, good conservationist that I try to be, I don't put any up because they require electricity, which pollutes the air and emits greenhouse gases. (I know. I know. Grinch.) But I think the lighted pentacle is a good idea for the same reason that I thought it was a good idea for my friend R. to send home Yule flyers in school children's backpacks. It forces the fundies to realize that they're NOT the only ones celebrating a holiday at this time of year.
Image found here.
4 comments:
Hecate, i have driven them crazy with Religion of the Day, where i have told the stories of Mithras, Appolonius of tyre, etc without the names and made them 'guess who'.
And i have had a great old time talking seriously to them (as per me buddy Mike's suggestion) about how their Nativity/creche/manger scene is a "graven image' and an 'idol'.
Problem is, if you are scholarly, you can parse out all the pagan borrowings from Xmas and realize that w/o the pagan, there's no 'there' there. But you cannot get enough time to force-learn that to another - especially an unwilling other.
but something that has been blowing my mind for two years now - all along KY 300, the road i live (way) off of, there are 3-4 light displays of 5-pointed stars....one of them set up on the hillside to be a good 20+ YARDS across. Not Pagan, Xtian. Given that, i know not how this guy got the static in the first place.....
in indonesian countries, people celebrate christmas by put up giant illuminated stars, just like in your graphic, minus the circle.
-jello
It might be interesting to do some research intyo just how the pentagram aka pentacle became associated with Satanism. There is no question that Hollywood horror movies are largely responsible for popularizing this association but I do wonder where it all began. The fact of the matter is the pentagram symbol is found alongside the hexagram aka 'Star of David' symbol in ancient Jewish synagogues and I don't doubt that numerous examples of use of the pentagram could be found in many Christian churches if one went looking for them. Don't Christians often use a five-pointed star to represent the 'Star of Bethlehem' and place pentagram stars at the top of their Christmas trees? I have said it before but it bears repeating. Any Christian who is concerned about the pentagram being a Satanic symbol ought to be concerned that 50 pentagrams appear in the upper left quadrant of the 'Stars and Stripes' and the pentagram is used to identify U.S. Army vehicles and U.S. Air Force fighter jets and bombers etc.
I want all those Christians to stop putting up those pagan Christmas trees, right now. Oh, and quit getting their kids gifts, too, because obviously, that's not appropriate. Donate all that money to the church, instead, since the gifts are supposed to go to Christ, after all.
Idiots.
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