Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Thinking... I know it can be dangerous!

First let me say, we don't have cable. We have a digital antenna that helps us get local stations and things like ION and then we have a Roku box that we use with Netflix. Since our home at our previous address hasn't sold this is one of the cut backs we made to make ends meet. (That's another post all together. Maybe later...)

So that being said, we were wasting about 30 minutes before bed the other night and DD wanted to watch this "movie" that was on our Roku called, "The Spirit of Christmas". I had no idea what it was but knew it was short and kid friendly so we turned it on for her. It was an 1950 TV special. The announcer introduced the program and told us it was brought to us by the telephone company. They were in a switchboard room filled with operators. It was pretty neat. The program included "Twas the Night Before Christmas". They had a couple dressed as Clement Clarke Moore and his wife as he was preparing to write the poem. Then as he sat down and began writing everything turned into puppets. It was really pretty cute. My daughter laughed at it. They had music playing with it and the puppets danced. It was great.

Then the next part of the program, which the announcer called "the greatest story ever told" the nativity. He referred to it this way several times. As I was sitting there listening to it and watching it I couldn't help but wonder what had changed since then. What has happened to TV these days? Where is this kind of programming? This was on just a regular channel, remember it was in 1950 so they didn't have religious channels, or music channels, or science channels, or news channels. Sometimes I wish it was like that again. Sometimes I think we have information overload! It's just too much to choose from.

Anyway, back to my point. I know that not everyone is a Christian but is it really so bad for us to be able to celebrate it? The kids and I were watching a movie the other night and again it was an older one and they were putting on their school program and they were singing a hymn or something churchy and I thought to myself, "I just don't understand. Why is it that this is tabo now?" I'm sure that I went to school with kids who weren't Christians in fact I remember some who weren't and yet we always sang Christmasy songs and that I know of, no one complained and everyone enjoyed it. I'm not saying that the Christmas side is ALL we should do or see. I actually remember learning about the Menorah and so on too. Why can't we just learn about each others religions? Why do we have to push it out all together?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to force the world to think like me. In fact I enjoy learning about other religions. I enjoy seeing the differences and similarities. I enjoy worshiping in my way and seeing others worship in their way. It is all very intriguing to me. I just don't understand how this all came about. Oh, I know that it started with that woman and all that but really I just don't understand it. Something had to have happened to her to make her do this. Who was she mad at and why? No, I don't need a history lesson, I'm just saying....

And, yes, I'm a democrat and yes, I believe we all have our rights and I don't want to infringe on anyone elses but it seems to me that mine are being infringed on a lot lately and I'm just tired of it. I miss the way it was. I know a lot of things have gotten better and I'm grateful for that but there a lot of the old things that I miss. I guess the holidays make me nostalgic.

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