Provocative Planet

Thanksgiving & Holidays Fun

"The Great Pumpkin Died for Our Sins, Charlie Brown" - Linus

Ho Ho Ho, it's that time of year again. Time for the home stretch, where three major holidays exist in close proximity, each with different and multiple meanings. Pick your poison, it's going to be a turkey-eating christ-loving present-unwrapping firework-watching booze-fest no matter how you slice it! Suicides will be up... temperatures will be down. Start your engines, open your hearts, wallets, and palettes, and enjoy.

But before you go off setting up shop in your home and plotting more lies to your offspring about the fat jolly one, ponder your own childhood for a moment. I got to thinking why is there a Santa Claus? Why is he so accepted? You tell your kids to never lie to you, and yet you get elaborate schemes (sometimes with half-eaten cookies and such) to ensure their belief in the easter bunny, tooth fairy, santa clause, the maternity stork, etc. Call it a vision, but I can predict that in the future, "Fisher Price CSI Kits" will be given to kids as gifts and they will be able to perform DNA testing on half-eaten cookie samples, which will reveal the truth in shocking fashion! (Also, I wouldn't encourage letting them swab your bedroom with that kit, or you'll be explaining more than you bargained for!) Anyway, these are just the widely used fibs... I'm sure that each parent explains a multitude of things to their kids in as few words as possible as to not have to deal with the lengthy problems that come with telling the truth. All I know is that it would appear to be more family-like and heartfelt if parents would just tell their kids that they loved them so much and would like to buy them some nice things that they may have wanted for the holidays. Gifts coming from my parents instead of some mystical figure would seem more bonding from parent to child, don't you think? Probably not... my devil's advocate paragraph could surely be disputed by hypocrites all around.

Jerry Falwell has a crusade of his own nowadays. Join the "Friend of Foe" campaign.. to fight for Christmas. Forget the countless retailers who manage to spread jingle jolly sale advertisements with obvious exploitation of the holiday season. No, he's not after them. His group promises to file suit against anyone who spreads what it sees as misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces. He'll boycott, sue, or threaten to kill (oh wait, that's Pat Robertson... Sorry, I get all those self-righteous faith-exploitist snake-oil bastards confused!) any groups that subvert Christmas. Now, I can handle boycotts. That's actually my preferred method of public disapproval. Peaceful, safe, and legal. But legal action is unwarranted. He wants people to "draw a line in the sand and resist bullying tactics of the ACLU and others who intimidate school and government officials by spreading misinformation about Christmas." Ignorance and narrow-mindedness are to blame for people who can't see that the ACLU is fighting for the rights of EVERYONE equally, not just one group, race, or sex. The ACLU is right in that we should keep church and state separate. That includes schools where people of different faiths , race, and sex congregate to learn FACTS, not conjecture.. no matter how widely believed it is. "People are free to worship in their homes and their houses of worship and if they rent out a hall," said the ACLU's Jeremy Gunn, national director of the group's Freedom of Religion and Belief program. "That they're doing this in the name of religion is very, very sad," Gunn said. "It would be one thing if they're talking about consumerism of the season or something, but they're not." When Christians believe that the world should be catering to their unique viewpoints on religious studies while shunning anyone who believes otherwise, they are no better than radical muslims.

Now before you go on calling me anti-christian or Lucifer. I will say that I do back the Catholic church on certain things. A pregnant (and unmarried) teacher is suing a Catholic school for firing her. Call it discrimination or what not, but my stance is clear... The school is a privately funded non-public educational center who should have the right to dismiss any employee for any reason they wish. On top of that, she had agreed to the rules layed out in the employee handbook that says that each teacher must "convey the teachings of the Catholic faith by his or her words and actions." Had this been a public school, i'd say that foul play had occurred.

Speaking of having a christmas wishlist... it appears that liberals, democrats, the UN, and Iraqi leaders all have something in common.. they want the US Government & Military to set dates for leaving Iraq. Unfortunately, the one's against the plan for leaving Iraq are your president, his administration, most republicans, oil tycoons, and haliburton contractors.