a big vacuous pile of red and green treacle

When I was a kid, Christmas was always my favorite time of year. Perhaps that (coupled with the anticipation of snowfall) is why I consistently claimed winter was my favorite season. Obviously, I loved getting presents, but what I loved most was that feeling of warmth and family (and hot chocolate) that always put me in a little emotional cocoon.

Now that I am an adult (apparently I am), I have to deal with the other side of Christmas. The dark side, if you will. Without the spin of the Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas record or the feeling of complete contentment from a stocking full of baseball cards there to comfort me, shopping and over-eating and Hallmark movies and gift budgets and company Christmas luncheons and television commercials and the lack of snow can start to weigh down on me in a big vacuous pile of red and green treacle (a new word I just learned - look it up!).

But it doesn't have to be that way. Christmas actually does mean something. Now that I am adult, I can understand that. Perhaps someday I can enjoy the season on a spiritual and emotional level without reverting completely to the spiritual and emotional state of a five-year-old. Yes, someday I will figure it out. I'll just sit on my rocking chair, drink my cider, praise God for sending his Son, and listen to Audrey as she fiddles up some foot-stompin' tunes.

Until then, I'm just going to love this article written by Cathleen Falsani, the Religion Columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Gap Ads Reduce Holidays To Treacly Meaninglessness

There are only 35 shopping days left until Christmas. I'm keenly aware of this primarily because of those overcaffeinated Glee-show-choir-in-red-white-and-blue-alpine-sweaters-and-ear-flaps-making-high school-cheerleading-pyramids Gap ads that started running about a week ago.

You know, the ones where they chant a little ditty titled, annoyingly, "Happy Dowhateveryouwannukah."

"Go Christmas! Go Hannukah! Go Kwanzaa! Go Solstice!" the exceptionally good-looking, multicultural, skinny-jeans-clad cheerbots shout.

"You 86 the rules, you do what just feels right," they cheer, before entreating us to "do whatever [we] wannukkah" this ambiguous winter holiday season.

Their jangly dance number ends by wishing us "a cheery night."

How festive, you say?

Meh. Notsomuch.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those paranoid religious folks who believes that there is an organized effort to take the Christ out of Christmas orchestrated by a clandestine cabal of secular humanist movie moguls, feminists and vegetarians who plot their nefarious attack on family values (and the Baby Jesus) in triannual meetings at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows, to paraphrase a brilliant line from the movie "So I Married an Axe Murderer."

I am no proponent of the alleged "War on Christmas."

And I'm all for inclusiveness and multiculturalism, as much as I am for inexpensive cotton T-shirts and reindeer-themed boxer shorts.

But this year's Gap "holiday" ad campaign just rubs me the wrong way.

In its effort, I would surmise, to be inclusive and inoffensive, the Gap has made the mortal advertising (and cultural) error of being twee. Not to mention spiritually facile.

While they all occur around the same time of the year, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa and Winter Solstice hardly carry the same spiritual weight.

Christmas celebrates the miraculous birth of a savior come to redeem the world. Hannukah, while also commemorating a miracle (a one-day supply of oil for a lamp in the temple lasted eight days) and the victory of the Jewish rebellion over the Hellenistic rulers of Jerusalem, it is a minor holiday, not to be compared to the High Holidays of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur or the major festivals, Sukkot and Passover.

Kwanzaa is a nonreligious festival, begun in 1966 and celebrated nearly exclusively in the United States, which celebrates African-American culture and values. Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year and is for many pagans and neo-pagans the symbolic and spiritual rebirth of the year.

While each of these holidays, for lack of a more universally applicable term, is significant to different groups of believers (and nonbelievers, for that matter) they are not spiritual equivalents.

Still, I have no problem with all four being mentioned in the same context when we're talking about the things people celebrate this time of year. That's valid and correct.

What isn't, however, is the notion that any of these holidays espouse the idea, explicitly or implicitly, of doing "what just feels right" or "whatever we want"-ukah.

Unless we're meant to be concelebrating Bacchanalia or -- and this is even a stretch -- Mardi Gras, nothing in the Christian, Jewish and pagan traditions or the African-American cultural ideals that Kwanzaa celebrates would encourage the faithful to throw all rules out the window and do whatever feels good, man.

If that were true, the Gap ad would have done well to end with an Ayn Rand look-alike in a Santa hat and white beard driving a sled pulled by 12 tiny flying armadillos.

Christmas is about selflessness and transformative love, the improbable gift of a divine baby born into straw poverty in order to reconcile the world back to God. We do celebrate Christ's birth by giving something to each other to commemorate that epic, divine gift. But it's not supposed to pivot around the exchange of material goods, and it's definitely not about sweaters and turtlenecks.

Hannukah is about power of perseverance, faith and righteousness to overcome tyranny. It's about a small miracle that changes everything. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Those principles are pretty much the direct opposite of the idea of "do whatever you want." And Solstice is, first and foremost, a natural, communal, Earth-centered event. Nothing about ushering in the death of the old year and the birth of the new says "fleece hoodies" to me.

The "Dowhateveryouwannukah" spots have made me think twice about where I'll purchase any last-minute stocking stuffers this year. But not for the same reason as that of the perennial saber-rattling "pro-family" organization the American Family Association, which, it brags, has been for 32 years "on the frontlines of the American culture war."

Earlier this month the association called for a two-month boycott of the Gap because of its "censorship of the word 'Christmas' " in its ads.

Oops!

The Gap ad campaign (which began running a few days after the association's clarion call for a boycott) says "Christmas" repeatedly, and that's precisely my problem with it. The use of the word "Christmas" -- and "Hannukah," "Kwanzaa" and "Solstice" for that matter -- is so flippant and false that the cheerbots might as well be shouting "Go Hippopotamus!" instead of "Go Christmas!"

I'd much prefer a heartfelt "Happy Holidays" to this faux-inclusive, hodgepodge of treacly meaninglessness.

Rather than an inviting cup of steaming Wassail to which everyone is welcome, the Gap's "Dowhateveryouwannukah" is little more than a strangely saccharin fruitcake that appeals to no one.

Amen, Cathleen!

And here's the Gap television spot under scrutiny:

the hogslop string band

I met a couple of these guys last night, in a seemingly random situation. Tell me this doesn't look like a good time....

for will and dad

the best part is at 1:36...

and the video of the year goes to.....

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY!

the working beard door

How could I not share this? It is, in fact, what I aspire to. You're welcome, Audrey!

farming as a spiritual discipline

Here's a short passage from a book I'm particularly excited about (order it here for only $5).

Farming As A Spiritual Discipline by Ragan Sutterfield:

I have a friend who attended a university run by Cistercians. One of his professors, a monk, would often walk down the hall between classes mumbling to himself in Latin, “I am finite, I am finite, I am finite.” This is a necessary mantra, but one ignored in our age of pride and power. Even with all of the evidence of our limits, we still think that there is no greater power on earth “than human ingenuity.” We believe that we can solve our own problems, clean up our own messes, if only we think about it a little while longer.

We have been surprisingly successful at this game, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and in a creation that is abundant we have many Peters to rob before we run out. So we have the illusion that we’re making progress in large part because we are tangled in an economic web that keeps the illusion going, even through times of crisis.

It is more difficult to perpetuate this illusion with farming; the distance between Peter and Paul is shorter and the accounts come due sooner. However much we try to control the conditions, in the end farming is a mostly reactive art, relying on response as much as planning. A farmer can intend to plant peppers on the 20th of May, but then it could rain for two straight weeks without a single break. The best a farmer can plan for is ranges with large margins for change and contingencies.

This contingent nature of the farm comes from the reality of what a farm is—a tenuous patch of domestication in the midst of a wild landscape. Nature creeps in always and can only be managed, never controlled.

I recently listened to Sutterfield's talk/sermon, also called Farming As A Spiritual Discipline, that he gave at the Godspeed the Plough Conference about a year ago. I imagine the book's content is similar to that of this talk (especially considering they have the same title).

Listen to it here: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

permaculture seeds sprouting on st. croix

A cool article about cool goings-on at VISFI. CHECK IT OUT. Oh, and those tidal pools are where I almost died last March. I'll post a video of them later on....

steeped in reality

If you decide to live a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.

Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion — do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.

If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers — most of which are never even seen — don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Matthew 6: 25-34 (The Message)

i'm pretty sure this is why i'm 5 minutes late to work every morning

what is your car seat made out of?

This is the Russian-made Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition. All you really need to know about it is that is will cost $1.5 million and the interior is fashioned out of WHALE PENIS LEATHER.

Other features include:
- Ruby Red matte paint
- Gold-plated bulletproof windows
- 22" Kremlin Red Star bulletproof wheels
- Whale Penis Leather interior
- Tungsten exhaust
- Tungsten and white gold gauges with diamonds and rubies
- White gold diamond and ruby encrusted badges - grill, side and dashboard
- Special edition Vertu mobile phone with "alert" button
- Additional outside kevlar coating
- Rogue Acoustic Audio System.
And, of course, of course - THREE BOTTLES of the world's most expensive vodka - RussoBaltique Vodka, drink edition, same as in the RussoBaltique car when it visited Monaco at 1912.

Unreal. My mind just asploded.

Also, from the comments section of the site I read about this on:

Fauxhemian says, "Leather, from the biggest dick in the world, for the biggest dick in the world."

And eddie000 says, "Q: How do you circumcise a whale? A: Send down four skin divers"

UPDATE: I just discovered that vodka costs $1.3 million per bottle. WHAAAAT IS GOING ON?!? One huge SUV: $1.5 million. Three bottles of RussoBaltique Vodka: $3.9 million value. Sitting on whale penis: Priceless.

the road trailer, part II

A new trailer for the long-awaited (this is getting ridiculous) film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Personally, I say its a fine-lookin' little trailer, but I will admit - the music gets kinda strange there in the second half. This is a movie about post-apocalyptic death and cannibalism in a cold and hellish landscape, right? I know there is beautiful hope as only McCarthy can write, but let's be real here: This is not Mighty Ducks.

A less ridiculous version (I laughed so hard watching this. I hope you do, too):