Alzheimer Dad

I dont know what that Irish lunatic Oreilly is grousing about. We are still living in Christendom, pretty much. If Christianity is not the state religion, it certainly has a large influence on the collective unconscious..Our sense of right and wrong, our laws, our sense of redemption, rehabs, starting over, re-inventing ourselves...these have been developed from a decidedly Christian mindset. But Christ is so groovy, you don't have to beat anyone over the head with his ideas..people will be drawn to them, if they hear about them.. ..Perhaps a little bit of pluralistic etiquette is in order. The USA demographics have radically changed, and there are OTHER PEOPLE LIVING HERE.. Maybe people could learn from NY'ers, the ultimate melting pot people.
I mean, I grew up in NYC where , at Christmas time, you always said Happy Holidays, unless you knew someone was a practising Christian, or you saw them at church, in which you said Merry Christmas. Lots of the kids were Jewish, there was at least one Muslim and one Hindu that I knew of, in my class, and several Chinese kids who might have been Buddist, or maybe not. We all mostly knew the religion of our friends, what with confirmations, bar mitzphas, etc, but who knew the religion of strangers? Religion was a personal thing, and asking someone about their religion was about as polite as asking them how much money they earned. So we used Happy Holidays. Happy Holidays is really a better phrase than that crappy Season's Greetings they used to dump onto cards.. Season's greetings...which celebrated, what? Winter? Snow? At least Happy Holidays covers a multitude of celebrations... But Oreilly and company are just getting on my nerves. Americans are spoiled. Mostly in the heartland where everyone is Christian, everyone assumes that everyone else is Christian, too. Noone makes you join a Christian church to gain US citizenship..(Used to be they didn't allow polygamists in, which kinda cut down on a flock of exotic faiths, but they don't put that on the US Naturalization form anymore, I don't think).
Early Christianity was an underground religion. Remember the martyrs? They got mauled by a lion for following Christ. No Joke. Now, in the USA, we're the dominant religion, and we butch anyone off who isn't Christian..SAY IT! SAY IT! MERRY CHRISTMAS! WE STRONG ARM EVERYONE!! We demand from the shop clerks that they should say Merry Christmas, regardless of the customers' religious persuasion..Or the clerks..Cheeze...Either lobby to make some Christian faith the state religion, or get over it. It's my personal view that Christian values from the Puritans, the Methodists, the Quakers et al. made America strong..but we're not a theocracy. Perhaps some would prefer the USA to have a state religion, like Saudi Arabia or Israel, but we dont' have one....so either Christians should fight to keep non Christians out of the country, or learn to keep their faith to themselves.. I dont' need Macy's to tell me Merry Christmas..I need to be in a country where I won't get mugged for going to church..or wont lose my job for going to church...If American Christians aren't happy with a pluralistic society, perhaps they can take comfort in the fact that the global calendar is based on Christ's birthday, not Mohammed's or Moses' or Buddah's or whomever..That the whole world knows his name is a prerequisite for the Messiah coming back, but I'm digressing..and I'm a female and will only preach in extraordinary circumstances..under grace, for example...
but uggh..back to the grindstone..the fear, the stress..bills piling up and no gig....Tomorrow, the kid's gotta go back to school. I would too, only I lost my assignment. I've gotta start from scratch, getting a new gig. This is nutzo. I was just getting on a roll, decent pay..and then BLAMMO...I get the pink slip on the same day I come home to find out my Stepmom is dead. Some christmas. Glad we got the tree tho..it's a short squat one, not like an upwardly mobile king of the universe Rockefeller Center gargantuan. No, it's short and squat, probably has cellulite, and was the last one picked at the dance, i mean at the Christmas tree yard. How come all the Xmas tree guys have a finger missing? Anyway, da kid did the decorating, and did a great job. I kept the heat on, kept the apartment warm for a change, and kept my head under the covers for NY eve..that's how I sit Shiva...