Your Humble Blogger has mentioned before that a big drawback of this Tohu Bohu as a blog is that if I can’t think of anything to say on a piece of news, I usually just won’t blog it. That’s not the way to move up the Ecosystem, now, is it? Case in point: for a couple of days, now, I’ve been sitting on this thing about megachurches closing their doors on Xmas. I mean, it seemed like the sort of thing that one should blog about, but to say what? And really, how is it any of my business what Christians I don’t know choose to do with their religious holidays and excursions. I mean, it bugs me, because for several years my Best Reader was prevented from worshipping on the holiday with her congregation because of the whole ‘Christmas is for families’ business, but again, that’s to do with her preference, her congregation at the time, and her family, and Lord knows I shouldn’t extrapolate from that sort of thing.
Heck, I only barely feel entitled to whinge about Temple Beth Reform; I don’t like their services, but then who asked me to? If they were doing something harmful, sure, I’ll holler, and honestly I’ll make fun of them no matter what, because I’m that way, but the use of a piano during service scarcely is a shanda fer the goyim. It’s wrong, it’s deeply deeply wrong, but let them do it, abi gezunt. Nu? So if the Shulamit Faith Community of Greater Nowhere thinks that it is appropriate to have no services on Xmas Sunday, it’s their choice, and I don’t care. It’s yet another way in which those churches don’t appeal to me, which should neither surprise nor bother anybody.
I’ll add (oh, I really shouldn’t have started here) that most of these churches aren’t even remotely Sabbatarian anyway. When the room fills up on Sunday, they have Saturday meetin’, and that works just fine. Yes, it’s totally alien to me, but then it’s not my religious tradition. It’s not even my religious-tradition-in-law, which I won’t say absolutely requires taking the Lord’s Meal at the Lord’s Table on the Lord’s Day, but at least makes a distinction between LMatLTotLD and chicken’n’ribs in front of the college football game on the tube. Not that a nice family meal isn’t holy in itself, but it is Different. And if you aren’t going to church for the LMatLTotLD, then why not stay home, says I? This, of course, is one of my problems with Temple Beth Reform; if you aren’t going to get into the fetishization of the Scroll, then why not stay home and read your parshah in your jammies? But again (and again and again) this is Your Humble Blogger’s preference, this is YHB’s tradition and teaching, this is how YHB draws spiritual sustenance, this is why YHB prefers one thing to another. As it is written, Your Mileage May Vary.
On the other hand, there is something about this story that just ... well, I wanted to have something to write about it. I really did. I wanted to make fun of people who observe their own traditions in their own way. And yet, happy little pluralist me, I couldn’t see my way to it. Fortunately, there’s John Scalzi, who manages to use the opportunity to skewer everybody in sight. Ah, that’s better. That’s what I like about this blogosphere thingy. If you wait a few minutes, somebody else will come along and blog it for you.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
so when this story went around and i was looking at it and wondering what it the world it meant that people were so entertained by it (i thought it was a little dull), it struck me that it would be funnier, if the story had been a joke, to put around a story like this:
“the national football league has announced that the super bowl will not be held in a physical stadium this year, in consideration that so many people will be too busy watching the game on television to attend.”
that would have been funnier.
however on the GWOX issue i would like to state for the record that i despise hearing the phrase “season’s greetings” leave a person’s lips, and that i have only ever meant “happy holidays” to replace “happy new year and whatever” because that’s too complicated to say over the phone.