A kind of random observation about the Season…\n
To me, the categories of religious Christmas decoration<\/i> and secular winter decoration<\/i> are not exactly defined. However, I do have strong feelings about where they belong—I do not want religious decorations in what I consider Public Spaces (also not entirely well-defined, but clearly including the Town Hall, the Public Libraries and the Public Schools) and I really like religious decorations in publicly-available Private Spaces (people’s windows and lawns, churches, cars, etc). I mean, people can also have secular decorations<\/a> if they so desire. I just like to see the religious ones.\n Religious decorations clearly include nativity scenes, angels (with or without trumpets) and advent wreaths (with candles). Secular decorations clearly include lights, candles, snowflakes, icicles, snowmen and stars. Also mittens and scarves, I suppose. There are things that I could argue about: candy canes and evergreen trees, holly and ivy, wreaths without candles, a fireplace log. I am not going to be offended by someone including those in a Public Space, but if you were putting together a secular winter display of some kind, you might want to leave them out. Santa Clause is clearly a religious figure (if there is a Santa, it’s a Christmas display, not a winter display) but are reindeer? I mean, the reason reindeer are in the Christmas display and caribou are not is because of the St. Nick connection, unquestionably, but like the evergreen tree or holly sprigs, reindeer are in the Christmas story because they are winter things, not vice versa. Gift-wrapped packages are a Christmas thing, of course, as secular as they are.\n The library that employs me has what we might call mildly Christmassy decorations: no cr\u00e8che or angels, but trees and Santa. The dominating themes are snow and light, sure, but there are enough things that are not associated with the non-Christmassy parts of the season to make me very slightly uneasy. The director added some Chanukah decorations, which of course have dreidels and menorahs. And to me, the image of the chanukiah<\/i>, or menorah, is absolutely as religious as a nativity scene or three kings on camels. There doesn’t seem to me to be any question about it. And frankly, it makes me uncomfortable.\n Now, as a private institution, they are certainly entitled to decorate however they want. And I understand the idea that if we have a tree we should have a menorah to indicate plurality of experience. I think we have had Kwanzaa candle sorts of decorations in the past as well, and those never made me uneasy. Of course, candles are (to me) an absolutely essential part of winter decoration, just because the days are so damn’ short. That is different from the menorah. And I don’t know what else we might have as a Chanukah decoration—plates of doughnuts and latkes? Chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil?\n So, mostly I just wanted to ask if any of y’all also think of a menorah as being more like a cr\u00e8che than a reindeer, in terms of public and private decoration for the Season. Or if you have any other feelings about seasonal decorations you want to discuss. Like that terrifying gingerbread man with his feet dissolving slowly in the cocoa. I’m ready.\n Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>, In Which Your Humble Blogger has decided to insist that they were always called ‘candy croziers’ until the War on Christmas made everything so damn’ PC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16250,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15435\/revisions\/16250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
-Vardibidian.\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
![secular decorations<\/a> if they so desire. I just like to see the religious ones.\nReligious decorations clearly include nativity scenes, angels (with or without trumpets) and advent wreaths (with candles). Secular decorations clearly include lights, candles, snowflakes, icicles, snowmen and stars. Also mittens and scarves, I suppose. There are things that I could argue about: candy canes and evergreen trees, holly and ivy, wreaths without candles, a fireplace log. I am not going to be offended by someone including those in a Public Space, but if you were putting together a secular winter display of some kind, you might want to leave them out. Santa Clause is clearly a religious figure (if there is a Santa, it’s a Christmas display, not a winter display) but are reindeer? I mean, the reason reindeer are in the Christmas display and caribou are not is because of the St. Nick connection, unquestionably, but like the evergreen tree or holly sprigs, reindeer are in the Christmas story because they are winter things, not vice versa. Gift-wrapped packages are a Christmas thing, of course, as secular as they are.\nThe library that employs me has what we might call mildly Christmassy decorations: no cr\u00e8che or angels, but trees and Santa. The dominating themes are snow and light, sure, but there are enough things that are not associated with the non-Christmassy parts of the season to make me very slightly uneasy. The director added some Chanukah decorations, which of course have dreidels and menorahs. And to me, the image of the chanukiah<\/i>, or menorah, is absolutely as religious as a nativity scene or three kings on camels. There doesn’t seem to me to be any question about it. And frankly, it makes me uncomfortable.\nNow, as a private institution, they are certainly entitled to decorate however they want. And I understand the idea that if we have a tree we should have a menorah to indicate plurality of experience. I think we have had Kwanzaa candle sorts of decorations in the past as well, and those never made me uneasy. Of course, candles are (to me) an absolutely essential part of winter decoration, just because the days are so damn’ short. That is different from the menorah. And I don’t know what else we might have as a Chanukah decoration—plates of doughnuts and latkes? Chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil?\nSo, mostly I just wanted to ask if any of y’all also think of a menorah as being more like a cr\u00e8che than a reindeer, in terms of public and private decoration for the Season. Or if you have any other feelings about seasonal decorations you want to discuss. Like that terrifying gingerbread man with his feet dissolving slowly in the cocoa. I’m ready.\nTolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,-Vardibidian.\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger has decided to insist that they were always called ‘candy croziers’ until the War on Christmas made everything so damn’ PC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16250,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15435\/revisions\/16250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/i5.walmartimages.com\/asr\/9ae1847f-1fc1-484e-8ff0-33e039660d5c_1.54d9d4603809ce4fc537d7ec1d9f27bc.jpeg\"){kind=link}