A Christmas Ramble You know, I wasn't going to touch on this subject again this year. This time around, I was going to let the holiday season pass me by. However, my pledge to keep quiet and wait for the trees to come down was knocked out of the ring by the horror of horrors: Christmas carols on the radio. The murder of thousands of trees, the self-indulgent mass-consuming and mass-wasting which the Christmas holiday brings pales in comparison to the crime against humanity that is the poorly sung Christmas carol. The siren's song has called me out and I am here to ramble about the winter holiday once more. One convenient way to avoid questions around this time of year, I've found, is to simply let people believe I'm Jewish. It happened by accident once. Someone I didn't know approached me and said they had heard I didn't celebrate Christmas. When I confirmed their suspicion, the person asked if I was Jewish. Seeing an easy way out, I took it. Not that I'm knowledgeable enough on the Jewish faith to pass myself off, but I've discovered people tend to accept blind faith as an excuse. Oddly enough, no one has ever asked if I'm a Jehovah's Witness. While a branch of Christianity, the JW's don't celebrate Christmas. Curious as to why, I asked a young Jehovah's Witness. He told me, "We are all children of God, but children who celebrate Christmas are owned by Satan." There you have it. Thinking a second opinion may be in order, for fairness sake, I asked another, adult, follower of the faith. He confirmed Jehovah's Witnesses are Christian and, no, they do not celebrate Christmas. Why? A couple of reasons. For one, the selfish, consumerism surrounding Christmas distracts from the core reason for the holiday: worship. All the pagan symbols used during the holiday (trees, reindeer, Santa, etc) are improper for use in the celebration of the birth of the Savior. What's the other reason? It seems the Jehovah's Witnesses believe Jesus was born in the fall, rather than the winter. The timing, they claim, is off. As an interesting side note to this tid-bit of trivia, the Mormons, who do celebrate Christmas, think Jesus was born in the spring. Both claim to have Bible passages which support their alternative timing, but I've yet to find the proper verses. My Jehovah's Witness correspondent shared a few other bits of information, which I'll pass along here. The JW's do, in a fashion, celebrate Easter. Though they don't bring such pagan symbols as bunnies, coloured eggs and chocolate into the picture. Also, the Jehovah's Witness organization isn't just a Christian religion, it is the Christian religion. Seems the rest of the so-called Christians have it wrong. And my JW representative will not be voting in the upcoming federal election because our government, like all governments and countries, is controlled by Satan. It appears socialized medicare is a product of the Dark Lord. But I digress. I've noticed no one has ever assumed, upon learning of my anti-Christmas position, I may be Buddhist. Though, again, I don't know enough about Buddhism to pass myself off as a follower of those teachings. I have been told, however, by my Buddhist go-to guru, we are all Buddhas. Most of us just don't know it, yet. It appears we are all Buddhas and we are all children of God. Funny how inclusive these groups sound. ... At least on the surface. Oops, I'm digressing again. At the risk of sounding bitter, I'm sick of hearing (mostly from TV and radio ads), "There is nothing worse than a child not experiencing Christmas." Wanna bet? While one could point to war, to famine, to flood, to disease, to corrupt government and sinking ships, (on Death, on War, on Pollution and Plague) I'm going to dive into some more specific examples. Let's take a guess at the answers to these questions: 1. Okay, Jimmy, this year you can either, "A", give up Christmas, or, "B", mommy is going to cut up your brothers with a big knife and eat them in front of you. Then, she'll drown you in the bath tub and boil your corpse. No no, don't worry, she won't go to jail, the judge will let her off when she tells him Satan made her do it. 2. Robert, you've got two choices this year. Either give up Christmas, or your mother and I will tie you to a chair in the basement. We'll come down every so often to sing hymens to you, in the spirit of the season, and to keep you company while you slowly starve to death. Prison? Not much, we'll claim we were performing an exorcism which got out of hand... 3. Son, this year you can fore go Christmas, or your father will hit you three hundred times with this large stick. We get away with this because it's our "culture". 4. Emily, would you rather give up Christmas this year or would you like us to send you away to a "Christian Camp" where "nuns" will starve, torture and scold you until either school starts again or you die? Remember, "Christian Camps" build character. 5. Yes, son, you could go out with your friends to the cabin and have them lock you out in the cold until you freeze to death, or you could give up Christmas. Your choice. 6. Susan, this year we want you to pick. Either go out and sell your little, thirteen year old body on the street or we can skip Christmas this year. Hey, kid, you're a "young offender". Do you know what that means? 7. Son, We can either skip Christmas this year, or We can let the Romans spit on you, whip you, beat you and nail you to a large cross and leave you to die. I know this is a tough one, so take your time. With the exception of, perhaps, the last example, I think we know which one children would choose. Also, I'd like to point out that, again, with the exception of the last item, all of the above were taken from actual cases in Canada. My point? Humanity is messed up, our legal system is a joke (all of the offenders mentioned above either got off completely, were required to simply take counselling or received sentences of less than one year) and there are a lot of things worse than a child not experiencing Christmas. Rather than continue and put a little bug in your hum, I'm going to leave you with this thought: The Christmas season is the only time of year when parents will allow a complete stranger, with a nasty case of the giggles, to dress in a goofy costume and encourage children to sit on his lap.