BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Goldman was among a clutch of Democrats who voted for an NSA spy program, despite warnings about Trump’s return to power. Read More →
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For years, I’ve shared names of former soldiers implicated in atrocities with the Pentagon. It’s shown no interest in punishment until Mark Kelly dissed Trump. Read More →
The December 24 drone strike in Venezuela is the latest in a long tradition of CIA interventions in Latin America — which often lead to destabilization and blowback. Read More →
LA District Attorney Nathan Hochman is playing politics by raising the specter of the death penalty for the murders of Rob and Michele Reiner. Read More →
The pro-police group wants the Justice Department to investigate a reformist prosecutor for violating the civil rights of against American citizens. Read More →
Prosecutors for the Trump administration have been quick to bring charges against ICE protesters. They’ve also been quick to lose the cases. Read More →
The Illinois congressional candidate turned her campaign office into a mutual aid hub. Read More →
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Verse of the day
For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. - Ecclesiastes 3:1
Voice of the day
No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others. - Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet” (1934)
Prayer of the day
God of change, as we embark on this fresh start in a new year, invite every person to consider the intentionality of every moment you place before us.
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Christmas story is replete with images of people journeying to new lands Maciej Sojka/Shutterstock
THOUGH I should have posted this before Christmas it is never too late to not do these things in the true spirit of Christmas! So Merry Christmas to all again, and as sung that night over 2000 years ago, Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth, Peace and Goodwill Towards Men!!!! From Sojourners
Ah, Christmas! The most wonderful time of the year. A time to gather with family and friends, and, with a smile on our faces, pretend we aren’t quietly measuring who received the best present and which relative really, really needs to stop drinking. A time to hang tinsel and baubles from the tree, and a time to hang up our hopes of losing that last 10 pounds this year. Such a joyous season!
The real point here is that Christmas is what we make of it. For Christians, however, there are some very specific things you can’t do if you want to actually honor and follow the person we celebrate this season. So, I give you my “10 Things You Can’t Do AT CHRISTMAS While Following Jesus.” As with my other “10 Things” lists, this is not intended to be a complete list, but it is a pretty good start.
10) Celebrate Consumeristmas — For many folks, Christmas starts standing in line on Thanksgiving Day. ’Tis the season for mass consumerism. Regardless of where you think it began, Christmas has slowly drifted into the bog of consumer madness. Like frogs in a pot of slowly boiling water, we never saw it coming. For Christians, this is particularly problematic because the guy we are celebrating this time of year told us that collecting stuff here on Earth is not the way to follow him.
9) Forget Those Without Food — Jesus once said that when we feed the hungry we are feeding him. Anyone want to guess what it means when we ignore the hungry? How about ignoring the hungry as we scrape the leftover Christmas ham from our plates into the trash? Maybe we need to change the name of the season to Gluttonousmas? Too many presents, too much food, too little consideration for those in need.
8) Forget Those Without Shelter — No room at the inn. One of the key moments in the story Christians celebrate is the moment when Jesus was almost born in the streets of Bethlehem. Our need to clean up the Christmas story assumes that the innkeeper told them to use the manger but the Bible says no such thing. There was no room at the inn, leaving Mary to place her newborn child in a smelly feeding trough. For that night they were without shelter. Throughout his life Jesus would spend his ministry with no place to lay his head. This time of year we celebrate a homeless man. Do our actions, do the places we place our money honor that?
7) Forget About Immigrants —We three kings from Orient are. Besides sounding like Yoda wrote a Christmas carol, there are a number of things messed up about that line. We don’t actually know how many there were. They were magi, not kings. We also do not know where they were really from other than “from the East.” What we do know is they were foreigners and their revelation of the real king’s plans to kill all newborn boys to put an end to Jesus turned Jesus’ family into immigrants in Egypt. Our Christmas story is replete with images of people journeying to new lands. Christmas should cause Christians to recommit to embracing immigrants.
6) Miss the Message About Resisting Abusive Power — Mary and Joseph and their family had to flee their homeland because King Herod strong-handedly used his power to squash out what he saw as a threat to his power. I can guarantee you two things; One, in the house where Jesus grew up, the narrative of why they had to flee to Egypt and of the senseless deaths imposed on other families by the powerful was a story that was told time and time again. Two, the focus on abuse of power in Jesus’ teaching and his constant willingness to confront it was no accident. Christmas should cause Christians to recommit to confronting those who abuse power.
5) Forget Those Without Presents — If you have two coats, give one away. In announcing the coming of Jesus, John the Baptist told us what God was asking of us. Coats were just an example – a placeholder if you will. If you have two Christmas presents, give one away.
4) Insist Your Religious Celebration Rule Them All — This time of year far too many Christians remind me of Gollum and his Precious. (A Lord of the Rings shout out in a Christian Christmas post! C’mon Peter Jackson, give me some promo love!) One holiday to rule them all: “We nee-eeds it. They stole it from us!” Never mind that Jesus was Jewish or that there is a list of other celebrations that occur this time of year, there’s a certain cultural privilege in the air that seems so very un-Christian to me. You can just about bet that the folks calling out for the dominance of Christmas would be singing a new song if Judaism were the dominant religious culture and this time of year radio stations across the land played Chanukah songs. Well, metaphorically they would be singing a new song — maybe a few even literally.
3) Get Mad About “Happy Holidays” — On a related note, you know what “holiday” is short for, right? Holy day. Do you really have a problem with people calling Christmas a holy day?
2) Think That It Is Actually Jesus’ Birthday — Um. So, dang, this is hard and I’m really sorry to be the one telling you. Um, let’s see. Remember how when you were growing up the Sunday school teacher told you it was Jesus’ birthday? Yeah. Well, um ... they lied. Yeah. Sorry about that. We don’t actually know when Jesus was born. It was probably in the spring or summer because “the shepherds watched their flocks by night” — something that definitely didn’t happen in the winter.
1) Confuse the Religious Observance With the Secular Holiday — It may be that Dec. 25 was picked as the date to celebrate Jesus’ birth to compete with or even to adopt the followers of the pagan celebration of Saturnalia, which included decorating with evergreens, gift giving and parties. (Hmmm, why does that seem so familiar?) I bring this up to make a simple point; A lot of our “War on Christmas” problems would rightfully go away if we simply acknowledged that there are two celebrations of Christmas each year. One is religious and one is not. Most of this article actually points to the issues that happen when we conflate them. So, let’s stop doing it.
Mark Sandlin currently serves as the minister at Vandalia Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, NC. He received his M. Div. from Wake Forest University's School of Divinity and has undergraduate degrees in Business Administration and English with a minor in Computer Science. He's an ordained minister in the PC(USA) and a self-described progressive.
A cross, left in Saint-Yves (Saint-Yvon – Ploegsteert; Comines-Warneton in Belgium) in 1999, to commemorate the site of the Christmas Truce. The text reads: "1914 – The Khaki Chums Christmas Truce – 1999 – 85 Years – Lest We Forget".
A poignant and much needed story of peace made possible because it was desired by people who had the most to lose in a war. Imagine what our world would be like if the Christmas Truce of 1914 had ended the war because people actually believed in and practiced Christianity. From DW ( Deutsche Welle ) 121 years after, with wars still raging.....
On Christmas Eve 1914, battling German and British soldiers laid down their arms and sang Christmas carols together — a brief moment of peace in the midst of war.
https://p.dw.com/p/55c22
Weary of fighting: Historic group photo of German and British soldiers standing togetherImage: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
December 1914. World War I had been raging for five months. Between minefields and barbed-wire fences, millions of soldiers faced each other in trenches along the Western Front, sometimes only some 30 meters apart. The combat zone stretched from the English Channel through Belgium and France to the Swiss border.
As the war dragged on, soldiers huddled in their dugouts, where rats, lice, the cold and poor food wore them down, and death hung over them. Beyond the trenches, between the enemy lines, lay the muddy hell of no man's land, where the bodies of fallen comrades lay out of reach.
Disillusionment at the front
The war had already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives — English, French, Belgian and German — torn apart by grenades, riddled with machine-gun fire and impaled in hand-to-hand bayonet combat. Many German soldiers had charged into battle, believing victory was within sight. They thought they would be home with their families by Christmas — at least that was what German Emperor Wilhelm II had promised. The French and British had also believed their leaders when they said the troops would return home quickly. But disillusionment soon set in at the front. Every day, the men looked death in the face, even on December 24. How could anyone get into the Christmas spirit under such circumstances?
Life in the trenches: Between fear of death and boredomImage: Scherl/SZ Photo/picture alliance
'Silent Night, Holy Night'
Then something unexpected happened. In the middle of the freezing December night, a single German soldier in the trenches near the Belgian town of Ypres began singing "Silent Night." More and more men joined in. The British on the other side of no man's land could hardly believe their ears. "Silent Night" was also well known in England.
At first, the British did not trust "the Hun," as they pejoratively called the Germans, and wondered whether they were being lured into a trap. But then they applauded and began to sing along. The Germans responded with calls of "Merry Christmas" and shouted, "We not shoot, you not shoot!" The first brave soldiers on both sides clambered out of the trenches, stood among the bodies of their dead comrades, and shook hands.
Similar scenes unfolded along much of the Western Front. At Fleurbaix, near the English Channel, German soldiers placed decorated Christmas trees on the edge of their trenches. The bright lights came from candles, not muzzle flashes.
Christmas trees, gifts and soccer
The German High Command had thousands of trees delivered to the front line to boost morale. Leaders knew how difficult it was for soldiers to be away from their loved ones on Christmas Eve.
Ordinarily, having bright candlelight visible to the enemy violated strict bans, and made it impossible for snipers to move unnoticed in no man's land. That night, none of it mattered.
"What I am about to tell you sounds incredible, but it is the truth," wrote Josef Wenzl of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 to his parents on December 28, 1914. "Between the trenches, bitter adversaries were standing around the Christmas tree and singing Christmas songs. I will never forget the sight for as long as I live."
Thousands of soldiers exchanged small gifts that night, trading corned beef for sausages or Dresden stollen for plum pudding. They shared wine, rum and cigarettes and showed one another photographs of their brides, wives and children. Uniform buttons were swapped as souvenirs. Most of the men were British and German, but some French soldiers also joined the truce, bringing out their reserves of champagne for Christmas.
The soccer match of 1914 — reenacted in the 21st centuryImage: Stephanie Lecocq/EPA/dpa/picture alliance
They even played soccer, using German spiked helmets and British field caps as goalposts. A hard ball of straw or a tin can often served as the ball, though in some places the British managed to produce a real leather one. "We sent someone on a bicycle to the rear, to our reserve position," a soldier of the Scots Guards wrote to his parents, "and he brought back the ball."
A short-lived truce
There was something else dear to the hearts of the men on both sides: the chance to bury comrades who had fallen in no man's land. These were moments of humanity in a brutal war.
"I don't know how long it will go on," young officer Alfred Dougan Chater wrote to his mother. "We are, at any rate, having another truce on New Year's Day, as the Germans want to see how the photos came out!"
Not everyone along the Western Front was in the mood to fraternize with the enemy. In some areas, the fighting never stopped. That was exactly what senior officers on both sides wanted. They were deeply opposed to the Christmas Truce and believed such displays of friendship should never be repeated, even viewing them as treason.
"It is terrible," a German soldier later wrote home, "that one day you can interact with each other in such peace, and the next day you have to kill each other."
Even high ranking officers on either side fraternized brieflyImage: Kpa/Topfoto/dpa/picture alliance
Peace over war — a utopian dream?
World War I ultimately claimed the lives of about 9 million soldiers, along with countless civilians. Josef Wenzl was killed in battle on May 6, 1917 — two and a half years after writing to his parents: "Christmas 1914 is one I will never forget." More than 100 years later, wars are still raging around the world — in Ukraine, Sudan and Congo. Yet the soldiers of 1914 showed how simple peace can be: Lay down your weapons and reach out to your enemy. Or is this simply a utopian dream?
This article was originally written in German.
Suzanne Cords Globetrotter with a passion for culture
