Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

THE ABOLITION OF CHRISTMAS


A concerted effort is currently being made by some cultural dissidents to expose the wide-ranging campaign undertaken by our betters to expunge all aspects of Christ from the holiday of Christmas, and what's more, to eradicate all aspects of Christmas from the gift-exchanging season of late December. In fact, this "war on Christmas" has been ranging for decades, epitomized in the numerous instances of newly renamed "holiday trees," corporate-mandated salutations of "happy holidays" or "season's greetings" instead of "merry Christmas," and forced removals of manger scenes from public places.

It is quite true, as Samuel Francis once pointed out, that the campaign against Christmas is a mere skirmish in the more widespread war against the West. Christmas is, after all, a Christian holy day, and Christianity is the spiritual foundation upon which Western civilization was built; hostility toward unabashed celebration of the birth of Christ does indeed spring from a hatred of all things Occidental. But it is a bit more complicated, and more bizarrely perverse, than that. For the war against the West is largely being waged by ... Westerners.

SCI-FI CINEMATIC CHRISTMAS: AFFIRMATIONS OF INCARNATION

Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell in "Moon"

In many ways Christmas is a highly cinematic season. The feelings that surround the holiday are finally ineffable, better expressed in images than words. Language, wonderful tool of communication though it is, sometimes fails us when it comes to conveying the glory and beauty of truly profound occasions.

That is why, when pondering the "meaning of Christmas," one often thinks of movies: Miracle on 34th StreetIt's a Wonderful Life, the many and varied cinematic incarnations of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and so forth. Highly as I regard these and other explicitly Christmas-themed films, however, they were not the formative movies of my youth. I grew up in the '70s and '80s, and from an early age imbibed and internalized the science-fiction ethos of that time. The original Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana Jones movies thus appeal to me with more immediacy than countless, no doubt superior films from previous eras and separate genres.

SCI-FI CINEMATIC CHRISTMAS: AFFIRMATIONS OF INCARNATION

Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell in "Moon"

In many ways Christmas is a highly cinematic season. The feelings that surround the holiday are finally ineffable, better expressed in images than words. Language, wonderful tool of communication though it is, sometimes fails us when it comes to conveying the glory and beauty of truly profound occasions.

That is why, when pondering the "meaning of Christmas," one often thinks of movies: Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, the many and varied cinematic incarnations of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and so forth. Highly as I regard these and other explicitly Christmas-themed films, however, they were not the formative movies of my youth. I grew up in the '70s and '80s, and from an early age imbibed and internalized the science-fiction ethos of that time. The original Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana Jones movies thus appeal to me with more immediacy than countless, no doubt superior films from previous eras and separate genres.

REFLECTIONS, RITALIN, AND RESOLUTIONS

Traditionalist themes in video games.

by John Maelstrom

Much as I felt the call of Scrooge in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I was thwarted by great friends, a loving family, and a few events that conspired to defeat my inner curmudgeon. As enjoyable as Christmas proved to be for me, my favorite time is the week between Christmas and the New Year. This period is marked by a deep quiet that lends itself to reflection and plans for the coming year. Being American I have a terribly short attention span, so I found myself reflecting mostly on this last month of the year.