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QUOTES OF THE DAY
Tag: Christmas
The Greatest Gift of All
Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.
The Train
There are 2 songs that bring a smile to my face every Christmas season.
They are not traditional tunes like “White Christmas” or “Silver Bells”. Perhaps that is why I like them so much…they are not played ad nauseum as those songs, and many others are, for the period from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
This one is Pat Metheny’s ‘Last Train Home’. A shortened version was used by one of our local super market chains ‘Publix’.
The full version is below it.
Full Version
Gladness and Silence amid Chaos and Violence
By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.
… The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The name written on her forehead was a mystery: Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes, and of the abominations of the earth.
– Revelation 17:1-5
I had been emotionally involved a few times with women with enough of a record of promiscuity to make me vaguely uneasy. It is difficult to put much value on something the lady has distributed all too generously. I have the feeling there is some mysterious quota, which varies with each woman. And whether she gives herself or sells herself, once she reaches her own number, once X pairs of hungry hands have been clamped rightly upon her rounded undersides, she suffers a sea change wherein her juices alter from honey to acid, her eyes change to glass, her heart becomes a stone, and her mouth a windy cave from whence, with each moisturous gasping, comes a tiny stink of death.
― MacDonald, John D. (1966). “Darker Than Amber”, Travis McGee series, Random House LLC, 2013, pgs 56-57
We live in an age of wizards and whores where souls are sold in the pursuit of material pleasures. Time-honored principles have been traded for profit and power as lawlessness intensifies.
The word “mystery” is defined as “something not understood or beyond understanding” or, in a religious sense: “truth that one can know only by revelation and cannot fully understand”. This would imply more than simply not knowing. A mystery can be that which exceeds human understanding.
There is a saying I’ve heard over and over in my life that has… for the most part… been stated by older men with whom I’ve been related and/or acquainted: “The older I get, the less I know”.
Continue reading “Gladness and Silence amid Chaos and Violence”
QOTD: SVARGA LOKA EDITION
“How was your Christmas?”
22 Memes To Help Get You Through Christmas
So this is Christmas,
And what have we done?
We’ve shared lots of meme posts,
And had lots of fun.
And told lots of people,
That the world’s all gone wrong.
But it’s all a big joke now,
So let’s all laugh along.
1. Zelensky was back in Washington this week, you’ll never guess why.
Pictorial: The Story Of Christmas Via Art (Oldie But Goodie)
Originally published in 2017
The angel said to her ‘Don’t be afraid, God has been very kind to you. You will become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and give birth to a baby boy and you will call him Jesus.
Joseph was worried when he found out that Mary was expecting a baby before their marriage had taken place. He wondered if he should put off the wedding altogether. Then an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and said: ‘Don’t be afraid to have Mary as your wife.’ When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel had told him to do and took Mary as his wife.
Continue reading “Pictorial: The Story Of Christmas Via Art (Oldie But Goodie)”
A Gift of Words
Guest Post by Edward Curtin
The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.”
Karl Kraus, Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths
Things, possessions, life on the installment plan or credit card. This is the season to buy, to accumulate more folderols, to give things to one’s children and each other, which, we like to believe, will bring joy.
It’s make-believe, of course, an adult lie conjured up out of guilt and fear that our lives, the stories we live, the stories we dream, and those that dream us, are insufficiently meaningful to bring our children and ourselves the joy we say we seek.
Driven by a pure sense of guilt devoid of any sense of redemption in a capitalist materialist culture, we buy and buy, accumulate and accumulate, in the vain hope that such tangible “gifts” will bring a magic that we can possess. Our exchange of gifts is a consumer culture’s parody of the true meaning of a gift: that gifts are given to be given away, to be passed around, like the peace pipe of native American Indian tribes.
Santa and Satan
Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
“Amidst the general call to happiness, the bustle of the spirits, and stir of the affections, which prevail at this period, what bosom can remain insensible?” — Washington Irving (1783–1859) on Christmas
Santa… Satan…? Notice, they’re spelled similarly. Weird, a little bit….
The Santa we know came from a mashup of ancient pre-Christian Teutonic and Norse folk figures (Wotan, Odin) with the 4th century Greek bishop, St. Nicholas, a humble giver of gifts to children. That evolved in 19th century Anglo-America, with help from Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, and Clement Moore, into the jolly fat man in a fur-lined cloak, chortling merrily amid the platters of roast goose and baskets of sugarplums.
Have Yourself an Awkward Little Christmas . . .
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Christmas will never be the same again. For the same reason that America will never be the same again. Millions of us will never be able to look upon some of our fellow Americans – including some of our friends and family members – as we once did, ever again.
The ones who turned their backs on us – and worse – for questioning what we rightly identified as a mass hysteria they embraced. Who feared and loathed us, because we would not wear a “mask” – which we didn’t because we knew that putting it on only fueled the mass hysteria. We didn’t wear the things for their sakes as well as our own. For the sake of calm and common sense. To show normality rather than “masked” insanity. For doing that – often at the cost of being denied not merely service but our ability to earn a living – we were abused as pathologically selfish, granny-killing ne’er do-wells.
Continue reading “Have Yourself an Awkward Little Christmas . . .”
Has America Lost Its Faith?
Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
Here we are on the eve of Christmas, that day of joy set aside for celebrating the birth of Christ who came down to earth 2,000 years ago to show mankind the way to eternal salvation.
Yet, the present mood of America at Christmas 2021 seems better captured by Jimmy Carter in his “malaise speech” in July of 1979, several days before he cashiered half of his Cabinet.
“The threat” to America, said Carter, “is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”
Carter’s speech, reflecting the mood of the nation, was initially well received. But when his dirge became contrasted with the optimism about America of Ronald Reagan, Carter was sent packing. He lost 44 states.
Christmas Awokenings
Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
And so, on Christmas morning, having suffered the night visitations of vexing spirits — or was that just the strange interaction of Zyprexa and Zolpidem — Joe Biden woke up (in a manner of speaking) to find himself transformed. He was no longer dogged by the prospect of being president of the US, but, rather, was convinced he had become the provincial plenipotentiary of a Chinese overseas possession known as Golden Wok West, where CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping can order up any asset for take-out. What a relief, Joe thought, as they brought in his morning meds. Here, now, was a one-horse pony of a different color, Joe mused, chugging down his 5mg of Haldol.
A Short History Of Christmas In America
What is wrong with the picture below? Everything.
Jesus wasn’t born on Dec.25th … or, even in December. He wasn’t visited by three Kings. Christmas trees had nothing to do with it. He wasn’t born in a barn/stable surrounded by farm animals. He wasn’t laid on a wooden manger. There was no literal star, or other celestial body, hovering over Bethlehem. Two gospels conflict whether or not Jesus was even born in Bethlehem. We don’t know if angels were present at the manger. And until about 400 A.D., the early church knew absolutely nothing about celebrating Jesus’ birth.
CHRISTMAS PREPARATIONS
The Ghost of Christmas Past
Guest Post by Bill Bonner
Today we kick off a special three-part Christmas series that Bill originally penned in 2000…
Old Greenspan was not dead. Not dead as a doornail, nor dead as a door knocker. Not even as dead as a laptop computer after the power goes out – not even John Maynard Keynes is that dead.
Not even God himself… but that is another story.
Nothing is as dead as a computer without power. For even a nail continues to provide good service after the spark of life has gone out of it.
But Alan Greenspan? The Fed chief was still alive. Not only that, he still had the power to flood the economy with cash… and lift stock prices.
Christmas Column 2019
Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?
Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.