I have fled the state of Minnesota and am now in Boulder, Colorado…and look! My daughter has one of those unbiblical pagan decorated trees! The war on Christmas continues.
I didn’t finish my grading. I brought a bunch of it with me, sad to say.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Happy Solstice!
*Waves Happy Holidays from Denver.*
Not much snow here in the shadow of the Rockies — warm, too –except for a week of subzero temperatures a few weeks ago.
Have fun with the fam, PZ! I’ve never been to Boulder, but I hear it’s lovely.
We’re putting up our tree today and finishing our gingerbread house. Much hot chocolate and peppermint candy will be had today.
Boulder is the mirror-universe counterpart of Colorado Springs. Strangely, they are both able to exist in our universe at the same time.
I’m so happy that we haven’t had a tree for a few years now. So much less trouble. Also, happy that mine is the only apartment in the building without some sort of wreath on the door.
I have a life-sized mummy replica outside my front door that I stick a Santa hat on every year. That’s the most I’m willing to do to recognize the holiday.
I appreciate the fact that you can workout on your stationary bicycle while simultaneously admiring the tree and drinking some booze! That’s my kind of holiday tradition!
Question out of pure curiosity for all of you: what’s your relationship with Christmas as atheists? Do you hate it, ignore it, celebrate it? Just wondering.
As for me, I think I’ve been lucky in that my family never really related Christmas with religion. It always was just a date to get the whole family together, eat like pigs and exchange gifts.
Even if the family are atheists, it sure looks like the exercise bike is devout and worshipping the tree. To my eye it’s doing the whole ‘I am not worthy’ routine.
You have made the baby Jesus cry … and sneeze and honk and snort. He’s alergic to evergreens.
Happy solstice, PZ! All the best to you and yours for Saturnalia, Yule and Cthulhumas.
A very happy and delightful Solstice to you and yours.
Perhaps you should try the Colorado bud while you’re there…
Christmas? What’s that? Next Wednesday is my younger son’s 28th birthday, and he and older bro are traveling here to observe the occasion. We’re flattered that so many people are making a fuss over that day, taking it off work, stringing up coloured lights and what-have-you (I don’t really get the significance of erecting all those conifers, though). Makes me embarrassed that we haven’t made a single token effort in that direction. For dinner that day, along with cake, we will likely be having Chinese take-out, which my wife says was her family’s tradition (Jewish).
Oh, and I’ll probably play the Jethro Tull Christmas album, all day, very loud.
…Why?
‘Tis the day of eating way too much ham and knocking back a few beers with my rarely seen cousins. Presents are unheard of, except for my grandma sometimes giving me $20-50 in a christmas card, and only because I’m the youngest in my extended family.
At 31.
I’m in Denver myself. I didn’t put up my evil Pagan tree, though. My roommate and I have been too busy to even think about putting it up… Or maybe we’re just lazy.
Boulder, eh? Does this mean you’ll be doing some of your grading on a slope rather than a curve?
Will you be calling on Phil Plait while you’re there?
Happy Winter Solstice, everyone!
I view the dressing of a “Christmas tree” not only as the continuation of an old pagan tradition celebrating the Winter solstice, but as an annual sculpture that symbolically reconstructs the shape of the universe in time since the big bang, with the initial hot cosmic singularity at the top and the quasars and star-infested galaxies in the lights within the tree beneath, along the lines of the light cone any observer within the universe would agree.
Never put green lights in a Christmas tree: follow the colors suggested by the spectrum of real stars.
Phil Plait, as he would readily agree if put to it, is not an authority on anything. That circumstance doesn’t prevent him from talking, which is generally a good thing. ;)
I think I see some Patron on the mantle….
I’ll be right over.
That teapot looks an awfull lot like the Darwin fish. +1!
The star on top of our big Christmas tree is a Super Mario Starman made out of perler beads, which is pretty much the perfect medium for all things 8-bit. And then we have the horse-tree. Some of our guests think the horse-tree is creepy, but I think it’s just delightful.