Today, someone at the hardware store said, almost aggressively, “Merry Christmas.”

It took me a few minutes to remember (so, unfortunately, they got away) that “cancel culture stopping us from saying ‘Merry Christmas'” is a deep matter of national concern in some sectors. Personally, I’d be worried about drones in New Jersey, or capitalists exporting remaining good jobs, but – OK, sure, let’s talk about that.

(MidJourney AI and mjr)

My specialty is definitely not UK history, so I hope I get this right. I did a little research but I’m mostly going from memory. There’s loads of information about it on the web. [ials] But christmas was actually canceled, once upon a time. In the UK, in 1647. And, it actually stayed canceled for 400 years or so. When the laws against christmas were first passed, it was actually enforced, but eventually became part of the zeitgeist, and the Scots celebrated Hogmanay, e.g.: New Year’s. Unexpectedly, the reason christmas was canceled was not (supposedly) a typical christian attempt to suppress old pagan holidays, but rather because it was, you know, a party and celebration and offensive to the christian Fun Police.

[ials]

In London the military were reported to be patrolling the streets and seizing any items they believed to be used to celebrate Christmas. Town criers walked the streets calling “No Christmas, No Christmas”.

The ban was very unpopular: riots took place in some major cities, including Ipswich where it is reported that one person died.

The ban remained in place for 13 years until 1600 when When King Charles II returned to power and one of his first acts was to repeal all the anti-Christmas legislation, helping foster his image as the “Merry Monarch”.

… apparently god did not approve of the repeal, ‘cuz he fucked King Charles up pretty severely. Eating mince pies on December 25 could result in imprisonment, though doubtless there were stealthy pies eaten, and probably secret networks of pie eaters. Christmas was not restored to being on the official list of holidays until 1958.

As an atheist and general shrugger-at of religions, I’m always a bit amused by these things. Religion’s value as a tool for social control is never more apparent than when they are anathematizing eachother or purging or crusading or whatever god’s love demands at this particular juncture. Remember that, in principle, these people believe in a relentlessly vengeful god who is perfectly capable of omnisciently identifying the mince pie eaters for eternal punishment – there is no need for the government to get involved. Unless, perhaps, the government is just looking for something to control.

Of course that requires Emo Philips’ “golden gate bridge” joke, which won “best joke about religion” for years, but only because the christians couldn’t “do a Jan Huss on him.” The Fun Police really hate when you poke fun at them, especially when their body cameras are turned on.

As I search for a way to end this posting, I realize that it’s been quite a while since I had anything to say about religion, anyway. In my mind, it’s a dead issue and has been one for a long time. Remember when we used to have the big wars and whatnot over atheism, and those writers were all writing books about what a load of horseshit faith is? Was that even necessary? When they achieve power, they seem to be unable to keep from flexing it (the object of power is power, per Orwell) and proving once again that they should be kept away from power. Now that Trump is coming into office again (I kick myself: did that really happen? WTF!?) the religious wing of the fascist party will attempt to soil itself by pushing prayer and religious observances into the public square. It will become a shit-show, of course, because if it succeeds they will immediately fall again to squabbling over which of the 1,271 variants of christianity gets to stand in the spotlight. All we have to do is stand back and ask politely, “which observance?” No need to bring the satanists into the picture, at all. If you want to see christians pause and scratch their ${whatevers} in puzzlement you can ask “which version of the ten commandments?” and then mention that the one they think they know was written by a jewish hollywood director (Cecil B. DeMille) and significantly shortened so it could fit on some wooden props for Charleton Heston to carry in his role of Moses. Listen, guys, before you decide to put the ten commandments in public, maybe you should decide which ones you’re in favor of. And maybe you should drop the commandments that the president of the USA has ruthlessly violated, i.e.: most of them.