End of year clearance.

Clearance?  Seemed like as good a title as any for the last day of the year.  I feel like clearing a few things out of my brain.

The war on Christmas.  Yeah, I'm going there, albeit a bit late.  You know by now, religion is not my thing.  So I get a bit irate by all the shit about Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays.  Allow me to break it down to show why this is the stupidest argument ever.

Everyone knows (or should by now) that Christmas traditions were adopted from pagan observances.  Christians go on and on about how this is their holiday, Jesus is the reason for the season, yada yada.  When the Christians were trying to convert the masses, they decided the best way was to roll the customs already in place into the religious holiday.  Including the date.  The Winter Solstice was the most important date to pagans, and Christians invented a mythological birthday to usurp it.  I haven't heard any scientific evidence that Jesus was actually born on this day.  Very little about Christmas is original to Christianity.  Yet, Christians claim it as THEIR holiday.

Let's go back to that line...the reason for the season.  SEASON.  Season is not 1 day, it's a series of days.  In the USA, it begins with Thanksgiving, and ends with New Year's Day. Over a month of days!  And it's not just those 2 holidays.  It's Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, and if you count Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve, there's 8 holidays in that period.  8!  Christmas is only 1 day, and to insist that we say Merry Christmas the whole time is absurd.  Happy Holidays (my preference) or Season's Greetings covers it all very well.  Say whatever you want, however you feel about it, but don't push your agenda on the rest of us.  Aren't there more important things to argue about?

Oh and one more thing.  The reason for the season...the entire season beginning with Thanksgiving...is consumerism.  You can't say Jesus is the reason until you give up the gift buying and getting, and the other pagan customs.  And if you participated in Black Thursday/Friday insanity, don't turn around and thump a bible.  Pretty sure it's not what Jesus would do.

I like to write Xmas.  Some think this is rude or lazy.  No, it's not.  Look it up.  I did.  It's actually a perfectly acceptable way to write the word based on historical facts about early language and writing.  You would think Christians would like it because their beloved cross is right there in the word.  But noooo.  They want it to clearly include the word Christ.  OK, maybe it's bit lazy in my case.  BTW - I often don't capitalize words commonly capitalized by religion, either.  It's my way of expressing my disdain for organized religion.

What else?

Haven is killing me!  Turns out I was wrong, Audrey and William were lovers, and apparently really evil people...or...  Witches?  Fallen angels?  Gods or demi-gods?  Aliens?  That's going to be interesting to learn.  Probaby witches.  We learned that Audrey was originally Mara, and the Barn made her forget her original self, I guess to redeem herself for what she and William did.  But now she remembers who she was, and the Mara persona has resurfaced.  And that's how the season ended.  Grrrr!  Gonna be a long wait to see what happens next.  I wonder if we'll ever learn what the Barn is, and who the people in charge of it (Agent Howard) are.

Doctor Who's December episodes were awesome!  Every bit as good as a Whovian could want.  We got a glimpse of #12 (actually #13) and I think he'll be a wonderful Doctor!

Remember how I ragged about Dish Network's dispute with the local carrier for CBS?  Shortly after that one was resolved and the station returned to my programming, here came another.  This time it's NBC, FOX, and CW.  I'm only getting ABC and CBS now.  For crying out fuckin loud!  So I called Dish to complain, and suggest I should get a break on my bill.  I'm paying extra for those local network channels, and also for the Hopper that was designed specifically for the 4 major networks, and I'm not getting what I'm paying for.  Well, sometimes it pays to complain.  I got a $5 discount on my monthly bill for 6 months.  Yeah, 6 months!  Even if the dispute is resolved before then (jeez I hope so!), it's for 6 months.  Thanks, Dish.

CW isn't considered one of the 4 covered by the Hopper, but it's one I'd really miss.  Happily, my package includes CW from the west coast (airs after EST prime time) so I'm not missing my shows.  I just hope the dispute is resolved soon.  It's not been that big a deal right now during holiday season.  Most shows aren't picking up again until 2nd week of Jan.

Big changes coming for me in the near future.  Let's just say I got what I wanted for Xmas, and the New Year looks brighter.  That's for another day, and elsewhere.


Happy New Year!