Will Xmas carols defeat the Left?

Just a small initial point:  Is my use above of "X" to represent Christ disrespectful?  It is not.  It is in fact very respectful indeed.  The Gospels were written in Greek and the first letter of Christ's name in Greek is the letter Chi -- which is normally written the same as our letter X.

And Greek letters are not exactly unknown in educated circles to this day.  Statisticians, for instance, will all be familiar with the statistic "Chi squared" -- a way of testing the statistical significance of frequencies.

And there are still some of us who work their way through the New Testament in Greek.   I actually own three recensions of the Greek New Testament:  Griesbach, Westcott & Hort and a 1958 revision of  Nestle.  So my very occasional excursions into the original Greek are well supported.

And the early Christians made much use of Chi.  They used it to represent Christ and closed one end of it to make it look like a fish when they were being persecuted.  So the use of Chi has a most honorable background.

And to this day, some Christians (mostly Anglicans in my observation) do still use a fish to represent their faith.

But I did not intend this post to be about ancient Greek so let me get on to the small but perhaps important point that I originally wanted to make:

When I first visited California in the mid-70s I arrived, for some long-forgotten reason, in early December.  So I was delighted to have Xmas carols piped at me from any retail outlet that I entered.  I gather that that pleasant world is long gone now, however.  Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and Frosty the Snowman are about it these days -- which must be very boring.

And the Left have some logic behind their suppression of Xmas carols.  Most of the carols are very devout.  They in fact largely tell the basic story of Christianity:  That Jesus was God incarnate.  I guess that people rarely pay full attention to the words of songs but to the extent that they are exposed to Xmas carols, people will learn rather a lot about basic Xian doctrine.  The sheer beauty of the traditional Xmas carols will often get them past Leftist censorship.

And there are even hints of long-lost scholarship in the carols. "Gloria in excelsis Deo" and "Adeste fidelis", for instance, may open up the world of Latin for some. And the perspective that conveys could indeed be transformative.

And the frequent mentions of Israel in the carols should make it clear that Israel is forever the land of the Jews


2 comments:

  1. As far as I know you used to be an atheist.
    So why do you occasionally feature items in which you bemoan various attempts to deconstruct forms of Christian piety.
    And if Jesus was God incarnate (which he was not) why arent you a Christian. Especially as there are now well over 30,000 different and differing forms of Christianity to choose from, in the whats-in-it-for-me market place of consumerist religiosity.
    By the way, as far as I know in the USA one is more likely to suffer in-your-face discrimination for being an atheist than for being a Christian. In some States it is illegal for an atheist to hold a government office. This is probably the case in many counties, cities and towns too. Of course it would be impossible for an atheist to be nominated as a candidate for the Presidency by both the GOP and the Democrats. Meanwhile a majority of the Supreme Court judges are right-wing "catholics", some of which are affiliated with the deeply misogynist outfit opus dei (which by the way has a long list of banned books not to be read by students in their schools and "universities")

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  2. Some Chinese thoughts on the life of the the Jesus who was always and only a Jew, and was never ever in any sense a Christian. Nor did he invent one smidgen of an iota of the religion about him, aka Christian-ism (yes it is an ideology, and therefore about power-and-control) all of which was invented by others long after his brutal murder, and mostly very long after too. None of whom ever met Jesus up close and personal while he was alive in a living-breathing human form.

    The people whom Jesus was addressing presumed that suffering was the natural and not merely political state of human beings. Human beings, in that view, are all humble, mortal, suffering, often ill, and deprived, regardless of their worldly status, whether high or low in the human social and political hierarchy. Jesus was not a social revolutionary, or a social activist. Jesus was, simply, by nature, sympathetic and compassionate.
    Jesus felt a profound disposition of compassion for people in their ordinary, natural, human condition. He stepped out of the spheres of both the State and the power of the official state religion of his time and place - just as he would now if he happened to reappear. Basically he taught everyone else to do the same. Jesus extended his Blessing-Regard to all, as is shown through the reported incidents of his healing work.
    In contrast to all of the worldly power of "official" institutional religion both then, and especially now, Jesus was a rather humble and simply human figure who was socially and politically powerless. He was thus highly critical of both worldly political and "religious" power and constantly Blessed all and everyone regardless of their circumstance. He taught and demonstrated a way of authentic human freedom free of any tradition-bound restraints or political requirements. As such he was not talking about making an institution that would become an "official religion" of the entire world (as most right-wing "catholics" pretend or claim). Nor was he talking about a cultic "God" that should become the "official' Deity of the entire world (as most right-wing power-and-control-seeking "catholics" pretend or claim)

    Speaking of right-wing power and control seeking "catholics", both Rick Santorum and the hanging Governor of Texas Rick Perry fit very tightly within this spectrum. By the way they are both either members of or closely associated with that charming deeply misogynist outfit Opus Dei.
    Are you a fan of Opus Dei?
    Their applied politics is described in the book titled The Power & The Glory: The Dark Heart of JPII's Vatican by David Yallop
    Meanwhile re the hanging Governor of Texas Rick Perry - I wonder how many people Jesus would execute if he were alive.

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All comments containing Chinese characters will not be published as I do not understand them