By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
HAPPY Holidays! My gift to you this post is very little political detail. It won’t cheer you, encourage you or make the coming days happier. It would even be productive, perhaps, to fast from news the next few days. I’ll keep an eye on it for you, if you insist on knowing when the sky falls or the Congress implodes or George Bush chokes on another pretzel. Let me be candid, though. I’m struggling with the season. I think many of us are, certainly many who can’t seem to find time, money or energy to do what we managed so smoothly even a year ago. It’s part of our shift and it’s calling for a change in how we handle our experience of the holidays.
Of the many things that need to change if we are to make an evolutionary jump, our traditions are the toughest to let go. We define ourselves through our participation in them. They’re dear to us, they comfort and calm us even if they’ve become anxiety-ridden and shallow, as has our excessive holiday season. Face it, today’s version of Santa might as well have been slapped together by the G20 as the ultimate profit booster, and I could go on indefinitely about the misery Christocrats have produced with their politicized culture wars.
Andrew Sullivan thinks that the reason the Christocrats feel free to demonize Obama as a probable Muslim is because he’s an actual Christian, as opposed to their religious embrace of capitalism in tandem with politically-operative theocracy. They’re not familiar with what they’re seeing, similar to when they tell us about how the Constitution works without having any idea of its actual transcendent quality. Me, I think those trapped in this kind of fervor wouldn’t recognize a real follower of Christian principle if they ran one over with Santa’s reindeer at the mall. Especially at the mall.