Here is this year’s gingerbread house. Bit more of a success than last year’s.
Last week, we headed up to Headingley for the Finnish Christmas Carols concert.
It was held at the Lutheran Church in Headingley, and there were around twenty people there, mostly Finns. Mixed in with the hymn, which had an organ for the first time this year (in previous years, they have just sung, without music), they had a short play as well, about how you should be dishonest in order to achieve personal gain (not quite why you would include a play with such a message, but there you go).
I’m not sure about the idea of getting a nation of people famous for being rather introverted to sing, but Elina seemed to enjoy it, so job done I guess.
After, everyone headed into the church house in which there was some Finnish food laid on. There were also feedback forms, in which I suggested it would be great if the church could get wifi installed.
It’s interesting how there is a gradual change between the Gay Quarter where I live, and the Catholic cathedral.
To make Christmas feel a bit more like Finland, Elina and I made a ginger bread house.
I actually gave in this year and put some Christmas decorations up. What is the world coming to?
That’s right, I said it. I’m an atheist, and I used the word Christmas. I know, I know, I’m crazy, I’m on the edge, etc, etc. A lot of non-believers don’t like using the word because they think it has too many Christian connotations. But I really don’t have a problem with it.
Why? I guess for the same reason that Reclaim the Night started. I don’t think we should give up the word so easy. Because it’s nonsense that the origins of the holiday season lie in Christianity, we all know it’s nonsense and it really doesn’t bother me that people are occasionally misguided about this, but even if they were, it would only inspire me to explain to them the truth.
Of course, Christians genuinely are celebrating the birth of Jesus, but the rest of us aren’t. Any suggestion we were could equally be rebuked by the argument that actually, Christians are celebrating Paganism just as much. So I don’t even get drawn into the debate these days. For me, as a Humanist, the holiday season is another arbitrary point to celebrate life. family and friendships. But as all holidays are essentially arbitrary these days, it doesn’t make it any less special.
Huzzah, the German Market has once again arrived on Millennium Square. So, A-Soc headed down there for a good bit of German sausage.
On December 24th, 1995, I was a 9-year-old child. Much younger than the soon to be middle-aged man that now sits writing this. I had already figured out that there was an international conspiracy among adults to perpetrate the hoax that a magical being called Santa existed, but being the materialist child I’m sure most of us once were, it didn’t make it any less magical – who cares who delivers the presents as long as you get them, right?
I was so excited, I couldn’t sleep a wink. Even if I could have, it wouldn’t have been that helpful as even if I had achieved multiple winks, that would still not have been enough time to reach REM sleep, because a wink is such a short period of time.
So, in my excitement, I decided to take out the cover inserts from every single cassette I owned (remember cassettes?) and inside them I wrote “Chris Worfolk. Happy Christmas 1995!” so that I could remember that moment, and how excited I felt, forever.
To this day, I’ve never recaptured such a strong feeling of excitement. Until now. The reason is the impending return of this young woman…
After parting at the end of August, she will be returning to see me in a mere ten days, and I can only describe the feeling as synonymous with how I felt as a child, counting down to Christmas.
The problem is that I have a lot of other things to think about, and laying awake a night feeling excited isn’t helping my already significant sleep problems.
God help you, FinnAir, if that flight doesn’t arrive on time. You simply can’t imagine how disgruntled a letter you would receive should it be significantly delayed…
On Tuesday, Leeds Atheist Society hosted a talk by James Murray on “Christmas Beliefs around the World” which looked at the true origins of the holiday season and the various, often comical, holiday traditions around the world.
For those of you who read NME you may well have read possibly one of the silliest comments I have read in a long time, and this is from someone who reads the Daily Mail every morning.
Cheryl Cole has launched an attack on Rage Against The Machine for sabotaging the Christmas Number One race. Despite the US band themselves not orchestrating the Facebook campaign to get ‘Killing In The Name’ to the top of the charts ahead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry, Cole said the battle had now reached biblical levels. “It’s David versus Goliath and it’s not fair on Joe. It’s getting out of hand.” She went on to say that the thought of a US band topping the charts at Christmas was just wrong. “If that song, or should I say campaign, by an American group is our Christmas Number One I’ll be gutted for him and our charts” (The Sun).
The obvious first point is that this campaign wasn’t started by Rage, it was started by fans (and someone would phrase that as true music fans for obviously justified reasons). But that isn’t the main point that I want to make.
The reason the comment is so stupid is because the campaign hasn’t sabotaged the race for the Christmas number one, it’s created a race! Until Rage came along there was no race, the only thing this campaign has sabotaged is X Factor’s divine right to have the Christmas number one as it somehow thinks it is entitled to.
And this is what the campaign is about – it shouldn’t just be a fact that X Factor is entitled to take the number one spot every Christmas, we’re tired of it. We want a fair race based on genuine musical talent rather than how much publicity you can spin off the back of an appallingly bad TV show.
As such I cannot imagine what thought process went through her head that concluded “yes, that’s an intelligent thing to say.” Presumably none.
In other news despite the physical single now being out for the past two days it has still failed to catch up with Rage! Saturday will be the real physical sales boost though so Rage needs a big lead and the campaign needs you. You can gift up to two extra purchases to friends and you can also grab some copies for free without a credit card from Nokia Music.