As soon as my neighbors had taken down their cheap, little Chinese-made flag sets showing pumpkins and corn, scarecrows and bounty, mangers began to appear. Some were outlines of figures cut from plywood and painted a uniform color, mostly white; others were elaborate scenes with electric lighting, hovering angels, quality clothes on life-like figures, and real hay strewn about. As I am no longer a Christian but was raised by a pair of them, one of whom was clergy, I know that there are at least four different tellings of Jesus' birth myth, each one wholly different from the next, each one with different players, places, and progressions. I also know that some of the stories don't mention a manger at all and that others don't speak of beasts of burden, that, in general, there is in fact little uniformity and therefore much room for interpretation most everywhere one might care to look in the Christians' bible.
What I struggle to understand is why people feel the need to haul a bunch of props out of storage and hammer them into their lawns, year after year, time and time again, and why they then read the same stories over and over, boredom and mischief spreading like wildfire amongst any assembled youth, the lack of personal progress or group ingenuity glaring and obvious to anyone who might care to see it. We Americans go to market and buy fresh fruits and vegetables to eat, not old and stale ones; we overhaul and streamline our business processes constantly, allowing exhausted methods and worn-out ideas to fade into obscurity so that better ones might take their place; and yet we cling to highly stylized and professionally-commercialized versions of a religion that – due to its inherent absurdity and tendency to promote mistrust for and violence against All Things Strange or Unusual – should have been jettisoned from the annals of history during our all-too-short Age Of Enlightenment. The lessons of that age, however, appear to have been fallen before the idea that we are to search for salvation in the mouths of our preachers rather than in the stillness that comes when the animal and the human spirits are unified within.
The people who erect elaborate mangers depicting mythical scenes from the brutal past (young Mary and her husband Joseph were, after all, fleeing systematic infanticide) probably think of themselves as good Christians. In reality, however they rely heavily on the magic of modern technology for much of their comfort and success, on telephones and motor-vehicles, on paved roads and postal services, on well-pumps and central heating, on electrical lighting and printed books, on Constitutions and charters, and on no one else reminding them of the hypocrisy of their living fat and happy lives in air- and rain-tight houses with a car for each inhabitant parked in the driveway while most people on Earth shiver and starve. At least some neighbors merely staple yard upon blinking yard of seizure-inducing lights to their homes' gables and window-frames without making any sort of religious statement, wasting the output of coal-fired electrical plants on garish light-shows, pouring out our precious fossil resources merely on secular, non-partisan attempts to celebrate this, the Season of Excess. I, for one, shall refrain from celebrating an unassisted birth held in a grimy sty, and stick to bitching about those persons who do. Oh, brother, how stupid can I be. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
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