Uproar Around Celebrity's Opinion Allows Nation to Have Productive, Nuanced Conversation About Serious Issues

Image via Jeffrey Smith

by Ben Howard

As the nation gathered for their respective family Christmas celebrations this week, conversations across the country turned to the outspoken comments of a reality television star. Though various family members inevitably took divergent views regarding this celebrity and his opinions, the nation was unanimous in its gratitude to the reality star for facilitating such rational, healthy conversation about a particularly thorny issue.

“Everyone was able to express their thoughts and beliefs maturely and openly,” said Milwaukee resident Ed Flowers, 56. “Just a few weeks ago, I was worried that the Christmas table would be free of nuanced discussions about difficult issues involving politics, religion, race, and sexual orientation, but thankfully a guy with a beard intervened so we could all share our views with each other.”

Sources report that the sheer outlandishness of the comments made by this reality star along with the continued coverage of the situation from both regular media outlets and through social media venues such as Facebook and Twitter, allowed the nation to take a good long look at the way it had been conducting itself at previous family gatherings.

“In the past when I’d gone to visit my family, I would try to hide my opinions and change the subject whenever the topic turned to something touchy,” recalled Julie Harmon, 27, the token liberal member of her conservative Macon, Georgia-based family. “But thankfully this year, I was able to talk about all of my political opinions with my relatives who disagree with me passionately.”

When asked if the constant conversation about controversial political topics detracted from the festive atmosphere, or whether the time would have been better spent strengthening familial bonds, the nation cocked its head to the side, narrowed its eyes, and said, “I don’t understand.”

Ed Flowers, for one, is looking forward to the next round. “I can’t wait for next year, I’m hoping a football player says something about Israel, or maybe a talk show host will talk about income inequality. It’ll be exciting, I’m sure.” 

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87. 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  

You might also like:  

• A Series of Outright Lies About Christmas
• Your Favorite Movie Needs More Pandas
• A Power Ranking of Various Kinds of Powers

A Series of Outright Lies About Christmas

Image by Ren Norman

by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust 

There's a lot of misinformation in the world today. Some argue that's simply the nature of the internet and the democratization of information itself. A lot of websites exist to fight the good fight in an attempt to right these factual wrongs and a well-informed public is thankful for them. 

But we're not one of those websites. So with the fundamental ethos of the internet in mind, we bring you A Series of Outright Lies About Christmas.

1) Rudolph's glowing nose is the side-effect of the 52 megaton hydrogen bomb that awakened both him and his sworn enemy, Godzilla.  Since that day, the two have been locked in mortal combat, a struggle so fierce and terrifying that not even Japanese film dares to depict it.

2) Many of our most cherished Christmas traditions come from the now-lost proto-gnostic Gospel of Kringle. The book includes detailed instructions on how to hang tiny decorative lanterns outside one’s hovel and also prophecies the coming of a great snowy man with a corn cob pipe and a top hat despite none of those things existing in the region of Syria where the author lived.

3) The Salvation Army is nearly ready to undertake the armed revolution it has been plotting for 150 years, funded entirely by individual donations to their bell-ringers around the world.

4) The ancient druids believed that the north pole was actually a sacred site where sits the portal to another realm, a world ruled by a white-bearded deity dressed in red, borne upon a flying chariot pulled by nine immortal stags.  This angry god seeks vengeance all, but is unable to enter any home warded by a Fraser fir bedecked with tinsel.

5) Dick Cheney, long before becoming the most evil man in American history, made a run at trying to offer the world an alternative to Santa. Despite making inroads with niche markets who appreciated Cheney's commitment to Machiavellian plotting over the jovial spirit of St. Nick, Cheney was forced to abandon his dream to become Vice-President and the right hand of the Devil.

Image by John Leech

6) Mrs. Claus has tiny, tiny hands.

7) In 1982, Ebenezer Scrooge of Poughkeepsie, New York filed a lawsuit against the estate of Charles Dickens for defamation of character. He eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and currently resides in a seaside villa on the Pacific coast where he has reported no problems with ghosts whatsoever.

8) Despite the perfect synergy and obvious pun potential, X-Men do not celebrate Xmas.

9) In response to Al Gore’s 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, Santa ceased the distribution of coal to naughty children. Instead, naughty children received a sternly worded letter in their stockings outraging Christian political groups who argued that giving coal to children was central to their expression of faith.

10) Santa does not keep an entire population of little people in subjugation, forcing them to craft toys in squalid conditions and brutally making examples of those that step out of line.
 
Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.  

Sebastian Faust is an avowed heretic, armchair theologian, and a self-styled canary in the coal mine of pop culture. He takes life by the reins, bulls by the horns, and tigers by the tail, all while living in Nashville. You can't follow Sebastian on Twitter because he doesn't understand technology. 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  

You might also like:  

• A Series of Outright Lies About the Bible
• A Series of Outright Lies About Prayer
• The Best of On Pop Theology 2013

I Like Christmas Without The "Christ"

Image via Alan Cleaver

by Ben Howard

I have a lot of nostalgia for Christmas. I vaguely remember going to see Santa at the mall when I was little and squinting at him, cocking my head to the side, trying to contemplate how he got into our house since we didn’t have a chimney. I was very worried about our lack of a chimney. I remember re-arranging presents under the tree and trying to guess what was inside in the days leading up to Christmas morning. We watched Rudolph and Frosty and Charlie Brown too in those days. 

A few weeks ago I found myself watching the three Christmas-themed episodes of the show Community. In its rather wonderful satirical way, one episode pokes fun at the political correctness that has come to dominate so many discussions of Christmas. The Dean dresses up as “non-denominational Mr. Winter” and refuses to decorate the school with Christmas trees. A separate episode, shot almost entirely in claymation, follows the study-group on a magical Christmas journey replete with a little drummer boy, a toy robot, and the Cave of Frozen Memories, all of which turns out to be the delusional fantasy of one of the show's characters. Another focuses on the group's putting on a Christmas pageant (while simultaneously mocking Glee).

These stories, even with their heavy satirical edge, resonated with my own experiences of Christmas: the holiday festivals at school, the claymation TV specials, and the Christmas programs and pageants (I played a turtle in a 4th grade Christmas play; I’m told I was excellent).

Image via The Turtle Hospital

But I’m always struck by a curious incongruity when I think back on the Christmases of my youth. Even though I was raised in a church and I’m the son (and grandson) of a preacher, none of my childhood Christmas memories aren't even remotely religious. 

It’s not that I didn’t know that Christmas was religious, it’s just that the tradition I grew up in didn’t place any particular significance on it. In opposition to the “Keep Christ in Christmas” and “Reason for the season” crowds, I was far more likely to hear people discuss how Jesus was probably born in the spring or how the Bible never says how many  wise men there were or some other deconstruction of the romanticized version of the Christmas story. Needless to say, we didn’t go to church on Christmas because there was nothing particularly special to celebrate. In fact, I vaguely remember church being cancelled when Christmas fell on a Sunday. 

It wasn’t until my early twenties when I started diving into theology and regularly attending a liturgical church that I started to appreciate the Advent/Christmas season for its religious value. As I’ve grown and learned, the incarnation has become increasingly important to me adding even more depth to this time of year. And while I’m not particularly good at waiting, I look forward to Advent as an opportunity to take another shot at patience.

Image via Brent Flanders

But I’m still left with this cognitive divide. While Advent feels holy and spiritual to me, I still experience Christmas as the cultural, secular festival that I grew up with. I adore the dark nights filled with the songs of waiting and longing which make up early December and find the theology of incarnation and renewal beautiful. Yet, when I hear “Christmas,” I think of decorations and reindeer and a large smiling man trying to stuff himself down a chimney. I think of Red Rider BB Gun’s and Bing Crosby. 

I love Christmas, but I’d be lying if I said it had anything to do with Christ. To me Christmas is friends and family, food and laughter, gifts and stockings hung over a fireplace, and I’m perfectly happy for it to stay that way. I'm perfectly happy with a Christmas without the "Christ." 

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.  

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  

You might also like:  

• Nostalgia: The Christmas Addiction
• The World Needs More Unironic Glitter Glue (Or, I Can't Help Loving Christmas)
• Christmas Magic, Miracles, and Doctor Who

The World Needs More Unironic Glitter Glue (Or, I Can't Help Loving Christmas)

Image by Currier & Ives

by Lyndsey Graves 

I can’t help loving Christmas.

Sometimes I think it’s not very cool to love Christmas. Lots of people like to run around reminding everyone that it’s a pagan holiday (and therefore, somehow, utterly godless); some people have an understandable aversion to the commercialism of the season, which taints their enjoyment in the whole thing; and other people seem to relish cultivating a Scrooge-y, Grinch-y Scrinchiness, simply for the sake of being contrary. But I am one of those people who just believes in Christmas spirit.

I don’t know exactly why. I’m usually a pretty suspicious, critical person; I spent Thanksgiving weekend in equal parts watching football and analyzing misogyny in football TV commercials. But I am 100% bought into Christmas time, Christmas cookies, Christmas gifts, tinsel, lights, and praying for snow. 

This isn’t because I am immune to the frustrating parts of the season. I’m not as busy as some  - no parties to host, no kids in pageants, no church services to organize like my seminary pastor-friends. Further, I also happen to like my family and don’t mind driving long distances. Yet, December for me is and always will be fraught with finals frenzy, and as a student I always pick up extra work hours in order to afford a few gifts. I’m not just making paper snowflakes and singing Alvin and the Chipmunks all month.

Image by Susan Smith

So what do I mean by “Christmas spirit”? If there’s something beyond the shopping and rushing and Pinteresting, something warm and human and divine – what is that something supposed to be?

I certainly can’t say there’s anything objectively special about December 25th, unless it’s that, growing up in Georgia, praying for snow teaches you stubborn hope for things as distant and unlikely as the Advent of the Messiah. Maybe the dark of winter is, after all, a good time for an unlikely-bright celebration of such an unlooked-for king. And yes, that story itself has much to do with what I love about Christmas, but you’ll forgive me if I am a bit more enchanted by the donkeys and magic stars and cousins leaping in wombs than by the incarnation. I’m a theology student and “incarnation” is the only word any of us knows anymore. 

My Christmas just isn’t going to be hyper-seriously-spiritual this year; after term papers on theological concepts and obligations of all kinds, I’m gonna need down-to-earth sugar sprinkles and a Linus-reciting-Luke level of heady theological engagement.

Image by gravity_grave

Maybe “Christmas spirit” just means to me that I love seeing everyone try just a bit harder, approach the world with a little more openness and love. Just because we can – and, when we remember, because God is with us – we try to make a day more special for each other. We remember to surround ourselves with music and to feed each other real food. We let Christ’s birth into humanity call us back to our own humanity. If we’re lucky, we even get to take actual time off work to actually be with our families. 

The world needs more un-ironic glitter glue. As long as my Christmas still has those moments beyond the money-spending, pine-needle-sweeping, and Scotch tape emergencies, I’ll still believe in the magic of the whole thing.

Lyndsey lives in Boston, MA where she is pursuing her Master's in Theological Studies at Boston University. She enjoys Community, Mad Men and Beauty and the Beast and her spirit animal is a sloth. She would like to know if this is some kind of interactive theater art piece. You can follow her on Twitter @lyndseygraves and you can find more of her writing at her blog To Be Honest.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  
You might also like:  

• On Entitlement
• Perhaps, For Now, This Is Enough
• Matriculation Day

Christmas Magic, Miracles, and Doctor Who

Image by Mot

by Ben Howard 

I don’t believe in miracles. As a matter of faith I confess to believing in a few, the virgin birth, the resurrection, even the occasional healing, but they aren’t the cornerstones of my faith. If you adamantly argued that they were physically impossible and never happened, I wouldn’t try and fight you. The theological implications of these miracles are more than enough to overwhelm any question of historicity.

That is to say, do not take this confession as an endorsement of skepticism, even though I am a skeptic. While I may not believe in the miraculous, I would very much like to. It strikes me as a much more optimistic way to encounter the world; a world full of indescribable and undiscoverable mysteries and wonders. I would very much like to live in a world where epic, magnificent, magical things occur, whether rarely or as a matter of course.

But, much to my consternation, I have a difficult time believing that this world of miracles is the same as the one where I live, where the rules of physical reality seem to hold fast.

This tension, between my natural skepticism and my desired belief, makes me especially vulnerable at this time of year to the mystical sentimentality of Christmas specials. There's  a certain magic in a cold, dark, snowy night when everyone is warm in their homes while wondrous adventures are unfolding in the world around them without their knowledge and I easily suspend my disbelief for an hour or two to lose myself in the story.

In recent years, I've found myself enthralled by the traditional Christmas specials of the British sci-fi series Doctor Who. These episodes combine the typical Christmas tropes I find so wonderfully appealing, such as wintery nights in Dickensian England, with the utter insanity of a alien time-traveler on a constant quest to save the world. Also he wears a bowtie because bowties are cool.

Image by Slytan

I find The Doctor's Christmas specials especially affecting because they present such a complex and enticing alternate reality. Not only do they include the ineffable “Christmas magic,” they also include the presence of the otherworldly. The mere presence of The Doctor, a Time-Lord from the planet Gallifrey, points beyond himself to the existence of infinitely more worlds with infinitely more wonders to explore.

When contrasted with my own skepticism, the “Christmas magic” becomes just as otherworldly, just as foreign and impossible as the fantastical notion of a madman in a blue box traveling through space and time. Yet I still find myself entranced by a glimpse of this world. While I do not believe that such a thing exists, whether it be Christmas miracles or time-traveling spacemen, I very much wish that it did and by the simple act of engaging in it the gates of my mind are held open to the possibility, even if just a crack, that there is a bit of magic in the world.

I want to believe in miracles. I want to believe in them so hard that maybe they’ll even come true.

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.  

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  

You might also like:  

• Rule Number 1: Your Faith Lies
• OPT Podcast: Ep. 21 - Doctor Who, The Hunger Games and God w/ Julie Clawson
• OPT Podcast: Ep. 19 - God and Doctor Who w/ James McGrath

Nostalgia: The Christmas Addiction

Image via Kris De Curtis

by Charity Erickson

When I was in my early teens, I spent many December evenings lying on the floor with my head beneath our fake Christmas tree, looking up through the papery-plastic branches at the colored lights we’d woven through the ever-ever-evergreen. (My parents have had the same tree for twenty years now; it’s still going strong.) I was trying to recapture a feeling—a memory of an experience that seemed so specific and real—of transcendent wonder that I felt at some singular moment in early childhood, while lying under the Christmas tree.

Now that I know a little more about the inner-workings of nostalgia, I know that the original experience which I was trying to re-create probably never really happened. Nostalgia is funny like that. It is a feeling based on idealized memory; it is a trick of the brain in which past events are recalled as we wish they had occurred. There is a mournful aspect to nostalgia, and I don’t think it’s just because it involves longing for a time that is past and cannot be revisited; I think the gentle sadness that accompanies nostalgia has also to do with a subconscious awareness that our most beautiful memories are of things that never really happened, at least, not the way we remember them.

Image via Royce Bair

It seems to me that nostalgia is never more active than during the holiday season. We have a collective belief that this time of year should be special, sentimental, perfect. It makes sense, then, that our subconscious would be devoted to repairing our lackluster or outright negative holiday memories. That our brains manufacture holiday nostalgia evidences, perhaps, a psychic need to affirm the societal construct – the goodness and specialness of the holidays.

It is fascinating that nostalgia’s richer, more intense German cousin sehnsucht includes “addiction” as part of its meaning; it speaks to a yearning so powerful that it has to be filled with something, even if that something is just a place-holder. And I can’t help but wonder if the ever-inflating consumption and consumerism that takes place during the winter months have less to do with pure greed and gluttony and more to do with satisfying our desperate need to believe that transcendent moments of pure joy and wonder are able to be orchestrated or contrived—and our deep sadness at knowing they are not. It’s the sehnsucht of Christmas that pushes us to buy, to decorate, to stress out about traditions. It’s all about chasing that beautiful moment.

Image via Jack Fussell

The fact that we have to go to other languages to find words to capture the full essence of this longing (the Japanese have a similar concept, called mono no aware) shows how uncomfortable our culture is with simply feeling these feelings. We feel like we need to fix the feelings—we need to indulge our nostalgia, to chase it and change the past—but perhaps when we do this, we miss out on the beauty of the feelings themselves. Longing is so close to hope; and in that wishful desire for the beauty of the holidays to take over and bring us to that transcendent place of wonder and joy—in that simple hope—there is something worth celebrating, even with quiet tears while lying under the Christmas tree. 

Charity Erickson and her husband live and work together in the north woods of Minnesota. Check out her blog for more of her writing and follow her on Twitter @CharityJill.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  
You might also like:

• The Spirituality of Horror
• Reading Exile (Or, The Surprising Truth of Alaskan Women Looking for Love)
• We Have Been to Gray Place: A Review of Addie Zierman's When We Were On Fire