OK, so apparently the Catholic church has bumped St. Patrick's Day for 2008. The official reason is that they want to avoid scheduling conflicts between masses for that day and Holy Week observations. However, every Catholic I've talked to about it has been pretty forthright about the real problem: that the standard St. Patrick's Day celebrations are considered inappropriate for Holy Week.
So the Vatican, in a display of Solomonic baby-splitting wisdom, is asking the faithful to reschedule their drunken debauchery. While you're at it, if you could just get that abortion moved from this week to, say, the 27th or so, that would be just super. Thanks!
(I don't care about St. Patrick's Day much anyway, as you may have expected by extrapolating from the principles stated in a couple of my earlier posts. For me it's just like New Year's Eve: a day I only "celebrate" by trying to stay off the roads, because the chances of getting wiped out by a drunk driver are even higher than usual.)
Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the appliances I use to hold down my kitchen cupboards.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Solving The Wrong Problem
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The problem ISN'T Saint Patrick's Day but the way people choose to celebrate. (See my comment on the previous post.) How we celebrate should be informed by what it is we are celebrating, should it not?
So, my daughter awoke to green bread/toast, with green sprinkles, and green milk. Green is also her favourite colour, so today was just the perfect excuse for such mayhem.
Then she helped me bake a cake, which we coloured green too, to her very great delight. We used a small, heart-shaped pan, so that with three of them we could make a shamrock. We'll never be able to eat it all, but we were thinking of giving the "Father" and the "Holy Spirit" sections to our neighbours!
And we watched the Big Idea story of Saint Patrick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TCB5QhHVJA), which gave us all a laugh.
Now, unless you've given up carbs or dairy for Lent, I doubt that anything we did to "celebrate" Saint Patricks Day could be considered out-of-line for Holy Week.
Since secularism has taken over the major holidays, we've seen Saint Valentine's Day become dedicated to fornication (how horrified would he have been?), Saint Patrick's Day changed to a day of drunkenness (wasn't that supposed to be Purim? "Having drunk enough wine so that you cannot tell the Blessed Mordecai from the Cursed Haman..." but that's a joke, for those of you who can't read the sarcasm see: http://www.aish.com/purimparty/purimpartydefault/Drink_Till_You.asp), and Christmas and Easter become dedicated to the idol "mammon."
So what's the point of celebrating them? There isn't any. Not unless you're celebrating them for the right reason, AND celebrating them the right way (which will follow automatically if the reason is right)!
Sorry, I got preaching again. I tend to do that, which probably has something to do with the reason I went into the ministry. And I know that you're not the easily offended type, and you know that I haven't got the least problem if you want to celebrate everyday as Easter and Christmas (or, more specifically, not celebrating them when or as others do - provided your wife is still willing to put up with you!), but I write this here because it's equally important for Christians (or anyone else who happens to read your strange and wonderous views) to consider that HOW they're celebrating is being observed, and that they should always be ready and willing to say WHY they celebrate as they do (and maybe look for opportunities to say why - or why they DON'T, as does someone else I know...).
Okay, I'll shut up now!
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