Drive the Cold Winter Away

Reason for the Season

When I was in Ocean City, Maryland, earlier this month most of the businesses were closed for the season. I was a little shocked at how much this was true; Savannah, Georgia, is a similar sort of town but has a large enough resident population that even in the depth of winter pretty much everything is still open. Not so here! Not just hotels and restaurants and bars but grocery stores and other purveyors of regularly-required necessities were shut down. 

Of the few hotels that were still operating, one of them had on its sign, "Let's keep the Christ in Christmas," or something similar to that. This greatly upset one of the comrades I had come to see, who felt it was exclusionary, perhaps even discriminatory, when displayed on a public accommodation. I said that I thought they should grant the Christians the justice of the statement, and, ah, 'turn the other cheek.' 

That is not the spirit of what has come to be known as "liberalism," which used to mean "being ok with other people disagreeing with you." Today's Asheville Citizen-Times presents locals with a lecture from a retired superintendent from Vermont who has, like so very many before him, chosen to move South and then lecture us about how we need to change to be more like it is up North.

Naturally, the newspaper was delighted to publish the letter.

Opinion: Christmas season not about religion, but about pure and simple love 

[Really? Not at all about religion? -Grim]

It is the time of the year that we are compelled to tell this wonderful story. In reality, the circumstances and conditions of this story are foreign to many of us. It is a story about poor people. It is a story about people of color. It is a story where might and wealth are on the opposite side. It is a story of Arabs. It is a story of Jews. It is a story of Phoenicians, at least that is what we are led to believe. It is a story where pieces and parts from separate Biblical writings are pulled together to give us a compelling version of what happened.

Most know what story I am talking about. While it is a story that is embraced by the Christian faith, it might also be embraced by people of all faiths or people of no faith at all for it is a story of love.

That's enough to give you the flavor of the thing; you can read the rest if you want to, but you've probably read it before. The man was a career educator, which explains a great deal about the state of our society.