A post at Assorted Babble made me think just a tiny bit. So here are my thoughts, unoriginal and well-tread though they are.

    Some people complain that there is some attempt being made by persons or organizations unknown to remove “Christ” from “Christmas”. They bemoan that Christmas is becoming a secular holiday.

    Humans change things just as they themselves change over time. Human societies change, too. Fighting it tooth and nail, or trying to turn back the clock to some mystical golden past (which was never as good as we remember it) is pretty non-productive.

    Americans, for the most part, celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday. It’s become more a celebration of consumerism than anything else, even by people who think they are celebrating Christ’s birth.
    I mean, do you really think that the Christian God would want us to celebrate the birth of his only begotten son by buying one another iPods, leather gloves, and Chicken Dance Elmo?
    Or do you, like me, expect that He’d rather we simply get together with friends and family, love one another, and perhaps help those who are less fortunate than us?

    Well, which holiday does America celebrate? The one where we get together, love one another, and help the less fortunate? Or the one where we blow our savings on mammon?

    Yeah, I think so too. Regardless of how you feel about it, Christ is ALREADY removed from Christmas, and has been for years. And every single Christian who buys a knick-nack or a piece of consumer jimmy-cracky for someone who doesn’t need it is part of the problem, even if they hypocritically complain about the de-Christification of the holiday.

Disclaimer: SafeTinspector does not espouse any specific religion, as he is a free-lance Gnostic (not a-gnostic). But SafeTinspector hates hypocrisy more than just about any other human failing.

I know, I know, everyone just loves a SafeT’unes update.
But you get one anyway. Two pieces today, both short.

• Lack of Discipline in December – self explanatory piece. Only 2:38.
• Cold and Crisp to Gusting…snow – One of my piano sketches. Intended to evoke a feeling, in 38 seconds flat.

(I was reading shoopska’s blog and was reminded of this…)

    I work in a small company; our company, in turn, works for bigger companies.

    Frequently these companies are lifeless places where everyone shuffles about from one spot to another, exchanging cliches instead of conversing, carrying their styrofoam cups of coffee back to their desks and slicing the seconds off their lives like tablespoons off a stick of butter*.

     Across from where I worked at one such company was small cubical. I never really saw the fellow who worked there. I mean, I’m certain that I saw him with my eyes, but he never left an impression strong enough for me to remember him by.

     One day he quietly retired, and I didn’t even notice he was gone for several weeks. It was only when his calendar had gone out of date that I realized there was no one in that cubical anymore, and I stepped in to investigate.

     It was one of those calendars in which each month sported another inspirational message. You know, like “Attitude is Everything,” or “You Miss Every Shot You Don’t Take.”

     On the month he retired he hand-wrote “bye!” in the bottom right-hand corner. I lay my hand upon the calendar and traced his handwriting with my fingertip.
     ”Bye,” I said under my breath and then stepped back out of the cubical.

     The cube was left empty for almost a year afterwards, and no one changed the month or took the calendar down.

     I often wondered how he would react if I called him at home and told him how he had affected me, and how long his final message had been left up on that fabric partition.

     But I didn’t have his phone number, and never felt bothered enough to try to track it down.

* butter, hmm… I say let the metaphor stand!

(taken from a comment I left at another blog)

Those who choose the ascetic lifestyle of the gartoculator, gartoculating as they do wherever a gart requires it, must exhibit the patience of Job to do the job right.

As a youth I considered, briefly, becoming my parish’s Gartoculator, and spent many an evening whiling away the wiles of our local ‘ulator. He told me his stories, poured me his wine, and ultimately did credit to his profession by garting me properly over a breakfast nook in his neighbor’s carriage house, which was the custom at the time.

That I instead decided to be the man who anonymously slaughters any and all gartoculators I find by surreptitiously setting them on fire in crowded public places is a story for another time.