Merry Christmas from SBPDL

We still have a few days of The 12 Days of Christmas to post, but we wanted to take a brief moment to wish everyone reading a Merry Christmas (and pause from any new SBPDL entries).

The 25 of December is a wonderful day as family gather near, old friends call to wish you a Merry Christmas and strangers act a little nicer in an attempt to bring about the best in humanity.

Christmas is a holiday that some believe is being devalued in the United States and turned into an increasingly secular event, as the mere mention of Jesus Christ and the celebration of his birth sends many a Grinch into fits of near spontaneous combustion.

Regardless of what you believe, Christmas has long been a source of controversy in the United States, as Puritans found the day an odious invention of the Catholics and modern Scrooges find the celebration of Christmas an affront to the only Holy Ghost worthy of praise and worship, diversity.

With the erosion of Christmas in America occurring at a speed that outpaces the Polar Ice Caps rapid melting process, you would think that Black people might join the fight to save Christmas, considering that pews are full of Black people on Sunday:

"The center's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted in 2007 on more than 35,000 people, found that 79 percent of African-Americans say religion is very important in their lives while 56 percent of all U.S. adults said the same. Even among African-Americans who are unaffiliated with any particular faith, 45 percent of them say religion is very important compared to 16 percent of the religiously unaffiliated population overall.

Among the various racial and ethnic groups, African-Americans are the most likely to say they belong to a formal religious affiliation. An overwhelming 87 percent of African-Americans identify with a religious group, according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life."

It will be interesting to see if Black people take up the fight in the War on Christmas, or if they decide to be non-participants in a battle that will rage for years to come (indeed, if you could ask a Puritan about celebrating Christmas they would tie you to a tree and flog you repeatedly).

Stuff Black People Don't Like would like to wish everyone in the United States a very Merry Christmas. Allow us to quote from Charles Dickens:

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

Christmas is a joyous day, and it should give everyone an ample opportunity to reflect on the wonder of childhood and the glorious Christmas' of long, long ago, and then the chance to look at your family and think about the simple pleasures of life in the now, the present.

The future will catch up with you quickly and if you don't stop to live in the present, you won't be able to enjoy the simple joys of life.

So on this 25 day of December, in the year of our lord 2009, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.