Angry feminist rails against true meaning of Christmas
Frankly, if you want to instill more relevant modern values into your children, you’d be better off sticking with the Dickens tale, which emphasizes the importance of love and generosity. The story of Christ’s birth, on the other hand, is about how virgins are better than non-virgins, with a side dose of arguing that babies who haven’t done anything yet can still be superior to everyone else by accident of birth.
~ Ebenezer Scrooge Amanda Marcotte insisting that we take Christ out of Christmas, Slate, December 24
[HT: Legal Insurrection]
Dec.26, 2012 6:00 am |
Feminism, The Church |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Amanda – still pining for paganism?
Go reread Hosea several times – or is infidelity desirable?
Either way, you probably should give up the bitterness – it’s killing you.
Or is that pain we see peeking through?
I am praying for you Amanda.
Chris,
The rage, the anger, the bitterness all point to the pain.
We see it all the time don’t we?
Can the proaborts round up ANY new arguments for 2013?
We have refuted them all and they are still crowing the same ol same ol.
yawn
Uh, the story she refers to is called A Christmas Carol and the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ became popular after the book became popular.
Amanda should have done her homework because Dickens was a Christian and he intertwined his faith in Jesus in the theme and characters in the story. In a letter regarding the book, Dicken writes, “All my strongest illustrations are derived from the New Testament. All my social abuses are shown as departures from its Spirit. All my good people are humble, charitable, faithful, forgiving, over and over again. I claim them in expressed words as disciples of the Founder of our religion.” An example in the book is the three spirits representing the Trinity but there are more examples to be found.
In a different work entitled The Life of Our Lord, Dickens writes about the four Gospels. He dedicates the book to his children saying, ”My dear children, I’m very anxious that you should know something about the history of Jesus Christ for everybody ought to know about Him.”
Keep promotingA Christmas Carol, Amanda. It further puts Christ back into Christmas!
You know, I heard a considerably smaller amount of grumbling about Christmas vs. [other winter holiday] this year than I have for a long time. Maybe this is a small-reference-pool thing, but I think people just got fed up with all the stupidness about trying to un-religion a religious holiday.
I think Marcotte is, on this as on many other things, doomed to disappointment.
Poor Amanda.
In railing against the Nativity and promoting Ebeneezer Scrooge’s love and generosity, she speaks in the voice of the pre-conversion Scrooge.
Ironic? Nope.
Vintage Amanda.
So, did everybody have a great Christmas?
This is the problem of our era: it’s not that people do not understand Christianity, it’s that they understand it only too well. And very often these days, those who understand it well utterly despise it. Case in point here.
Yes, God did choose to give a devout virgin rather than an irreligious prostitute the honor of giving birth to Jesus. And yes, Jesus was, as ‘Silent Night’ says, Lord at His birth. Christianity does have a message that God values chastity, and not sexual ‘freedom.’ Christianity does make Jesus the sovereign king of the world. Amanda, for obvious reasons, wants no part of this. She, rather than God, must be the total master of her own life (not to mention the life of any children she should conceive).
“So, did everybody have a great Christmas?”
Lol, I actually went to a church service on Christmas. Surprised? :p It was okay. How was yours JDC?
The irreligious prostitute WAS one of King David’s ancestors (Rahab of Jericho who tied a red cord in her window and whose whole family was spared by Joshua) and King David is an ancestor of Jesus. Or we can discuss the woman who for a day played prostitute which also earned her a spot in Christ’s lineage (Tamar, who had intercourse with her father in law after his second son refused to marry her). Or maybe we can discuss all the irreligious prostitutes that Jesus befriended, healed, and loved. He told the Pharisees that the tax collectors and prostitutes were getting the Kingdom of God while they self-righteous were not.
Amanda’s sexual history isn’t what’s keeping her from God’s love: it’s her granite-hard heart.
Merry Christmas Carla! (Also to your whole family!)
I pray for Amanda too. Would love to know how the Lord meets people exactly where they are.
Lately I’ve been sensitive to my own snark and cynicism, knowing it’s all too easy to give in, when what’s needed is reserve and steadfastness.
Christianity is still more honoring to women than paganism.
Why Christmas Comes In The Cold
By Denise Noe
In almost any context, cold
represents lack of feeling;
winter, the heart without love–
as dead as the branches of
a fruit, flower, and leaf-denuded tree.
Yet in the time of bitter cold,
Christmas comes a-caroling
when its message of generosity
could not possibly be more bold,
insisting we find the love
held within December’s frigidity.
Yes Ninek, I fully believe that God could have chosen a prostitute as the mother of Jesus, and it’s true that you can find prostitutes in His genealogy. But Amanda is correct in the larger sense that Christianity praises chastity, and condemns sexual promiscuity. It’s not good enough for her that God loves sinners – God must go a step further, and no longer declare certain lifestyles sinful.
In one respect, Amanda is to be commended. She does not try to twist Christianity like many liberal religious people, who change it to fit modern progressive sensibilities.
“How was yours JDC?”
Mine was excellent, spent a lot of time with family members I don’t see nearly often enough. So all in all, I was happy with it.
Dr. Nadal is right on the mark. Marcotte sounds like the pre-conversion Scrooge. Especially concerning his views of the “surplus population.”
best Christmas EVAR. I hope everyone else had a spectacular holiday. :)
Mine was good. I’ve been mostly sacking out, doing nothing productive, and watching TV on the internet.
And it is glorious! :D
Merry Christmas all!!
Chris, Hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas!!
Does anyone know if Amanda is post abortive? Just curious. All of that venom spewing has a source. Yikes.
Wonder how she spent Christmas Day?? Ignoring the reason for the season. Or trying to maybe??
Apparently, Amanda has never actually read the book “A Christmas Carol.”
Exhibit A:
’There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Exhibit B:
‘As good as gold,’ said Bob, ‘and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.’
Exhibit C:
[Scrooge] went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure.
Exhibit D:
And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
Can the anti-choicers round up ANY new arguments for 2013?
We have refuted them all and they are still crowing the same ol same ol.
yawn
Abortion will continue, same as ever, it won’t be stopped.
Abortion will continue, same as ever, it won’t be stopped.
Then why bother coming here to try and talk some sense into us, Reality?
Reality says:
We have refuted them all
Hahahahahaha! Good one.
“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens reminds me of another beautiful Victorian classic, “Silas Marner” by George Eliot. Both focus on the feelings of MEN for children. This is important since they don’t have the biologically based connection to the next generation that women do. Both also focus on men who have become obsessively stingy but are rehabilitated and made whole through their love of children even though they are not in a “father” or other relative relationship to the child for whom they come to care so deeply.
Rape will continue, same as ever, it won’t be stopped.
Murder will continue, same as ever, it won’t be stopped.
Child abuse will continue, same as ever, it won’t be stopped.
Second verse, same as the first…
“Then why bother coming here to try and talk some sense into us, Reality?” – to help you come to realise that there are far more beneficial ways to expend your time, money and energy. And to help anyone who comes here and is undecided to be correctly informed.
Women will still be able to vote
Blacks will still be able to vote
Women will still be able to have bank accounts
Blacks will be free, not owned by others
Women will have the right to choose
The verse of freedom.
Hey JDC! I went to a Christmas Eve mass. Totally a random long story. But I had fun helping the 6-year old find al the quiet, unobtrusive ways I used to entertain myself during church when I was a kid. Looking for the next hymn in the book, picking a keyword and counting the number of times it’s said (IN YOUR HEAD dude, not out loud!) etc. My goal was to keep the kids quiet enough that I could listen and keep on top of all the “and also with your spirit”s. Success!
Far more difficult was pulling off a Santa scheme in a small 2-bedroom apartment with two kids who refuse to close their bedroom door. But we did it somehow. At 2am, 2.5 hours before they woke up. :/
I had a kind of Christmas Spirit miracle, though. I unexpectedly came into some extra holiday cash and I really wanted to save it towards buying an ipad, to reward myself for all the hard work and just hard times over this last year. But I decided to buy a bunch of stuff for two of my friends who are single moms, instead. Clothes and toys for their kiddos, nice lotions and lip balms for them. One of them also recently had her iPad (a gift from her college for winning an academic award – it floors me that she’s such a great student while raising a 4-year old alone) shattered by a friend of her son, so I got a gift card to contribute towards replacing it, because its been so huge in her life and her son’s – it’s a library, a textbook, a TV, and more in one, etc, and she was just really disappointed to lose it in her life. I sent the packages as an anonymous surprise because I just wanted to give something unexpected, if that makes sense (they both guessed it was me eventually though, lol). I was happy with my decision and it brought me so much joy to see pictures of their kids in their Christmas pj’s on Facebook.
To be honest, I just kind of wanted to vanish this Christmas, disappear as a person, an entity, an identity, and just give things to other people. I wanted to just fade away in a puff of spreading joy – just retreat and stop feeling things for a while, not like die or anything but just explode into a million kind gestures and then exit stage right, hole up alone and forgotten for a few days. I work a lot around the holidays so my gentleman and his kids left without me to visit their grandmother, and I just wanted to kind of wallow a bit in the afterglow. I looked forward to it dully for weeks, in some sad way. I couldn’t even muster up the energy to want anything (except wool socks; I always want more wool socks). With everything between my parents being so horrific, my mom went somewhere warm to get away for the holidays, and I was happy for her but also just depressed. Selfishly, I felt like it was the end of Christmas being “about” me, for the one person for whom it was always “about me” – my mom – I don’t mean in a bad way but just, like, this is it, for the rest of my life I will mostly give rather than receive, and that’s a great feeling but I also just felt very…old, and kind of alone in a weird way. Like the things I want can’t be given. I figured I wouldn’t get anything from my mom because of the expense of the trip, which was fine with me. Imagine my surprise when I opened a gift from her and saw an iPad – exactly what I nearly put my bonus money towards! I know it’s not about the presents etc and all that, but opening that iPad just felt like the world cared about me after all. Like somehow this thing I never hardly even dared to tell even myself that I wanted, was given to me by someone I thought was finally free of always knowing what I want, even when I don’t. AND I got to give everybody else things I wanted to give them. I got to give away my bonus and get something even more in return. I am not really articulating it well but it just made me feel oddly cared for and remembered. Not really by my mom, though her too, but just, in general.
I am fully aware of how spoiled this sounds! :P Fortunately I’ve got to go back to work now so I cant twist myself in knots trying to explain it better.
You certainly have had an effect on me; I’ll give you that, Reality.
Let’s see, since I first met you here I’ve:
added a prolife bumper sticker to my vehicle, started wearing a prolife pin and bracelet, started teaching and talking to teens about the prolife movement (even in a public school setting – gasp!), sent out a Christmas card with a check to a pregnancy center, encouraged a pregnant teen couple, prayed at a Planned Parenthood, attended several prolife dinners/talks, stood up to a proabort gynecologist, started an abstinence program at my parish, written to legislators, handed out prolife materials, forwarded prolife emails/blogs to others and all in all become way more outspoken for Life.
Keep encouraging me! I will be doubling my efforts in 2012!
LOL Reality!!
Thanks. I needed that. :)
GO Praxedes GO!!!
“I will be doubling my efforts in 2012!” – can I donate a ‘Doh!’ for you?
Hey, I support your right to choose what you determine suits you best Praxedes.
And while I’m happy for you to be wasting your time and energy in your pointless pursuit of the ending of abortion, I am a bit disappointed that you haven’t yet seen fit to do something which is actually worthwhile and might make a positive difference.
Its the things you say which are encouraging me to consider reading more Peter Singer in 2013.
Abortion will continue, same as ever, it won’t be stopped.
The bloodlusting must continue…muahahaha!
(the REAL “Reality” says)
Get over yourself “Reality”…really.
“The bloodlusting must continue…muahahaha!” – aha, more irrational rhetoric. It is quite obvious that it is you who needs to get over something Pamela.
LOL…funny coming from YOU, Reality!
The fact that you think you’re “correctly informing” anyone about abortion shows just how ignorant and uneducated (about abortion) your side REALLY is.
Go on then Pamela, explain to me exactly how “The bloodlusting must continue…muahahaha!” is accurate and educative :-)
By accident of birth, huh? Is that anything like getting a Nobel Prize just in case you do some great things as president? Bwaah!
There is not much point in debating with “Reality.” Just be glad that s/he wastes hisher time here, where s/he can’t do any damage.
We need to devote our time and money to helping the desperate women and their children, before the abortion profiteers prey upon them.
I send money every month to a crisis pregnancy center. They help women with safety, job training, material needs and parenting skills — for up to three years after a child is born. But crisis centers don’t get half-a-billion dollars each year from Obama to cover for pimps, sexual abusers and to kill children, and they can’t defraud MedicAid. So we have to help them.
I feel dumber just reading today’s quote.
A person can get a lot of messages out of the birth of Christ. The view that virgins are better than non-virgins? What?
Come on – if you don’t like Christianity, at least come up with a sensible argument.
You don’t sound spoiled, Alexandra. It was really nice and selfless of you to help out your single mom friends instead of spending your (well-deserved) money on yourself, and it just ended up that the “pay it forward” principle worked out for you. :D
Ex, I totally agree with you! Oh, it’s a Christmas miracle ;>)
ninek -
Ha!
Hope you had a great Christmas.
Yes, and that baby who was better than everyone else also got to grow up in poverty and then be tortured to death. So unfair.
Seriously, though, being jealous of baby Jesus? What went wrong in this woman’s childhood?
” Seriously, though, being jealous of baby Jesus? What went wrong in this woman’s childhood?”
Lol, good point. I have my issues with Christianity, but I don’t think I have ever complained about baby Jesus. It’s just a strange, strange thing to complain about. How dare Christians celebrate a baby being born? It’s silly.
Without His birth we wouldn’t be celebrating His resurrection!!
I thought that TOLERANCE of other’s beliefs was oh so important!!?? Except for followers of Jesus right? Perhaps Amanda could answer that one for me.
I’d love to see the reaction if a pregnant abstinence pledger came out with the story that Mary is said to have told.
Why?
“abstinence pledger?”
Really? That is what you call them??
It would make for an enthralling psycho-sociological study.
How many people would believe it?
‘Who’ would believe it?
Why would they believe it?
Would the level of belief change over time?
What impacts over time could affect the level of belief and who the believers are?
It wasn’t meant to be a term of denigration. There are people who claim to practice abstinence and some of them actually sign pledges. Why?
“There are people who claim to practice abstinence and some of them actually sign pledges. Why?”
Why not? It’s a valid sexual lifestyle, not any worse than anyone else’s.
Gees Jack, I didn’t mean why do they sign pledges, I meant why did Carla ask if that’s what I call them. :-)
Lol sorry I didn’t see Carla’s edited post. Carry on then.
I have been a long time reader. This is my first time commenting. I guess reality finally got to me. I was adopted in 1972 by amazing, loving parents! I spoke with my birth mother in November for the first time. It is fine that you don’t believe abortion will end. It may not but if we can save one like me it will be worth it. Also, I do not know your religious views but I know that when I die I will stand before God and those that will be able to say they were on the side of life and knew that Abortion was murder will fare much better eternally. Isn’t there some sort of pro-choice blog you can go check out? You aren’t going to change our minds. They are babies and they are murdered because it is legal to do so.
Reality,
Because I have never heard that before.
Abstinence pledger. ?? I thought that proaborts were so very concerned with “minding their own business.” What business is it of yours??
Anywhoo….have fun with your imaginary psychological study……REALITY!! It is just another bunny trail that you are hopping down to avoid the truth of what abortion does to an innocent human being. Nothing new under the sun.
Hi Katie!! Welcome. :)
Hi Jack. :)
Hi Jack! I thought of you yesterday.
I spent my Christmas with my in-laws who spoil my boys too much! My oldest boy was overly excitable and there were toys strewn everywhere. My 9 month old sat in the pile and just watched his big brother with awe. It was fun to have my baby on the outside this year. Just think, a year ago he was just a fetus! And now he is this little PERSON, lol. I still don’t understand how that happens!
Reality, I am still waiting for you to refute one pro-life truth. You’ve yet to hit even ONE. ONE!!
Hi Katie, it would appear from your comments and semi-rhetorical questions that you haven’t actually read much of what I’ve said. But that’s ok.
“Because I have never heard that before.” – ok, I’m mildly surprised. Just type ‘abstinence pledgers’ into your favorite search engine, say ‘no’ when it asks if you mean ‘abstinence pledges’ and you’ll see, starting with wiki of course.
“What business is it of yours??” – in this particular instance I couldn’t give a rats about why they are abstinence pledgers, nor the stupidity of it. It is simply that this would probably be the most relevant group from within which a ‘virgin birth’ may be claimed.
“have fun with your imaginary psychological study” – I wouldn’t conduct it, I’m not a psychologist or sociologist, but it’d be interesting to know the outcomes.
Would you believe a pregnant abstinence pledger who came to you and claimed goddidit? Why?
“just another bunny trail ‘ – thats odd, I thought this thread was about someones criticism of the whole jesus/mary/virgin thing. Or was it just you who missed that.
“I am still waiting for you to refute one pro-life truth” – I’m still waiting for there to be any to refute.
Reality said: And while I’m happy for you to be wasting your time and energy in your pointless pursuit of the ending of abortion, I am a bit disappointed that you haven’t yet seen fit to do something which is actually worthwhile and might make a positive difference.
So working to encourage others to preserve the life of a pregnancy so that a human being in the earliest stages of develop may actually be allowed to continue developing and be born insteading of having it abruptly ended isn’t a worthwhile and positive pursuit?
This just makes me sad.
Reality: Would you believe a pregnant abstinence pledger who came to you and claimed goddidit? Why?
It’s called faith. God can do whatever He wants. However, He doesn’t need to do it again. Jesus already was born. He already came, died, rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven. As it says in the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds: “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
The bottom line is, either you believe it happened & that God can do what He wants or you don’t. Nobody can force you of course, any more than you can force anyone NOT to believe.
The story of Christ’s birth, on the other hand, is about how virgins are better than non-virgins, with a side dose of arguing that babies who haven’t done anything yet can still be superior to everyone else by accident of birth.
Wow Amanda, you are really touchy about that virgin thing, aren’t you? I’ve heard the story of Christ’s birth all my life, despite being raised in a heathen household. I never got the message from this story that virgins were better than nonvirgins. That just wasn’t the point of the story to me.
The point of Mary being a virgin was that the birth was miraculous, because it’s not a normal thing for virgins to give birth, much less to a son. It’s possible for an egg to start growing on its own, if it’s pierced just right. But the offspring of that is ALWAYS female. This is extremely rare however. But only people with modern knowledge of genetics and biology would know about that. So for a virgin to give birth to a son is known to be miraculous, even in our modern day. It violates all the laws of nature. But that’s the whole definition of a miracle, something happens in the physical world that violates the laws that the physical world usually operates on.
So that was the point of Mary being a virgin, so that people would know that the birth of her son was a huge God breathed miracle. God had to choose a virgin for that reason. It had nothing to do with saying that virgins were better than anyone else.
And why are you so bothered by the idea that a baby, “who hasn’t done anything yet,” could be better than everyone else, “by an accident of birth? Do you judge the worth of a person by what they’ve done? Or has the accident of birth thing given you the short end of the stick?