If you want peace then live alone.

The title today comes from a Blues Traveler song called Look Around. It was in my head and fit what I wanted to write about. Clicking on the title will bring you to a magical Merry Christmas/Happy Holiday Non-denominational near as I can tell celebratory video clip that I found truly amazing. Some people have too much time on their hands!

Because I am preparing myself to live amongst hippies I have begun to pay attention to what people more liberal than me are doing/complaining about. Simultaneously, to keep a grip on what I deem reality I have been watching what nutjobs on the other side of the spectrum are planning/steamed over. Today these two worlds collided in California, or at least on Yahoo News' coverage of California as these two headlines ran:

Wal-Mart Confronted on 'Happy Holidays'
You've got mail, and maybe gonorrhea

I feel like I could just say God Bless America and that'd be enough on these two topics, but let's spend some time dissecting them.

The first story was set in Sacramento, where the Terminator lords over the state with an iron robotic hand. Our good friends the religious kooks staged a protest outside of a Wal-Mart, pissed that the chain used 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas' this year in ads and media spots. As one protestor put it, "Taking the word 'Christmas' out of the holiday implies there's something sinful about it." Actually I don't think that's true. 'Happy Holidays' isn't a phrase that invokes sin to me in any way. What he might have meant is the absence of the root word Christ might cause people to forget that this season is commemorative in theory of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth who many (2 billion) people on Earth believe was the Savior. Although he might've also forgotten that there are 4 billion other people who live here on Earth too and K-Mart doesn't have a 'Merry Ramadan' sign waving across the street. In fact, they don't have a menorah aisle or a Happy Kwanzaa book display in Wal-Mart, like they do for us Christians on our big day. And it isn't important to me to win this debate. 'Happy Holidays' seems pretty polite to me.

Those evil Wal-Mart execs came up with this lame excuse to explain the phrase:
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Amy Wyatt said the company has made no effort to remove Christmas from its holiday ads. She said a promotion set to run from mid-November to early January was simply misunderstood: its slogan is "home for the holidays."
"It was a matter of choosing a slogan that carries through the entire season," Wyatt said. "The signs went up before Thanksgiving and won't be taken down until after New Year's. The idea was to focus on the family." Oh, family...well that's different.

No wait, the rabid zealots continued. About 50 protesters took part in Saturday's demonstration, organized by religious leaders. Dick Otterstad of the Church of the Divide donned a Santa Claus costume and greeted shoppers with the message: Don't forget about the meaning of Christmas.

That's right, put on a Santa costume deacon to remind us about the meaning of Christmas!

But let's take a break and see what our other friends, the gay liberals are doing today in California, just a train ride south in San Francisco...
In an effort to rid the world of HIV, AIDS, STD's and what other sexually transmitted chunks of letters humans can infect each other with, two companies, in LA and San Fran have begun to offer a service that allows people to send an email, often anonymously to casual sexual pertners alerting them that they might've just gotten an STD.

Merry Christmas, I might have just given you a permanent burning sensation!

Happy Holidays...you have herpes.

Doesn't seem to make much difference which one we use in those examples huh?

The only thing dumber than this site, is its proponents:
"This is another opportunity for people to disclose STD exposure to partners because sometimes people don't always have that face-to-face opportunity, or that level of relationship," Karen Mall, director of prevention and testing at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said on Thursday.

That's right it's hard to have that face to face opportunity when you're sexually active with someone. Just ruins the moment to say, 'hey before we do this...' doesn't it?
And how can you attain a level of relationship worthy of disclosing that you might have HIV if you disclose that you have HIV early in a relationship?

"Partner disclosure is where we really have the opportunity to break the chain of HIV infection," Mall said. After making an ass out of herself.

And just when I thought the idea couldn't be more preposterous I read the site allows users to choose one of six free e-cards to send to their sexual contacts either unsigned or with a personal message that avoids awkward face-to-face disclosure.

"It's not what you brought to the party, it's what you left with," says one e-card featuring a picture of a bare-chested man. "I left with an STD. You might have one too. Get checked out soon."

"You're too hot to be out of action," says another.

And here's where our two rants intertwine.

These cards, this site, the whole notion of awkward face to face conversations misses the point of what sex is supposed to be. It should be about two sweaty-palmed kids or two lonely forty year olds awkwardly staring into eachother's eyes and hashing out what they really want and need from one another. Is it crazy to wish people who 'made love' to one another were 'in love' with eachother? I won't even make the case they should be married or even committed though I could, but I'm not a Youth Minister here. I certainly won't tell you I don't like physical contact myself, but how little must you know about the person and how much less must you care if the way you tell them such a big thing is through a damn unsigned e-card?

Sex should be magical, beautiful, wonderful, spiritual, not casual-never procedural.

Sex should not be anonymous.

I'll listen to any group of people try to tell me why they should be able to marry who they want, sleep with who they want, and fall in love with who they do, but I won't let anyone say they can have anonymous casual sex, so much so they send email test results the morning after.

God created sex to be this spiritual connection between two people and these people are missing that larger point and its greater beauty.

In a similar way Santa and the Religious elves outside of Wal-Mart are missing the larger point too.

Is there anything that has less to do with the 'true meaning of Christmas' than our tradition of buying shit for eachother?

Is there any more visible symbol of our dependency on consumption than a Wal-Mart store? These folks ought to be protesting outside the megachurches that aren't having worship on Christmas, or the inner-city churches that don't do any inner-city ministry, or the Christian organizations that spend their money preaching on TV about who to vote for and what leaders of other countries we should assasinate instead of using the power of that exposure to lift people up. They should be outside of my church which doesn't have a budget for mission work and grumbles when we fundraise for youth mission trips. In truth, they probably better be protesting inside their own church if Wal-Mart's ad campaign is this high a priority to their congregation.

When Christmas gets reduced to what we call it-'Holidays', 'X-mas', 'Chrismahannukwanzaa', whatever, it is already lost to its deeper meaning. Call it whatever makes you feel comfortable and let me do the same. I call it Christmas, because that's what the holiday season means to me, but I don't live here alone and it shouldn't be made to be people's only option. Christmas is supposed to be this blessed event in human history, simply occuring whether the world makes note of it or not.

That same man who thought 'Happy Holidays' was so sinful (incidently the idiot in the Santa getup) said, "It is insulting that Wal-Mart has chosen to ignore the reason for the season."

Actually, buddy, and I mean this in the most Christian way in the midst of our most paegented season, no, it is insulting that you've chosen to ignore the reason for the season.

Instead of spending the day at a soup kitchen or working for Habitat for Humanity, or Heaven forbid talking to kids about sex and STDS's you spent the day outside a Wal-Mart making an ass out of yourself and in a way all of us who call ourselves Christians. Unfortunately, Jesus doesn't send us e-cards when we might've been infected by the world.