{"id":151229,"date":"2023-12-25T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2023-12-25T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=151229"},"modified":"2023-12-24T23:16:28","modified_gmt":"2023-12-25T04:16:28","slug":"merry-christmas-monday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=151229","title":{"rendered":"Merry Christmas Monday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jesus<\/p>\n

I know it isn’t really Jesus’ birthday. That exact date is lost in history, I hear probably in late March or early April. But in a canny political move to attract northerners who celebrated winter festivals, Christmas became an early winter celebration. And let’s face it, when your birthday is celebrated more or less worldwide two millenia after your birth, you should be considered an important guy.<\/p>\n

Even John Prine weighed in on him more than once:<\/p>\n

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He was missing from the time he was 12 until he was 30.<\/div>\n
And I said: “You mean like nobody knew where he was?”<\/div>\n
And he said: “Nobody.” So that kind of like stuck in the<\/div>\n
back of my mind, you know.<\/div>\n
I thought…nobody. One of the most influential<\/div>\n
and controversial figures in the history of mankind<\/div>\n
and nobody knows where he was for 18 years.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
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I snuck away on a fishing trip once with this waitress<\/div>\n
for a couple of days, and by the time we got back to<\/div>\n
Nashville, everybody knew where we were.<\/div>\n
John Prine, “Jesus, the Missing Years”<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
or<\/div>\n
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It was Christmas in prison<\/div>\n
And the food was real good<\/div>\n
We had turkey and pistols<\/div>\n
Carved out of wood<\/div>\n
John Prine, “Christmas in Prison”<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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We live in lucky times. Usedtabe, Christmas wasn’t a season – in Puritan New England, celebrating Christmas was illegal. Credit a certain English fella named Dickens for changing how we now do it up royally.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
And even now, many people say we’ve lost the meaning of Christmas.\u00a0 I have to admit, after spending the Christmas season in a few Central European paces like Germany or Czech, I have a lot of sympathy for those who complain how we have relentlessly over-commercialized perhaps the most important day, in honor of the most important man, in history.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Look at the poor folks in Israel, in Gaza. Look at the Russia-Ukraine area. I suspect Taiwan will soon be added to the list, along with some possible hot spots in northern South America. Let’s be honest, we complain, lib vs. rightists, and the rest of the -sists vs. all the other ists – but no matter what, we are still luckier than almost anyone else on the entire planet.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Be grateful for what Western civilization has brought us. Worship as you choose tomorrow. Or sleep in, if maybe you snuck in communion at the Christmas Eve service like we did. Look at your family, and be grateful several times over for them. Kiss the wife or significant other a few times. Kiss your kids more. If you have grandkids, you are thrice blessed. Friends? Icing on the cake. Got a few special ones I was stationed with, or just happen to know, who enrich my particular piece of turf.\u00a0 Bill, Doug, Mick, Bo, Jim, Combat Sue…you know who you are.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Bless you, your family, your special ones, and let’s hope maybe next Christmas may be a little less turbulent world-wide than this one. Go kiss your significant other again.<\/div>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know it isn’t really Jesus’ birthday. That exact date is lost in history, I hear … Merry Christmas Monday<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,478],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","category-none"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=151229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=151229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=151229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=151229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}