{"id":311,"date":"2004-12-09T10:38:38","date_gmt":"2004-12-09T18:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/archives\/2004\/12\/09\/christ-christmas-and-credit-cards\/"},"modified":"2004-12-09T10:40:57","modified_gmt":"2004-12-09T18:40:57","slug":"christ-christmas-and-credit-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2004\/12\/09\/christ-christmas-and-credit-cards","title":{"rendered":"Christ, Christmas, and Credit Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehouseblog.com\/\">Randy Jumper<\/a>, an old friend from grad school, just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehouseblog.com\/2004\/12\/09#a185\">post\u00aded<\/a> a won\u00adder\u00adful piece from NPR.<\/p>\n<p>Excerpt:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I\u2019m not fight\u00ading the com\u00admer\u00adcial\u00adiza\u00adtion of Christ\u00admas; that fight was lost ages ago. What I\u2019m after is more rad\u00adi\u00adcal: Dis\u00aden\u00adtan\u00adgling Jesus entire\u00adly from this blight on his good name. I\u2019m out to change the bumper stick\u00ader from \u2018Keep Christ in Christ\u00admas\u2019 to \u2018Free Christ from Christ\u00admas.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Heresy? Well, com\u00adpare Christ\u00admas with Mar\u00adtin Luther King\u2019s birth\u00adday. On his birth\u00adday, nobody ever pays any atten\u00adtion to his birth. Instead, it\u2019s \u2018I have a dream\u2019 and his impact on soci\u00adety. We mark Dr. King\u2019s birth by focus\u00ading on what he said and did as an adult. Christ\u00admas, by con\u00adtrast, has no time for what the adult Jesus said and did. Christ\u00admas keeps him safe\u00adly shut up as a baby in the manger, where he can\u2019t make his usu\u00adal noise about peo\u00adple repent\u00ading and liv\u00ading a god\u00adly life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u2026<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I\u2019m not propos\u00ading that we can\u00adcel Christ\u00admas. I know, the econ\u00ado\u00admy would col\u00adlapse with\u00adout it. Fine. Keep the gift-giv\u00ading and the jin\u00adgle bells. Let\u2019s just sub\u00adtract the remain\u00ading Jesus ele\u00adment from it and move that over into East\u00ader. Call Decem\u00adber 25th Sol\u00adstice. Call it Retail Day. Call it Hol\u00adi\u00adday Num\u00adber Nine. I don\u2019t care, just leave Christ out of it. He was not born to be the patron saint of fourth-quar\u00adter earn\u00adings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Randy Jumper, an old friend from grad school, just post\u00aded a won\u00adder\u00adful piece from NPR. Excerpt: I\u2019m not fight\u00ading the com\u00admer\u00adcial\u00adiza\u00adtion of Christ\u00admas; that fight was lost ages ago. What I\u2019m after is more rad\u00adi\u00adcal: Dis\u00aden\u00adtan\u00adgling Jesus entire\u00adly from this blight on his good name. I\u2019m out to change the bumper stick\u00ader from \u2018Keep Christ \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2004\/12\/09\/christ-christmas-and-credit-cards\" class=\"more-link\">Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cChrist, Christ\u00admas, and Cred\u00adit Cards\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-of-random-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-51","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}