Today's Sermon: Celebrate Christ's Mass,Or else, Damn it!

There are so many things wrong with Pastor Patrick Wooden's demand that everyone spew the words Merry Christmas (and they'd better sound like they mean it, damn it!), thus ignoring/negating every other religious/secular observation of the Winter Season, that it's difficult to note them all.

But, of course, your scrivener will try:

This Season, Greetings Are at Issue

A Southern church presses store workers to say 'Merry Christmas,' not 'Happy Holidays.'

By Ellen Barry, Times Staff Writer

RALEIGH, N.C. — This year, as Christmas season swung into gear, Pastor Patrick Wooden's followers fanned out to shopping malls across Raleigh to deliver a muscular message of holiday cheer: As Christian shoppers, they would like to be greeted with the phrase "Merry Christmas" — not a bland "Happy Holidays" — and stores that failed to do so would risk losing their business.

So... if a store dares to treat Jewish, Muslim, Buddist, Urantian, Pagan, or other religious/secular customers with respect, it's days are numbered?

I'm sure Pastor Woodenheart recommends Wal-Mart, where cheap Chinese slave labor goods were manufactured by the hands and machines of Good Christian Laborers... Not!

Nearly six weeks later, some citizens in Raleigh are seething over what they see as an attempt to force religion into the public square.

But others say "Merry Christmas" is rolling off their tongues more easily and more often than in previous years.

Conservative Christians nationwide have converged around the topic of Christmas, complaining that secularists and nonbelievers have tried to obliterate the holiday's religious meaning.

--snip--

"Our position is: If they want the gold, frankincense and myrrh, they should acknowledge the birth of the child," said Wooden, pastor of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ.

Someone had better educate Pastor Woodenheart: Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh were for burial rituals (Gold to pay for the burial, Myrrh to embalm the body, and Frankincense to mask the odor of decomposing flesh).

What an idiot!

Conservative Americans feel ready to push back against "the secularists or the humanists or the elitists" who dominate popular culture, said the Rev. Mark Creech of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, which is based in Raleigh.

"It's a cultural war. We are in the thick of it," Creech said. "It's not so much an attack on us. It's an attack on Christ."

An attack on Christ?

No, Rev. Creech. Christ isn't the target. You are, you sanctimonious asshole.

Throughout history, religious people have fretted over the holiday's secular aspects, said Penne Restad, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of "Christmas in America: A History."

Created by the Roman Catholic Church in the 4th century, the celebration of the nativity coincided with pre-Christian feasts, allowing observant Christians to "then go out the door and participate in Saturnalia," Restad said.

Don't stop there, Penne! Tell the rest of the story: The Romans usurped the Winter Solstice celebration long before the Christians usurped the Saturnalia celebration. LINK

It took a religious court decision to decide that Jesus was actually divine. Even then, early Christians had to learn the age-old lesson: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

I suggest that you google The Council of Nicea, Preacher Men.

In pre-Colonial days, English authorities looked on the holiday as a riot of drunkenness and hooliganism. American Puritans rejected it completely, preferring to get up and go to work. Not until the 1820s and '30s, with the holiday "getting rowdier and rowdier and more destructive," did Americans redefine it as a safe and private family time, Restad said — the "old-fashioned Christmas" celebrated in carols and Currier & Ives prints.

Karal Ann Marling, author of "Merry Christmas! Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday," called complaints about secularization "complete and utter bunk."

"If you think Christmas meant the baby Jesus in the past, it didn't," said Marling, a professor of art history at the University of Minnesota.

--snip--

Wooden, 43, considers the campaign such a success that he has already set aside money in the church budget — full-page ads cost about $7,600 — to buy a similar advertisement next year. Fresh off the fierce debate over same-sex marriage, which he opposes, he says condemnation from the left does not trouble him. On the contrary, he said: "It seems to me the greater the persecution, the stronger the church."

Money makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around

And where will the print ad dollars come from, Wooden?

Tithing = the church = the God of Abraham; therefore, render your hard earned gold unto Wooden and Creech, or God will get you!

As far as complaints from people of other religions go, Wooden looks at it this way: An ice-cream vendor doesn't have to like every flavor he sells.

"There's one group of people who get bullied all the time, and that's Christians," he said. "I know what it is like to be bullied. It is apartheid in reverse — the majority is being bullied by the minority."

Apartheid in reverse? The majority bullied by the minority?

Excuse me, Woodenstake, but you're just plain pig ignorant of recent history.

No surprise there, though.

Apartheid was the power of the white minority over the black majority, you idiot! LINK

Little has changed at Cary Towne Center, where Wooden's members delivered letters in late October: Festoons of tiny lights twinkle from the ceiling, garlands of artificial pine deck the halls, and the word "Christmas" is hard to find. Phyllis Maultsby, who owns the shop Light Years Jewelry, said pressure would not change her holiday decorating choices. LINK

Little has changed at Cary Towne Center...

Trans: You can't fool (or punish) all of the people all of the time, Preacher Men!

It could be worse, folks.

Wooden and Creech could reinstate the Inquisition.

I'm sure they'd like to see more than mere chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

Thus Endeth Today's Sermon.

Go forth and employ the seasonal greeting of your choice...

While you still can.


Later today...

Worst. Christmas Films. Ever.