"Old woman!"
Dec. 23rd, 2007 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciroccoj"MAN!"
"Old man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?"
"I'm 37."
"What?"
"I'm 37, I'm not old!"
Well, I'm not a man, but I am 37 as of today :) :)
Feeling almost unpleasantly full after a lovely birthday trip to the Green Door restaurant. The part that was not quite so lovely was the part where we were hopping puddles. Yes, puddles. It is raining. On December 23, in Ottawa. I'm all for new experiences, normally, but... this one I could do without.
Kids did their end of term Spanish concert yesterday at Heritage language class. Cute; they were elves for a Spanish language Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, which I didn't even know came in Spanish. Viva y aprenda, I guess.
Funny thing, the other heritage language classes were also doing their Christmas activities, and I had to shake my head at the idiocy of some people. Here are folks who come every Saturday to help kids learn the language of their parents - at our school they do Spanish, Arabic, and Hindi - and most of them are not Christian or of European descent, but they were all right into the Christmassy mood. One of the Arabic teachers was wearing a bright red overdress and hijab, another had bright green and red. Lots of "Happy Holidays!" chirped out, but also quite a few Merry Christmases. Granted, I'm pretty sure they're not going to church to Christmas mass, and they're focussing more on the holiday cheer, gifts, trees, decorations, songs, etc than the "birth of Christ" part of the holiday, but they're certainly not putting their feet down and demanding that all celebrating in Christ's name cease and desist to spare their feelings.
Which is the type of thing people love to ignore when they go on a tear about how put down and oppressed people are as they try to celebrate Christmas in a multicultural world. There's been a bit of hoopla around here in the last few days over a local school concert where the lyrics of one Christmas song were altered so that they could be more "inclusive;" apparently "Silver Bells" had the word "Christmas" replaced with "festive." People went apeshit and eventually that song was taken out of the playlist, as radio DJs and Editorial pages introduced the story with titles like "Is Christmas Dead?!"
It puts the thing into perspective a bit when you find out that the concert was being billed as a "Christmas Concert" and other songs that were being sung included "Candles of Hanukkah, Candles of Christmas," "Pere Noel" and "It's Christmas." But the teacher running the show wanted to change the words of one song so that non-Christian kids (there's a few of them in Ottawa) could feel more included in the festive season... ergo Christmas = dead.
::sigh::
Here's a fairly well-balanced article on the story. Well - except for the first sentence, "One of the more popular Christmas songs is getting a slight retooling by an Ottawa elementary school choir so as not to offend any students," because... all the other songs were about Christmas/Hannukah, but they tried to take the C-word out of one of the songs "so as not to offend" anyone? ::Scratch head:: This makes sense?
Reminds me of the story on that mall that took down its creche because a rabbi had mentioned to management that maybe they could have a menorah or something out there too. "We wouldn't want to offend anybody," said mall management. To which the puzzled rabbi commented, "I wasn't offended at all; I just wondered why they didn't have a menorah. Who said they had to take their creche down? Wasn't me."
The same year that happened, Chris and I were at Ottawa airport and saw how the airport managed to navigate the tricky perilous waters of multiculturalism: they had their regular Christmas displays, and then over the baggage carousels they had big brightly coloured papier mache dreidels. Must've cost them oh, dozens of dollars.
Why can't we all just get along?
"Old man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?"
"I'm 37."
"What?"
"I'm 37, I'm not old!"
Well, I'm not a man, but I am 37 as of today :) :)
Feeling almost unpleasantly full after a lovely birthday trip to the Green Door restaurant. The part that was not quite so lovely was the part where we were hopping puddles. Yes, puddles. It is raining. On December 23, in Ottawa. I'm all for new experiences, normally, but... this one I could do without.
Kids did their end of term Spanish concert yesterday at Heritage language class. Cute; they were elves for a Spanish language Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, which I didn't even know came in Spanish. Viva y aprenda, I guess.
Funny thing, the other heritage language classes were also doing their Christmas activities, and I had to shake my head at the idiocy of some people. Here are folks who come every Saturday to help kids learn the language of their parents - at our school they do Spanish, Arabic, and Hindi - and most of them are not Christian or of European descent, but they were all right into the Christmassy mood. One of the Arabic teachers was wearing a bright red overdress and hijab, another had bright green and red. Lots of "Happy Holidays!" chirped out, but also quite a few Merry Christmases. Granted, I'm pretty sure they're not going to church to Christmas mass, and they're focussing more on the holiday cheer, gifts, trees, decorations, songs, etc than the "birth of Christ" part of the holiday, but they're certainly not putting their feet down and demanding that all celebrating in Christ's name cease and desist to spare their feelings.
Which is the type of thing people love to ignore when they go on a tear about how put down and oppressed people are as they try to celebrate Christmas in a multicultural world. There's been a bit of hoopla around here in the last few days over a local school concert where the lyrics of one Christmas song were altered so that they could be more "inclusive;" apparently "Silver Bells" had the word "Christmas" replaced with "festive." People went apeshit and eventually that song was taken out of the playlist, as radio DJs and Editorial pages introduced the story with titles like "Is Christmas Dead?!"
It puts the thing into perspective a bit when you find out that the concert was being billed as a "Christmas Concert" and other songs that were being sung included "Candles of Hanukkah, Candles of Christmas," "Pere Noel" and "It's Christmas." But the teacher running the show wanted to change the words of one song so that non-Christian kids (there's a few of them in Ottawa) could feel more included in the festive season... ergo Christmas = dead.
::sigh::
Here's a fairly well-balanced article on the story. Well - except for the first sentence, "One of the more popular Christmas songs is getting a slight retooling by an Ottawa elementary school choir so as not to offend any students," because... all the other songs were about Christmas/Hannukah, but they tried to take the C-word out of one of the songs "so as not to offend" anyone? ::Scratch head:: This makes sense?
Reminds me of the story on that mall that took down its creche because a rabbi had mentioned to management that maybe they could have a menorah or something out there too. "We wouldn't want to offend anybody," said mall management. To which the puzzled rabbi commented, "I wasn't offended at all; I just wondered why they didn't have a menorah. Who said they had to take their creche down? Wasn't me."
The same year that happened, Chris and I were at Ottawa airport and saw how the airport managed to navigate the tricky perilous waters of multiculturalism: they had their regular Christmas displays, and then over the baggage carousels they had big brightly coloured papier mache dreidels. Must've cost them oh, dozens of dollars.
Why can't we all just get along?
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 01:25 am (UTC)"Old man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?"
"I'm 37."
"What?"
"I'm 37, I'm not old!"
Well, I'm not a man, but I am 37 as of today :) :)
Happy birthday! And ha, I thought that same thing when I turned 37 this past November.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 01:46 am (UTC)You're so YOUNG!!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 04:33 pm (UTC)Anyway, this year they built this huge "Santastic" display: a huge village complete with animated toy factory, snow, etc. that also housed their Santa, and a handy-dandy computer so parents can instantly view and select their child's pictures with Santa. It's huge, garish, and in my mind, a celebration of commercialism not the holiday season.
The rest of the mall is barely decorated at all. Mall management say they donated the money that they would have normally spent on the poinsettia tree to charity, and donated the metal frame for building the tree to the local holiday lights display thingy that raises money for the hospital. But you take one look at that "Santastic" display, and you know that they had to have spent more on it than the flowers would have cost (and they OWNED the metal frame). So really, how generous of them.
The editorial page of the local paper has been alive with criticism of the mall, counter-attacks of "do you people have nothing better to complain about?". There was a demonstration around the fountain where people brought potted poinsettias and stood around the fountain, and then left them there.
Ironically, management has already said they will be bringing back the poinsettias next year.
Go holiday cheer!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 04:34 pm (UTC)Happy Birthday!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 08:36 am (UTC)And it wasn't a mall. It was the friggin' Sea-Tac airport--and it was a Christmas tree, not a nativity. Seattle has a sizeable Jewish population, and their refusal to be inclusive set my teeth on edge last year.