I actually forgot about this until we had some family over for Christmas and a few of them wanted to see it!

A really long time ago (circa 2005), I was in my local county's 4-H fair. I did a number of projects, ranging from models to 3D artwork to woodworking. My last year (that turned out not to be my last year, but I didn't care and didn't go back for my real last year) in the club, I decided to go out with the biggest bang possible. There's a certain family in this 4H fair who is our sort of... nemesis... in the woodworking section. See, my Dad is a professional woodworker, and our nemesis family only pretended to be a professional woodworker, so it was always irksome to have them to beat us out when we decided to not go the extra mile and make our projects look really professional. So my last year? I went for something that everyone we know who professes to be a woodworker has dreamed about making:

Totally a violin. Everything you see (except the strings, of course) was hand made by yours truly. The black bits are ebony wood purchased off eBay for a nice sum, and I forget what the rest is. I didn't go for the whole "real" professional violin, where you carve a little on the wood, then tap on it to see if it makes a certain tone, and I haven't actually tried to have it tuned, yet. There are some... acoustical problems that will arise, due to some misplaced inside parts, but I really don't care.

This dude cleaned up the local 4H fair and went straight to state, where it was defeated by a grandfather clock. And get this. The clock? It was a kit. That's right... My violin was beat out by an unfinished (as in, it wasn't stained and made to look shiny) clock kit that whoever made only had to glue the pieces together. I swear, half the sections in 4H are rigged. I'm not kidding.

Speaking of Christmas, here's what I got this year:

Yeah, man. Big ol' glass chess set that I can't actually set up anywhere because it's so big, two (that's right, two) wolf calendars, a 1980 first edition copy of JRR Tolkien's Unfinished Tales, a 1979 publication of A Tolkien Bestiary, a beanie owl who also happens to be graduating (the owl is me! Get it? I'm wise), some underwear (you better believe it), an Indianapolis Colts t-shirt (not pictured, because it's being washed), and, yes, you're looking at a Rubik's Cube... One that I managed to scramble quite thoroughly and can't, for the life of me, figure out how to put it back together. I was never very good at logic puzzles. Took me hours to do the logic puzzle in Twilight Princess.

I got some other stuff from my grandpa, of course, but it's something I really don't feel like explaining the importance of, so you're just going to have to wonder for the rest of your life. (Or maybe ask me on IMs, if you really want to know.)

This post is about a week late, but I don't really care. I made an interesting discovery while I was in the shower, and I want to write it down somewhere, lest I forget. Seeing as how barely anyone but me reads this, I might as well write it down here, so I can upset everyone who takes this stuff too seriously!

Topic: Christmas Is a Pagan Holiday

You know it is. Everyone knows it is. Everyone, especially lately, Christians and non-Christians alike, has been bringing it up like it's some huge deal. Non-Christians bring it up in an attempt to undermine the Christians who celebrate it, and Christians bring it up in an attempt to explain why they don't celebrate it with everyone else. With all this nonsense about Christmas "taking over" everything else, it's become a big talking point when it comes to trying to crush it. "Well, you know, Christmas was never really about the birth of this Jesus character, so you're just trying to push your religion on to everyone else."

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure... That's the big thing these days: "Christians are pushing their morals on us, so we need to legislate against it and push our morals on them, instead, and make them stop." But that's not the point of this post, really. To all you people making a huge deal out of Christmas' origins, I have this question for you: What do you feel about Halloween?

I know of a few people, who will remain unnamed, who have lambasted me for bringing up the origins of Halloween, and asking them why in the heck they celebrate it. Their response has always been simply: "Well, I don't celebrate it for those reasons. Nobody does anymore, so it's okay." A bit of flawed logic, if you ask me. What do you celebrate, then? It's Halloween, you dress up as the ugliest nasty you can think of and run around to everyone's houses, decorated with black and orange, with carved pumpkins everywhere. It all had a meaning, so long ago. Everyone I discuss it with knows this fact, and still they say that since they don't celebrate those things, it's okay to have that stuff laying around. I suppose I should have asked if it's okay to have a pentagram painted on your floor, even if you don't actually use it for what it's intended. Let me tell you, if you had a pentagram on your floor, I don't care who you are, but I'm running away as fast as I can... But I'm getting distracted...

If Halloween is okay, why isn't Christmas? Halloween has some pretty dark, evil roots, but it's "okay" to celebrate it, because you're not celebrating it the way it was intended. Okay, so why doesn't that apply to Christmas? Nobody celebrates Christmas for what it was intended to be, so it should be okay, right? Well, from the general hysteria and outcry I've been hearing this year, it would make you think twice. (I mean, I know why it's being attacked. "How dare there be a holiday that publicly expresses Christianity, right? Let's promote free speech and expression for our oppressed homosexuals, but let's not allow those nutty Christians any leeway when it comes to what they believe.")

You can not have it both ways. You can't say Halloween is a harmless day of fun, not at all what it was originally intended to be because nobody does that sort of stuff anymore, and then turn right around and say "oh, Christmas, pfft, you know that was originally intended to be a pagan holiday, right?" Either both Halloween and Christmas are okay now, because modern society doesn't celebrate those holidays for the original reasons anymore, or both Halloween and Christmas are not okay, because they have original meanings that are still there in all the symbols of the holidays, even if modern society is too uneducated to understand them. It has to be one or the other. You can't mix it up. Well, you can... But then you're a hypocrite, and that, of course, is what I have made a sort of habit of pointing out lately. Hypocrisy. And that is why I bothered to write about this!

As one of those crazy, right-wing, conservative Republican Christians, I'm going to say... Both Halloween and Christmas have roots in things that have nothing to do with what we celebrate today, but because we don't celebrate them for the same reasons does not mean the original intentions no longer apply. Pumpkins, christmas trees, ugly costumes, wreaths... The works. They all have meanings and reasons, and you may or may not care, but the meanings and reasons are still there. It's like... Sauron's One Ring. It has a purpose and a reason, and even if you try not to use the ring for the original purpose and reason, it still has the original purpose and reason, and it always comes out. It's like hanging a picture of Satan or a pentagram on your wall, because it's "artistic". You hung it there because you like the look of it (a wild example, of course, because who in their right mind would think either of those things looks nice?!), not because you're worshipping it. But does that mean exposing yourself to that kind of stuff is okay because you're not actually using them in their original capacities? Of course not!

I'm not saying Christmas is bad to celebrate. (I am, however, saying Halloween is bad to celebrate.) But I am saying that, yes, Christmas was originally intended to be a pagan holiday, and the trees and wreaths and other things are symbols that were not intended to by symbols of "Christ's unending love" or anything. You can try to tell people that's what it means, but that's not what it means. The wreath is a symbol of life, granted. But, say, the jack-o'-lantern is the symbol of some guy who's forever locked out of both Heaven and Hell and is doomed to wander the world with his little turnip lantern lit by an ember from Hell. Yeah... That's really something I want sitting out on my porch.

It's all up to you, really. If you want to carve pumpkins and go wandering around at night collecting candy, or hang wreaths all over your house, or place a lovely picture of the guy with horns on your TV, you're very welcome to. I might not agree with you or even want to enter your house, but that's my choice, as well. I'm just sick of people ranting about how Christmas isn't supposed to be a Christian holiday when, with the same breath, they rant about how Halloween is okay because it's no longer celebrated the way it was supposed to be. They can make Halloween mean something else, but Christians can't make Christmas mean something else?

Interesting... Very interesting.