Christmas isn’t far away and I’m already seeing Christmas decorations appear in several stores. The only thing missing these past 30 years is the traditional Christmas toy catalogs. Sears had them including Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney. My brother and I would gaze through these books time and time again, until pages became dogeared and torn.
I’m a traditional kind of guy. Searching page by page through those catalogs was a small part of the holiday ritual I loved most as a kid. Sadly, they’ve went the way of many things, such as fruitcakes and silver Christmas trees, although fruitcakes can still be found in certain stores.
Sadly, Christmas cards is another disappearing holiday tradition. For many years a good assortment arrived from family and friends. With so many of the older generation now gone, and younger people not sending them out, the number of cards received is getting fewer and fewer.
For years, one thing my family has always done before Christmas and throughout the year, is not patronize those places of business that replace the name Christmas with Xmas. I won’t play Monopoly anymore, because the game maker, Hasbro, still uses this blasphemous Xmas definition on one of their Community Chest cards. It’s actually been that way going back to 1935, when the Parker Brothers first released this game.
Tradition has a way of disappearing it seems in not just Christmas, but other areas. I’m a traditional church-music-guy over that of contemporary. There’s nothing wrong with musical instruments in a church service, but when things start sounding like a rock concert, I tune out.
I’ve shed many tears while singing “The Old Rugged Cross” with no instruments whatsoever. The words alone are what penetrated my heart—not booming Ludwig drums or a rattling tambourine. All in all though, if loud music is what draws a person to a place of worship, I’m okay with it. The message is what counts most.
Holiday names are also a traditional thing for me, and I see no reason to change them to satisfy a few. An early episode of “Seinfeld” had George Costanza celebrating Festivus instead of Christmas or Hanukkah. The comical slogan for this event was, “Festivus for the rest of us.” There’s no such holiday of course, and I believe it was a way to poke fun at Kwanza which ironically falls on December 26, one day after Christmas.
A group of folks are out to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Native Day. Please leave Columbus Day alone, and keep Indigenous Native Day separate. Christopher Columbus is a hero from my earliest days of studying history in school and always will be.
Yes, he was the first Italian explorer discovering this part of the world. Others may have been here first but that isn’t the point. I was the first person in McDonalds the other morning but that doesn’t mean I totally own the place. Others came in after me and they sat down as well.
Celebrating Columbus Day is a part of American tradition. History books from my era made no mention of slavery or torture of Indigenous people. If newly written books say otherwise, I’d suggest questioning the people that wrote them. How many of those writers were around in 1492 to actually observe this taking place?
Christopher Columbus and his crew may have used what would be construed as cruel methods when dealing with Native, Indian, or Indigenous people, but if you study the warriorlike Navajo, Comanche, Apache, and Tlingit’s, you’ll find they did the exact same thing to other tribes, along with the Aztecs in Mexico.
George Washington’s Birthday will always be George Washington’s Birthday, instead of the unofficial, President’s Day. Slyly changing names of an existing holiday to another is a sneaky way to invoke wokeness or political correctness. Most of us are wise enough to see through this.
Mt. McKinley will remain Mt. McKinley on my map. Just because former President Barack Obama officially changed the name doesn’t mean that I’ll conform to his way of thinking. If some folks want to refer to it as Denali instead of McKinley that’s okay. My friend has a fully loaded 2018 with all the bells and whistles. It’s a big and luxurious SUV that’ll haul his large family with ease.
When I first moved to Alaska, the airport in Anchorage, was called Anchorage International Airport. Politicians in 2000, changed names to Ted Stevens International Airport. It would now be disrespectful to the late Senator Stevens, if some politicians saw fit to change things once again, as they did with Mt. McKinley. Such talk is being tossed around by leftist Democrats.
There’ll probably come a day when some obscure group decides that Big Rock Candy Mountain needs a name change as well. It wouldn’t surprise me. Of course, they’ll want to name it something that 99 percent of the population can’t pronounce. This seems to be the current line of thinking.
The word moon is of Latin origin. If you watch enough western movies, you’ll hear actors portraying American Indians as saying, “Many moons ago…” This wouldn’t have been the case until after they came in contact with Spanish missionaries.
Undoubtedly, these tribes had other names for the moon besides moon. The Hawaiian name is Mua’Dib. In Gwich’in, the word for moon is oozrii’. When I researched what other ancient names might be out there, I came up with several unpronounceable ones. The word tłʼéʼgonaʼáí is moon in Apache. “Many tłʼéʼgonaʼáí ago…” just doesn’t cut it where Cowboy and Indian movies are concerned.
Thus far, no Indigenous tribes that I know of have proposed changing moon back to their original tongue, with perhaps that being a good thing. Having some Choctaw blood in my veins, I feel I can make light of this subject without undue criticism. I’m sure my Indigenous ancestors wouldn’t mind, those with a sense of humor even getting a chuckle or two.
On a serious note, it goes against the grain for me to follow anyone attempting to change my mindset to theirs, especially politicians, where religion, politics, and history is concerned. I won’t conform to secular belief at all on these three subjects.
Over the years, I’ve observed some friends and family conforming to the way of the world, as well as television news channels, newspapers, and in one case, a pastor. Aligning with political correctness and woke policies instead of Biblical principle are good examples of conformity. The great evangelist Billy Graham said this about non-conformity:
“There are multitudes of people who do not give themselves to Jesus Christ, because they have conformed to this world. They are afraid of being called fanatic and pious. A true Christian is a nonconformist. This is our reasonable service to the Lord.”
To that I say, Amen.
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