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Current time: March 28, 2024, 7:39 pm

Poll: Are Christian groups promoting "Jesusween" where you live to replace Hallowe'en?
This poll is closed.
Yes
11.11%
1 11.11%
No
88.89%
8 88.89%
Total 9 vote(s) 100%
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Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"
#1
Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"

Reading all the nonsense about "Jesusween" in the news (where some church organisations are recommending that for Hallowe'en "treats" persons give out tracts or miniature Bibles or whatnot) I have come up with a few ideas.

Some police departments have had varying success with "gun buyback" programs, where a person turns in a weapon and the police give them a small fee for it. Perhaps we could take a page from their playbook.

If some little kid comes to your door with a bag full of religious trinkets, tracts, and whatnot, offer them a "buyback": for every one of those items they give to you, you will give them a candy in return. I'll bet your house would quickly become "the cool place" for all the kids wherever this "Jesusween" nonsense goes on.

(Edit: or for a kid who gives you a slew of the stuff, a copy of Darwin's On the Origin of Species)

Another idea: take back a holiday from them. For example, the Winter Solstice has long been celebrated as a time of gift-giving and praise for return of the sun, long before Christians started doing it. Neither gift-giving nor acknowledgement of the shortest day of the year necessarily have to have religious significance.

Last time I checked, atheists had nothing in particular against gift-giving (just some motivations for it), nor did any atheist I am aware of deny the existence of the solstice.

They want "Jesusween," we give 'em "Freethinkermas" or "atheistmas" in replacement for Christmas.

While no one here on the Left side of Nebraska in the village seems to be associated with this Jesusween nonsense, we have loaded up on a large stock of candy for a potential "buyback" programme. And if it turns out to be unneeded, we'll just eat it ourselves.

There is only one church here in the village (Messiah Lutheran, across the street from my house). They are quite aware of the atheist woman and Wiccan man who live as their neighbours, but they don't seem to be planning one of these Jesusween things. Plus their kids like candy too.

Those horrible pagan corporations like M&M/Mars and Cadbury must be stopped! They are corrupting our youth, and turning them toward the Devil!

I am minded of the movie Idiocracy. And it does seem the mean score of the bell curve is shifting to the left (lower) numbers, leaving my wife and me high and dry on the right. (This could have been a plot of the neocons painting themselves as "The Right," when IQ graphs normally show higher scores on the right-hand side of the bell curve. A preemptive strike by claiming the higher intelligence ground?)

Beth's corporeal sacrifice of the FSM is finished baking, it is time to eat and remember that wheat died for our alimentary needs.

"Be ye not lost amongst Precept of Order." - Book of Uterus, 1:5, "Principia Discordia, or How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her."
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#2
RE: Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"
Some interesting ideas there. I particularly like the buyback thing; the only drawback I can imagine is you'd probably get kids deliberately going to the Jesus houses so as to have something to trade with you, thus making the Jesusween nutters think their crap is catching on. Here in the UK it doesn't seem to be much of a problem at the moment, in fact I wasn't even aware of it until I read about it on Pharyngula the other day.

To be honest, though, I find all this hair-splitting over names and things ridiculously petty and a distraction from the real battles. Ok, I know 'they' started it, and it may be more of a problem in countries where religion has a greater hold than it does here, but it seems to me we already have names for these holidays. Renaming one of them Jesusween or Atheistmas is far too contrived to have much of an impact beyond giving certain groups more publicity than they deserve. Personally I have no problem with calling certain days Christmas, Xmas, Easter, etc anymore than I do other religiously-named days such as Saturday, Wednesday or Thursday. The name is traditional and means nothing.

Just my two penn'orth.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist.  This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair.  Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second.  That means there's a situation vacant.'
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#3
RE: Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"
You need an "I don't know." option. Smile
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#4
RE: Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"
Trying to prove atheists can just as stupid as theists?
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#5
RE: Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"
Oh, I only read the poll.

Why bother? Everyday is a holiday when you are a godless heathen.
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#6
RE: Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"
Answer "Jesusween" with Go Fuck Yourself
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#7
RE: Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"
(October 14, 2011 at 11:30 pm)Anymouse Wrote:
Beth's corporeal sacrifice of the FSM is finished baking, it is time to eat and remember that wheat died for our alimentary needs.

That's not true. I did a corporeal sacrifice of the Flying Rotini Monster, the second-cousin-once-removed of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I did this all the while singing "Bringing in the Cheese" - referring to the combination of ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan.

Beth - wondering where I can get IPU cheese to put on the next sacrifice which will be of another of their cousins, the Flying Lasagne Monster, and wondering if such cheese will be invisible or pink? Iff I use corn lasagne, perhaps John Barleycorn is related somehow, and it's well-documented that John Barleycorn must die!
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#8
RE: Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"
If the Christians can change Halloween to Jesusween, everybody else can be entitled to change Christmas back to Saturnalia.
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#9
RE: Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"
Ah, it's wonderful that some things didn't take root here in Scandinavia. We still call Christmas jul or joulu where I come from, and these names obviously stem from Yule. Deliciously pagan names for a holiday in a country that's supposedly Christian Big Grin
When I was young, there was a god with infinite power protecting me. Is there anyone else who felt that way? And was sure about it? but the first time I fell in love, I was thrown down - or maybe I broke free - and I bade farewell to God and became human. Now I don't have God's protection, and I walk on the ground without wings, but I don't regret this hardship. I want to live as a person. -Arina Tanemura

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#10
RE: Answer "Jesusween" with "athiestmas"
The only reasons I have to acknowledge Christmas at all is that my children's fathers are christian, and of course it's important to them to celebrate it and share traditions with our children and the schools shove it in their faces. My kids do not believe in Santa. This upsets the entire family, but how could I expect them to trust in me as a reliable source of information in general, if one day I explain to them why I think that god is just a myth, and the next day fill their heads with bullshit about flying reindeer? I don't care if it pisses my family off, because they're just as upset that the children don't believe in god. Ridiculous. They tell me that I have stolen something from their childhood, but have I? I think all I have stolen is a moment when they will learn that the person who they most love and trust has lied to them. And for what significance? There are so many real things in this world about which to wonder, marvel, and imagine.

I send them off with their dads, they collect their loot, eat their food, see their family, and then they come back to me and we go out for Chinese food. For every present they receive they must choose an old toy to donate to the Goodwill, and then we go on with our lives. It's just another "christian culture day" at my house.

Big Grin
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