You dont have to...

This has been written from the perspective of someone who celebrates Christmas holidays, so it is ‘christmas-centric” but there are  many other celebrations that put stress on families at this time of year.

You don’t have to…

You don’t have to is one of the most powerful reminders of the end-of-year season.

You don’t have to buy gifts.
You don’t have to attend functions
You don’t have to write cards.
You don’t have to spend too much.

We are more and more prone to forget this, the later in the year we get. And it is heart breaking. My friend is about to have her child’s first Christmas, and rather than looking forward to showing the baby off and seeing all the family, she is in a panic state in November, because the obligation to host everyone who wants to come and see baby will bankrupt them while they are only on one income.

I just said, “Do you have to? And her head just about exploded. Mind. Blown. What else would she do, if not decorate, cook, buy gifts for, and host an entire family? When you take a step back, the expectation that a young family with a new baby would want to, let alone be ABLE to do the above is patently ridiculous.

Whatever your religion/spirituality or holiday schedule, there will no doubt be something at the end of the year that puts the pressure on you to deliver “perfection”.

I say, walk away.
This holiday season we are taking the family camping. No presents. No fuss. No stress.
I cannot wait. Yes, I enjoy carols and decorations so there will be tinsel and fairy lights on my tent, and my mum loves Christmas cake, so that will no doubt be in attendance. But once we were actually honest about what was causing stress, it was the cost.
Not just the cost of gifts.
The cost of time and pressure to achieve “perfect memories” every single December, regardless of what else is going on.
I’ve handmade dried orange and cinnamon stick wreaths, chutneys, sweets, truffles, and crafts in an effort to cut costs by making presents, and resulted in a wonderful haze of exhaustion by the time I actually got a holiday. Money isn’t the only cost to Christmas and more and more, as a result of my arthritis I am aware of not wanting to waste the precious commodity that is my strength and energy.

November/December without presents to buy is a special kind of heaven, and the end of year, without trying to bake and decorate is awesome.  What will probably happen is that I will feel like doing a little baking close to the time, and I will. But it will be because I want to and have the energy reserves, and that is how it should be. No obligations.

So go have a chat to your families. Talk about what is needed, what is wanted, and what is painfully pointless tradition.  Empower your family with their own traditions.

Our tradition until this year has been for everyone to bring one gift, and through opening the presents and “stealing” off each other, we finally get to keep the gift we can steal three times.

This Christmas I will be missing my Nan dreadfully, but I will have the memory of tears of laughter last Christmas where we did a “secret Santa steal” and Nan REALLY wanted one of the gifts, and people kept taking it off her. She used her wiles, sneakiness and a bit of blackmail to get it back, and the fun of the challenge was more important than the gift. I have a wonderful photo of her grinning like a loon and clutching something to her chest. Her smile will be one of my favorite memories for years to come, not the gift.

In fact, come to think of it, I can’t remember what the gift was.

 

Some gentle alternatives to consider.

Dinner at a RSA/Pub/Café where each person pays their own way.

‘Bring a plate’ Christmas dinner.

Perhaps a “progressive celebration” where each course is served at a different family member’s house?

A cost limit on gifts.

Instead of gifts, ask that everyone brings an offer of a service which they can provide and use it as a lucky draw to see who gets whose offering?

Why not hold Christmas day two days late, and purchase everything you need in the Boxing Day sales?

 

 

Humanists show the catholics they are not the only ones with a marketing budget!

I’ve tried to write something myself, but I can’t find words better than WOOOHOOO!!
So here is the media brief from their website

Humanists Launch Largest National Advertising Campaign Critical of Religious Scripture

Washington, D.C., November 9, 2010
A national multimedia ad campaign – the largest, most extensive ever by a godless organization - launches today and will include a spot on NBC Dateline on Friday, November 12, as well as other television ads, that directly challenge biblical morality and fundamentalist Christianity. The campaign, sponsored by the American Humanist Association, also features ads in major national and regional newspapers and magazines demonstrating that secular humanist values are consistent with mainstream America and that fundamentalist religion has no right to claim the moral high ground.
The ads juxtapose notable humanist quotes with passages from religious texts, including the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Quran.
The ads then ask the audience to "Consider Humanism."
One example is the following pairing: The Bible: “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” I Timothy 2 (New International Version)
Humanism: “The rights of men and women should be equal and sacred—marriage should be a perfect partnership.” Robert G. Ingersoll, in a letter dated April 13, 1878.




Another pairing is: The Bible: “The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.” God, Hosea 13:16 (New International Version)
Humanism: “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own—a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.” Albert Einstein, column for The New York Times, Nov. 9, 1930.

To see images and videos of the ads and find more information about the campaign please visit: http://www.considerhumanism.org



"Humanist values are mainstream American values, and this campaign will help many people realize that they are already humanists and just did not know the term," said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association.
"Humanists believe in and value love, equality, peace, freedom and reason – values that are comparable to those of moderate and liberal religious people."
In addition to the television ad on NBC, ads will also be displayed on cable channels. Print ads will appear in major newspapers, including USA Today, the Seattle Times, the Village Voice, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Independent Triangle, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and magazines, including Reason and The Progressive. Ads will also appear on Metro trains in Washington, D.C., on billboards on I-95 near Philadelphia and in Moscow, Idaho, and on buses in select cities.
"We want to reach people in every corner of the U.S., from all walks of life, to raise the flag for humanists and show others that they have more in common with us than with biblical literalists," said Speckhardt.
"It's important that people recognize that a literal reading of religious texts is completely out of touch with mainstream America," Speckhardt added. "Although religious texts can teach good lessons, they also advocate fear, intolerance, hate and ignorance. It's time for all moderate people to stand up against conservative religion's claim on a moral monopoly."
All quotes from religious texts were checked by scripture scholars to ensure accuracy, context and proper translation.
The Stiefel Freethought Foundation was the primary sponsor of the Consider Humanism campaign with a $150,000 donation. Another $50,000 was raised from supporters of the American Humanist Association for the launch of this campaign, bringing the total ad buy to $200,000 so far.
The American Humanist Association advocates for the rights and viewpoints of humanists. Founded in 1941 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., its work is extended through over 140 local chapters and affiliates across America. Humanism is the idea that you can be good without a belief in God.

Website blocking a rights violation? Not in USA apparently!

I was a wee bit disturbed by some news that I read this morning on my tea break.
The article revealed a clear breach of church-state separation in the USA, within Indianapolis schools. They are banning students from viewing the websites of certain religions, as well as atheist and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) sites.

Some quotes that I pulled from the offending document regarding banned sites...

"Sites that promote and provide information on religions such as Wicca, Witchcraft or Satanism. Occult Practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or other forms of mysticism, [...] the use of spells, incantations, curses, and magic powers. This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events."

Pardon? How on EARTH have they popped Atheism in with occult and witch-craft? It is one of the very few theologies that DONT subscribe to “magic.”
And how was a man who rose again after death, walked on water, turned water into wine and hung out with hookers NOT part of this ban?

The ban of LGBT sites says that sites can't "cater to one's one's sexual orientation or gender identity including, but not limited to, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender sites".

At first sight this appears to simply be directed toward parental concerns that their children may be exposed to adult themes or content that they shouldn’t be at school. I can’t condemn them for protecting children from unsafe or dangerous sites.
However there is also a section specifically stating that adult content is banned.

So it appears that this LGBT section is banning the kids from viewing anything other than heterosexual Christian, Jewish and Muslim role-models.
How dismal that children sent to a public school in a country founded on the separatism of church and state are being exposed to absolutely no variety of role models involving consenting adults in healthy relationships with each other and their gods.
The real world waiting for them has plenty of variety of relationships, both healthy and unhealthy in the straight and LGBT community. I see no reason for age appropriate sites to be banned to children and young adults questioning their sexuality or belief systems.

So that was distressing but I already had a dismal view of the American public school system, thanks to my exposure while working with young people in the New York state.

Upon further research it appears that the problem began in 2009 but is still current.
The Freedom from religion foundation hit on it when it first started, and have this week reposted the issue – clearly still a problem that has not been addressed.

What I was not aware of is that this is a more widely spread problem than just Indianapolis.

The American 'Children's Internet Protection Act' requires that all schools seeking federal funds through the E-Rate program and Title VI of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, install a "technology protection measure" to protect against access to obscene material, child pornography, and material that is harmful to minors.

Many public school districts in the U.S. have or will be installing filtering software that functions by blocking access to sites that the filtering company has determined are inappropriate.
Some of the companies that are the focus of this report were active in the efforts to ensure the passage of this legislation through the efforts of a trade association called the Internet Safety Association(ISA) and through testimony provided to Congress.
The other major champions of this legislation were conservative religious organizations.

According to Cyberbully.org
“The open secret about content filters, besides the fact that they can be easily hacked, is that many of the site lists used in these filters had their genesis with conservative Christian organizations”

“Some of the filtering companies appear to have partnership relationships with conservative religious organizations. Some filtering companies have been functioning as conservative religious ISPs and have recently established new divisions that are marketing services to schools. Most of the companies have filtering categories in which they are blocking web sites presenting information known to be of concern to people with conservative religious values -- such as non-traditional religions and sexual orientation -- in the same category as material that no responsible adult would consider appropriate for young people. “

“Because filtering software companies protect the actual list of blocked sites, searching and blocking key words, blocking criteria, and blocking processes as confidential, proprietary trade secret information it is not possible to prove or disprove the hypothesis that the companies may be blocking access to material based on religious or other inappropriate bias. This situation raises concerns related to student's constitutionally-protected rights of access to information and excessive entanglement of religion with schools.”

So in summary, if your provider of filters origionated from a religious organisation you may find more that just objectionable material being blocked from your kids.

I would hope that even if my teenage son or daughter was in the grumps with me, that at the very least they could go to school and use the computers to look up something they needed to know – rates of homosexuality in young NZ men for example.

The internet has a lot of flaws and filth within it, but its major strength is that no one should feel alone with the variety of the world at their fingertips.



I would be VERY interested to know what programmes are used in New Zealand schools.
Does anyone have a way of finding out? I would hope that our public school system has a stronger level of freedom to it, but there is only one way to find out...