WND column
The Mystery of Christmas
This Christmas is a season for despair and disquiet for many Americans. Approximately 47.7 million of them, one in every six, are on food stamps. That is 16.1 million more than were being fed by government assistance in December 2008. More than 100 million working-age Americans do not have a job. The U.S. share of global wealth, as measured by GDP, has fallen from 31.8 percent to 21.6 percent in the last 10 years. A full 28 percent of Americans have no savings, not even for emergencies.
Most of us are having smaller and less luxurious Christmas celebrations this season. We are buying fewer and less expensive presents for each other. What has been a vague feeling of uncertainty has given way to the sober realization that we are facing more than an economic bump in the road; many are beginning to recognize that the decades-long party has ended, and the consequential hangover is just beginning.
This Christmas is a season for despair and disquiet for many Americans. Approximately 47.7 million of them, one in every six, are on food stamps. That is 16.1 million more than were being fed by government assistance in December 2008. More than 100 million working-age Americans do not have a job. The U.S. share of global wealth, as measured by GDP, has fallen from 31.8 percent to 21.6 percent in the last 10 years. A full 28 percent of Americans have no savings, not even for emergencies.
Most of us are having smaller and less luxurious Christmas celebrations this season. We are buying fewer and less expensive presents for each other. What has been a vague feeling of uncertainty has given way to the sober realization that we are facing more than an economic bump in the road; many are beginning to recognize that the decades-long party has ended, and the consequential hangover is just beginning.
Labels: Christianity, WND
60 Comments:
I remember mom and dad sitting us down on Christmas back in the 60's explaining what it was really about. I wonder how many parents did the same back then per capita vs today. Have we really changed or just the noise level and stress?
Back then whether Christmas or not almost every thing was required to close by law on Sunday. Now it is just the liquor stores (Texas).
Merry Christmas Vox Day and Spacebunny! And Merry Christmas to the dreaded ilk!!
I remember mom and dad sitting us down on Christmas back in the 60's explaining what it was really about.
Ah, I remember as well. Dad would fill his pipe and we'd all sit around the fireplace. He'd explain why frantic Christmas buying was good for the economy due to the Keynesian multiplier effect.
Back then whether Christmas or not almost every thing was required to close by law on Sunday. Now it is just the liquor stores (Texas).
Hey, an example of increased freedom. Always look on the bright side of life.
The rise and fall of Christendom finds a mirror image in the rise and fall of Jewish polity in the Holy Land. Just before its destruction, they were expecting a Messiah, and the Messiah arrived, but was rejected by the religious leaders of the day. Expectations of a return of the Messiah characterized Christendom through its appointed time, and it too is meeting with its destruction as the religious leaders of the day fell to evolutionism and the worshiping of other Messiahs, just as foretold.
Maybe rejoicing is in order.
Ah, I remember as well. Dad would fill his pipe and we'd all sit around the fireplace. He'd explain why frantic Christmas buying was good for the economy due to the Keynesian multiplier effect.
I think you're making that up.
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"The wheel has turned."
Did... you just make a Wheel Of Time reference? Man. Looks like the Mayan doomsday predictions were about three days too early.
Good column, though. The thing that I wonder about is whether "Christendom" is really ever the form that our faith was ever supposed to take in interacting with culture. It's always struck me as a top-down imposition of politicized Christian values, and while the Western world with its Christian intellectual foundation did accomplish great things, I always have this nagging feeling that "Christendom" missed the spirit of what the faith was really about - and that's why we've been seeing it collapse in Europe.
My hope is that Europe will someday have an authentic Christian revival from the ground up, not because some king converted and decreed all the people would convert or else. Maybe they just aren't ready yet.
The thing that I wonder about is whether "Christendom" is really ever the form that our faith was ever supposed to take in interacting with culture. It's always struck me as a top-down imposition of politicized Christian values, @ Kyle
Rev. 2:6 But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
Nicholans in Greek = Balaam in Hebrew.
Jolly old St. Nicholans.
O HOLY NIGHT
Celtic Woman
That quote by John Adams is as apt today as it was back then. *sarcasm* Yet, you can't tell people that our Constitution's effectiveness is contingent upon a moral people. That's judgmental! *sarcasm off*
"I wonder how many parents did the same back then per capita vs today." I can only speak for my family. My parents certainly did, as did my grade school and high school.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Just read Luke 2 with my wife this morning.
Merry Christmas, Ilk. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords will reign, and I don't plan on letting a little bit of economic collapse get me down. Thanks be unto God the Father! for all that we've had, all that we have and all that we will have tomorrow.
"Those who deny truth do not hesitate to torture law in the service of their lies." - Vox Day
Pure gold. I shall miss your column.
Merry Christmas to all.
Unfortunately I fear a majority of food stamp recipients no longer feel despair for their predicament. They are perfectly happy to live their government subsidized lives, oblivious to how this theft will impact the nation. Of course a majority of Americans are oblivious to the financial peril the country faces.
The bifactional ruling elite, responsible for the predicament we are in, are either thoroughly depraved in seeking the demise of the US (a few, doubtful for most), or really do believe that they can build some kind of neo-Keynsian perpetual inflation machine and pay for everything they want to pay for because debt doesn't matter. (they can't grasp why the Soviet economy's failure predicts their own doom because they are so much smarter than those Russian peasants.) They are the self-proclaimed bright ones, they have no understanding of God and no need for a savior.
Vanity, everything is vanity.
The Messiah sing-along at the Kennedy Center last night was well attended. The lead conducter made sure that no one who joined in the various choruses could possibly not know that they were singing to the glory of God and of HIS CHRIST. Even around the capital there is a remnant. Our hope is not in them, but in their leader, the King of Glory, who has prepared a place for us. Hallelujah! Merry Christmas, Amen.
Ditto on missing the column. The Christmas column was always the best of the year. Loved the shout out to the Starks at the end, Winter is indeed coming.
NORAD is tracking Santa. Fox 4 made a Freudian slip and the guy on the news said Jolly ol' "Satan" has left Japan and is heading across China.
"Approximately 47.7 million of them, one in every six [Americans], are on food stamps. More than 100 million working-age Americans do not have a job."
I don't think you appreciate how many of these "Americans" who are jobless and on food stamps, are not really "Americans" in any meaningful sense, except that they happen to be standing on American soil at the present moment, hoping for free stuff. _Our_ stuff.
Nothing will change until the American people are willing to admit that they are indeed a people, and that this means, by definition, that are other people from other places and cultures and climes are NOT the American people, and will never be, and that not everybody who shows up here with their hand out is automatically an American; and that if we flood our country with non-Americans, then the conclusion will be cold and mathematical and inevitable: this place will simply stop being America.
This particular piece of real estate here on planet Earth in space and time, between the two great oceans, has been called other things in the past; it can be called other things in the future. If we want it to continue to be "America", then we are going to have to admit that the word has a specific definition, not an emanation or a penumbra.
So, merry Christmas, Mohammad and Pedro and Nkulu and Hac Nguyen and Pedro and Pedro and Pedro and Pedro and Pedro and Abdullah and Swamavistrayana and Ching Chang Chao. Enjoy poking your greasy, grubby snouts into the giant feeding trough that used to be a country.
And now, enough with the complainy dirt-world politics, time to go back to Christmasy spiritual stuff.
In case anybody missed it last time I linked it, here's the best Christmas carol in town...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olpr4NDxRIk
Joyeux Noel a tous les ilk!
Merry Christmas to Vox and the Ilk. Best wishes for a better new year.
Vox, thanks for the columns that led me here. I've been lurking here for 7 or 8 years and have learned much. Merry Christmas to you and your family and all the Ilk!
Lisa
Man whose children attend school protected by armed guards derides those who call for armed guards at school
There's a word for that. Oh, yes: Hypocrisy.
That one wasn't "phoned-in", but it didn't choke me up a little bit either. It's my allergies, I tell ya!
Cue up Wheeler with clamorous objections to your (conventionally acceptable, IMHO) use of the word "pagan".
Merry Christmas, all!
In case anybody missed it last time I linked it, here's the best Christmas carol in town
It's my ALLERGIES! How many times must I say it?
O HOLY NIGHT
Celtic Woman
That is a big Geetar.
As my personal Christmas present to the Ilk, I will hereby postpone my rather, um, uncharitable dissection of The Hobbit movie until after Christmas.
Enjoy it, if your taste can permit such a thing!
And Merry Christmas to all tastes, and a happy New Year!
Here's my other present: Don't go see Cloud Atlas!!
Look at that, I just saved you three hours of your life, and a lot of pain. Don't say I never did nuffin for ya.
Ho ho ho!!
Thanks for the column at WND, VD; I always looked forward to it. However, I've always strayed by here every day for the last 8+ years to see what you, and the attendant commenters, have to say.
Merry Christmas to you and yours and to the colorful Ilk.
Vox, congrats on a great run at WND. Like many here, I will have little reason to visit WND now that you have moved on.
I've been a fan since reading your old video game spots in the Pioneer Press back in middle school...and it was actually a Fraters Libertas link I followed back in 2003 that got me hooked. It's truly a great thing you and the Ilk have going here. I'm especially grateful to you for making me hip to Chateau Heartiste and the old In Mala Fide pages, my marriage is happier and stronger for it.
It was a great way to end it Vox. Here is hoping that all of us find a renewed sense of hope in His birth. God bless you all this Christmas.
I would bet that a not insignificant percentage of food stamp recipients are not "despairing" about it at all. For many it is simply the normal way of life for their family for generations, since their great-great-grandmamma all the way back in the 1970s.
Merry Christmas, Froehliche Weichnachten, Joyeux Noel!
> He'd explain why frantic Christmas buying was good for the economy due to the Keynesian multiplier effect.
Ah, yes. A father and son together sharing tales of make believe. Why, it's almost enough to bring a tear to ones eye.
Perhaps many here are already familiar with this, but I wasn't . . . Paul Harvey on "If I were the Devil" here. Again, Merry Christmas all.
Is there a WND article anthology in our future Vox?
Fantastic op-ed, hopefully more people will make that sometimes painful look at reality.
Merry Christmas to Vox's family and all of the Dread Ilk.
Even the obtuse ones. You don't know who you are.
(But, Tad, surely you must suspect.....)
Christmas awesomeness!!!!!!!!
I just got a pre-64 Winchester model 94 lever action .30-.30!!
All right, Black Bart, now you. get. yours...
Merry Christmas, except to those hypocrites
Merry Christmas!
Christ is Born, Glorify Him !!
Thanks for the great columns over the years, Vox. WND will not be the same without you. I have received a great education from your column and this blog. Merry Christmas.
...every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!! To the Glory of GOD the FATHER!!
Merry Christmas Vox to you and yours!!
Vox, you use the term "pagan" in the column. Could you define exactly what you mean by it? Does it refer to any and all non-Christian belief systems? Are atheists pagan, or does it require a belief in some sort of (small-g) god or gods?
And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.
And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King Of Kings, And Lord Of Lords.
And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
Merry Christmas Vox and family, and to all the ilk. Love you all!
Always straight to it. The needed and most important points. Your writing has always been very effective. Even when I had a more nuanced view as does us faggy conservatives with the libertarian bent. I'll miss your WND articles Vox, but yeah, I was stoked when you started the blog, cause it was more thoughts more often, and less rigidly structured. Sometimes I missed your WND article and had Sarah remind me of the topic you wrote about. Your writing stays powerful, so whatever you do, it will find a readership. Thanks for all those years writing, I've kind of grown up and found my own way through your work, in reality its been a mix of you and my dad. And Donald Rumsfeld. And John Howard. And Peter Costello. And Erasmus. and Edmund Burke. And Thomas Jefferson, and yeah. But you're up there!
That geek guy too, the one who pestered you to blog, I thank him. He was the most awesome geek ever, loved his style. It was like Revenge of the Nerds gangs up to get Vox on the blogosphere. Freaking epic.
Is there a WND article anthology in our future Vox?
Yes, probably a two-volume set.
That geek guy too, the one who pestered you to blog, I thank him. He was the most awesome geek ever, loved his style. It was like Revenge of the Nerds gangs up to get Vox on the blogosphere. Freaking epic.
It was unusual, to be sure. I'm also glad I was convinced to permit comments; originally I wasn't all that keen on the concept and a lot of "serious" columnists with blogs didn't permit them.
Yeah, I've had my fair share of notable deletable comments, even till this day. The blame does lie at being Aussie on an American blog. At first it was somewhat of a cultural clash, no matter how 'Cool Vox is Worldly' you go, we are in some ways always gonna be different. But America's South was where my mum should have grown up.
I'm also glad I was convinced to permit comments
What is that Glitch Mob saying? "Starve the ego, feed the soul." Worked out well. FOR ME.
Merry Christmas Vox and family and Ilk.
God bless.
Merry Christmas to all.
Village:
That video was awesome! Somewhere, Bane is smiling. Celtic Woman was a favorite of his.
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Merry Christmas to all the Ilk.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
In abandoning biblical morality and the Christian faith, Americans have rendered their Constitution irrelevant and invalid. Those who deny truth do not hesitate to torture law in the service of their lies.
John Adams was a smart guy, but this statement just goes to show that he could be insanely wrong. Not only was the Constitution NOT created specifically with a "moral" and religious people in mind (why doesn't it say this in the document?), it has proven to work just fine for those who are not religious or not christian. The idea that the Constitution is a "christian" document is the kind of lie that Christians tell and latch on to when they are confronted with principles and documents and righteous items not of their own God's making.
Anyway, Vox Day's on what is relevant and valid concerning the constitution are weak in a majestic sort of way. He knows very little about the constitution, it's creation, its meaning, and has the unfortunate liability of trying to understand it through the prism of fairy tales, elves, Gods and such.
That's not all bad. Vox Day is like a lot of Blow Hards. You can spot them a mile a way. The difference is that Vox Day KNOWS he's a Blow Hard where it comes to political and constitutional issues, and yet he still blows hard.
There's a word for that: Deceit.
Merry Christmas, Tad.
The idea that the Constitution is a "christian" document is the kind of lie that Christians tell and latch on to when they are confronted with principles and documents and righteous items not of their own God's making.
So one of the guys who wrote it is lying to us about it? And all the other guys that wrote it are lying too? Are they getting some kind of graveyard jollies about lying to us?
Tad, your presence here is very necessary. It demonstrates the intellectual abyss that is progressivism.
Merry Christmas, Tad.
Merry Christmas, Tad.
"(why doesn't it say this in the document?)"
Well, to paraphrase D.F. Wallace, who was himself just re-telling an old joke... Two young fishes are swimming down stream, when they meet an older fish who's swimming upstream. The older fish smiles and winks and says, 'So, how d'ye like the water today, lads?' After he's gone, one of the younger fishes turns to the other and says, "What the fuck is WATER?"
Now do you know why it doesn't "say this" in the document? It doesn't have to; it already says, "to ourselves, and our Posterity."
"it has proven to work just fine for those who are not religious or not christian"
I don't know that it has proven "to work just fine," but twisting and distorting the thing certainly has proven to be a profitable racket for those who are, shall we say, not christian. Hasn't it, Tad.
I'm impressed with all the scripture being quoted. Not being religious, can't do it myself.
I'm impressed with all the economic lore being expounded. Not being an economist, can't do it myself.
I have a simplistic explanation for the economic ups and downs of the capitalist economy. When the government sees the private sector becomes somewhat "normal" it attaches more blooducking devices (in the form of taxes and regulations) to the private sector and like a cancer the governmnet grows larger. In the meanwhile, the private sector goes through a period of economic anemia.
Only when progress in the form of improved technology increases the picture overall, can the private sector recover somewhat. Then the government sector, lying in wait, will spring to life again.
I admire the constitution but I think its utility has been outgrown by this phenomenon. I think it must be revised.
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