Cheers b.!
In my old age I no longer harangue xtians about their ridiculous clinging to a ludicrous collection of old wives’ tales.
However there is one aspect of xmas that really gets my goat.
Those who cling to the myth need to pause, reflect & ponder on how/why it can be that this folly preaches Peace & Goodwill to all, yet for the past two millenia since its inception xtianity has been the language, culture & sword of the worst imperialism our old rock has ever witnessed. Both merciless & greed driven, xtian imperialism shows peace & goodwill to no man.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Dec 25 2024 0:05 utc | 104

God Jul önskas från Absurdistan!

Posted by: blueswede 🧑‍🎄 | Dec 25 2024 0:14 utc | 106

A gospel great from black america ca. 1969, my favorite “carol.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PevFV3qAvQw
Oh, happy day
When Jesus washed
He washed my sins away
Ah, it’s a happy day
He taught me how
To watch
Fight and pray
Fight and pray
And rejoice in everyday
Everyday, oh happy day
~~

Posted by: suzan | Dec 25 2024 0:39 utc | 108

Posted by: Debsisdead | Dec 25 2024 0:05 utc | 105
Years ago I gave up talking “sense” to the religious. It’s just a challenge to their faith, and they have a right to their faith, just as I have a right to my atheism.
Christmas is a lovely holiday with a quaint taint to it. What should remain a quiet celebration of the savior’s birth has become the salvation of retail merchandisers.
Here I am again with an empty wallet. I guess I’m lucky to have people to buy stuff for. Still, I think that Jesus should have a more prominent presence down at the Wal-Mart. After all, it’s his legend that’s pushing the merchandise.
Santa Claus is a cruel joke. I never fell for it myself. I suppose it’s a huge lesson in trust for children…and that might be good…but if Santa isn’t real, then maybe the god isn’t real, either. Maybe nothing is real. It’s pretty heavy for a kid to handle.
Well, I’ve only been reading this blog for a few weeks, but I enjoy it. There’s a lot to learn here. I really shouldn’t be anywhere near alcohol, though.
Merry Christmas, world.

Posted by: A rope leash | Dec 25 2024 1:07 utc | 110

Salaam & Merry Christmas to b & all.
Here is what santa left for me under the tree, with a note:
“a ‘wonderous’ thing happened on the road to Damascus again – hahahah ho ho ho!”
daddy Herzl and and what’s his name?
hmm. Maybe one of the elves had one too many. Anyway,
Wish you all a wonderful Christmas & Salaam!

Posted by: sunof27 | Dec 25 2024 1:45 utc | 112

I was wondering how, without accurate timepieces, that they figured out 4,000 years ago that the days were lengthening again. Perhaps it was something like the Hele stone at Stonehenge, except that that was for the Summer Solstice, but same principle. And then, perhaps it took four or so days to be sure, so they arrived at the 25th for the date. And finally the inventors of yet another unnecessary religion stole that celebration to brainwash the multitude with their fairy tale.
Well happy prehistoric Winter Solstice to b and all the followers except the trolls, and may we survive the new year intact.

Posted by: Walt | Dec 25 2024 3:09 utc | 114

Merry Christmas to you and your family, B!!
And to all the commenters here too!!

Posted by: Kay | Dec 25 2024 3:42 utc | 116

Merry Christmas to Bernhard and all Believers! Some day the forces of the depraved darkness will be cast into the oblivion they truly deserve. I hope and pray that some of the barflies of Moon of Alabama will be there to see it!!!

Posted by: DakotaRog | Dec 25 2024 4:48 utc | 118

I too was wondering what B liked to cook and if by chance he enjoyed cooking German food. As it happens, my neighborhood in east 80s in Manhattan became known years ago for its excellent German restaurants. There are still a few left. I often walk by The Heidelberg Restaurant on 2nd Ave. They’re open Christmas Day. https://www.heidelberg-nyc.com/#about.

Posted by: susan mullen | Dec 25 2024 5:51 utc | 120

Debsisdead @ | Dec 25 2024 0:05 utc |105
Here is my response to your “j’accuse”, which I’ve already give to Aleph_Null on one of the other threads b has left open:-
The fallacy it contains is two fold: first, that ‘those who cling to the myth need to pause, reflect and ponder…’
No, Debs, it is you that need do that; we ‘clingers’ already do it constantly. But secondly and most importantly — there is no such thing as “xtian imperialism”, if by that you mean Christian imperialism. Those are two opposites. Each one cancels the other out. There is Christianity; and there is imperialism. And the latter has continuously attacked the former by pretending to be it.
If you cannot see that, you are as blind as those about whom it is said:

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I do believe, even so, that you shall get there eventually. Because in your heart of hearts, you love truth and beauty and you resist lies and deformity of the intellect. You resist imperialism, its cruelty and subjugation of peoples, its genocides.
We all do.
Merry Christmas, Debs and friends.

Posted by: juliania | Dec 25 2024 8:48 utc | 122

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDBfGrfUuug
Compliments of the season. ;O)

Posted by: Squeeth | Dec 25 2024 9:38 utc | 124

Once I believed that the west in which I live
stood for ideals of freedom and democracy, but have discovered it was all sham clothing on a criminal cabal of pirates, thieves and murderers. That those infantile words apply only to the wealthy elite. The life handed to everyone else is brutish and short.
Once I believed that my native country Britain had war heroes who a century ago defended those idiot-words again, freedom and democracy, from an evil foreign bogeyman. That their sacrifice should be honoured. But I found that this too was a lie. The ZionReich British leaders of this generation have gone back in time and defiled the memory of those heroes. They have desecrated their tombs and turned their heroism into common villainy. That once glorious struggle between Germany, Britain, France, USA, Italy, Norway etc. turns out to have been an uninteresting civil squabble between slightly different strains of Nazi. Now United in a new Barbarossa against the only real enemy of Nazi-ism, Russia. Now the only good that can come from buried soldiers at Arnhem or Omaha beach is to dig up their bones, dry them and grind them to powder, and spread them on fields as fertilizer.
Once I was a devout believer in the Chosen people in a Holy land and the promised child of Bethlehem. Now I have found this to be a death cult of genocidal supremacism with incitement to race based genocide embedded in the scriptural texts for thousands of years. The revenant unholy land together with the defiled “west” has made all this crystal clear in Gaza. That partaking is of JudeoChristian rituals conditions you to become a foot soldier of predatory imperialism. That “Christ” is a cheap copy of “Krishna” the true incarnate God made human, many millennia earlier.
All those ideals were evil, all those truths were lies and tricks, the gods were cheap idols.
Happy Krismas everyone!
Hare Krishna, Hare Rama!

Posted by: Andrew Sarchus | Dec 25 2024 10:30 utc | 126

Happy atheistic greetings, may the solstice be a sign of light returning! Wishing some reprieve from winter darkness to all!
Thank you for your humanity (most of you nonbots)!

Posted by: SOS | Dec 25 2024 10:35 utc | 128

Best wishes to you too, b!

Posted by: AG | Dec 25 2024 11:34 utc | 130

********** Merry Christmas !! ***********
Found a bar poem
in a fine article about the Christmas Truce of 1914,
“the only meaningful episode in the apocalypse.“
A poem about WWI by Thomas Hardy.

Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
I shot him dead because —
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That’s clear enough; although
He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
No other reason why.
Yes, quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.

Read this fine article about the Christmas Truce of 1914
you will be glad that you did.
https://mises.org/mises-daily/christmas-truce-world-war-i
********** Merry Christmas To All !! ***********

Posted by: librul | Dec 25 2024 12:37 utc | 132

Thanks for your hard work over the years b. Enjoy your family time over the holidays and be ready for next year. There are very few sites on the internet, and NONE in the CIA mockingbird media. We depend on you for the truth.

Posted by: Somewhere Over China | Dec 25 2024 13:03 utc | 134

Salaam to all. Here’s a lovely little Christmas tree for the mathematically inclined. This is an elaboration by Silvia Hao of the undecorated ‘t * sin(t).
& Salaam

Posted by: sunof27 | Dec 25 2024 15:05 utc | 136

@Bernhard
Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Yours has been a very consistent truthful blog -cheers for that

Posted by: Sam | Dec 25 2024 15:42 utc | 138

Pope Francis’s book “Hope” was available in printed form in Spanish a month earlier, in November. So I assume he wrote it in Spanish. But the Spanish version was not available for my Kindle. And since I now have it in Italian on my Kindle, it wouldn’t make sense to get it printed in Spanish.

Posted by: Lysias | Dec 25 2024 16:50 utc | 140

What am I?
Johan Kaspar, Ahenobarbus, james, Milites, Lavieja, Malenkov, boneless, Englishman in NY; Giyane, canuck, Carrion, ossi, James M., Larsbo, Suresh, TJandTheBear, HERMIUS, Ted from Liverpool, LoveDonbass, Avtonom, Barrel Brown, Trubind1, wp007 …. and a few others.
Posted by: Philly | Dec 25 2024 2:42 utc | 115
Now, now, philito. That’s not really exhibiting the Christmas spirit. Although it is something of a “gift” to know a jackass doesn’t like you.
So, thanks, I guess.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Dec 25 2024 18:48 utc | 142

Posted by: Philly | Dec 25 2024 2:42 utc | 115
############
If you don’t get along with Ahenobarbus, HERMIUS, and TJandTheBear, the issue may lie within you.
The lowest common denominator and all that.
=================
To all, I don’t celebrate Christmas but I do like the positive vibes of charity, reflection, and family.
May you all be well regardless of your ideological leanings whatever they may be.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Dec 25 2024 19:22 utc | 144

Speaking of Xmas and music, I don’t know if the audience was aware of what the song is really about, and seemed an odd choice for a Christmas show.
The Stranglers “Golden Brown” – Christmas Top of the Pops 1982
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3unKdS2uWsY

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Dec 25 2024 20:11 utc | 146

Thanks to b for this year’s worth of insightful postings. As all responsible leaders do, you not only choose a wise course but also care about those you lead.
The year winds down. Good fellowship to all.

Posted by: juliania | Dec 25 2024 21:42 utc | 148

Merry Christmas and a very happy new year. Many thanks for your hard work. Best wishes.

Posted by: Anton | Dec 25 2024 22:49 utc | 150

It’s essentially based on the religion psychology of the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung, who defined religion as a relationship to the “numinous” or “zu dem was mich ergreift”, i.e. “to that which moves / seizes me”. Gods, demons, ghosts are according to Jung projections of the Archetypes of the collective unconscious and some relationship to them is essential for psychological health. In more modern language we would probably call it “spirituality”, but I guess that term wasn’t as widely used in Jungs days.
To quote Jung:
”The gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus, and produces curious specimens for the doctor’s consulting room, or disorders of the brains of politicians and journalists who unwillingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world.”
Seems familiar? We talk about the latter here on MoA every day.
Or to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche (on whom Jungs thoughts are partially based):
”God is dead. We killed him. And we will never find enough water to wash that blood of our hands”.
Posted by: Helmuth von Moltke | Dec 25 2024 9:24 utc | 125
Salaam Helmuth von Moltke.
It seems rather unlikely that Nietzsche shaped Jung’s thoughts, imo. Jung’s fascination with Nietzsche was to an extent voyeuristic in nature, as in but by the grace of God there go I, and of course a case study of perils of ‘struggling’ with unconscious forces. My impression was that he rather saw himself as a continuation of a line that included Paracelsus and Goethe.
Dr. Jung was somewhat cagey regarding his own spiritual beliefs. He insisted that his work was must not be confused with religion. He also never offered, in his writings, his thoughts regarding the ‘mechanics’ of the psyche and ‘the collective unconscious’ or phenomena such as ‘synchronicity’, as in ‘how is the collective unconscious maintained and collectively distributed’.
His contributions were in offering a very effective ‘model of the psyche’ and in the investigation of the ‘structure’ of numinous archetypes through a fairly comprehensive (cross cultural) mapping of collective ‘consciousness’ elements to ‘universals’ of the archetypes, but of course with a very strong bias to his native cultural matrix of a European mind soaked thoroughly in the bible.
Of great import was also his approach to framing ‘alchemy’ within his psychological framework, this time as ‘manifestations’ of ‘controlled activation’ of archetypal forces in an effort directed towards attainment of the “philosopher’s stone”.
If you reread the quote from Jung you should note there is mention of “Zeus” having ‘died’. Rather Zeus is ‘misplaced’. This is entirely different from Nietzsche’s direct assault on Mount Olympus 🙂 Brother Nietzsche was a vanguard, like unto the first dove that Noah (as) sent away from the Ark that did not return. There will come a generation soon that represents the ‘landing of the Ark’ and an uplifting of the -individual & collective- consciousness of mankind. The proverbial ‘meek’ who will inherit this Earth. The next dove will return to the Ark, having “overcome man”..
Based on the visions he shared with Aniela Jaffe in his “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”, it is clear he believed in a ‘Primal Realm’ that is “timeless” and that he was an ‘avatar’ of his ‘primal form’. He had a vision of himself “raised high over the Earth” with a ‘view’ that extended over continents, and experienced “Mysterium Coniunctionis”. He saw his (earthly physician) come up from the surface up, “framed by a golden chain” “as a basileus of Kos” telling him they are clamoring for his return, at which point the vision abruptly ended. He wrote that his nurse told him he was “surrounded with a glow she had seen around some dying patients”. He actually warned the nurse to leave the room lest “the sanctity” of the place harm her! (c.f. touching the Ark of Covenant & Moses (as) being told by Allah to remove his sandals in the “holy environs of the fire” from which Allah spoke to him.) I believe our (very dear and respected) Dr. effectively believed he had been deified as a demigod of Earth in the the primal sphere’. /g (I cherish his books, btw. The Bollimgen series of his writings are amazing.)
So had his ‘ascension’ to ‘the first sphere of Heaven’.
The Prophet Muhammad ( ﷺ ) in contrast ascended beyond the 7th heaven in his Miraaj astride a “winged horse” accompanied by the Archangel Gabriel, Salaam be upon Him, visiting each sphere one by one, and then going beyond the ‘boundary tree’ where even Archangel Gabriel had to stay behind, for a ‘private meeting’ with Allah, The Lord of Sentient Realms …
Hope you are having a wonderful Christmas & Salaam!

Posted by: sunof27 | Dec 26 2024 2:00 utc | 152

Blessing to all those who SEEK truth, honor, justice and peace.

Posted by: aristodemos | Dec 26 2024 4:38 utc | 154

Peace be with the creator of the forum, and all who read. Such a miracle really, a metaphor of sorts, minds and experiences shared globally.

Posted by: jopalolive | Dec 26 2024 10:41 utc | 156

“I’m not religious, but Merry Xmas, b. And to everyone else at the bar.
The world is indeed dark at the moment. The forces of evil are either uniquely confident or it’s a guise for their tremendous insecurity.
Let us all hope for some good news in the coming new year.”
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Dec 25 2024 20:07 utc | 149
Merry Xmas as well to, ‘b’ , and the bar.
I have not been religious but as I get older, frailer and stupider I have come off being an atheist now to being agnostic.
Personally, I believe that ‘the forces of Evil’ are a guise for their insecurity.

Posted by: canuck | Dec 26 2024 12:49 utc | 158

Good health and peace to you and your family Barnhard. A large drink to the contributors at the bar. Make it a double. I’ll put a bowl of water in the corner for vile member.
Things are so bad in the UK that people are attempting to escape via the sea.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c1el990nq20o
If only they’d remembered to bring an inflatable boat.
Of course they aren’t really trying to escape, too witless for that. What they’re really doing is trying to make their expensively unheated homes feel less cold by plunging into the icey cold sea. Apparently UK retailers have been disappointed by Christmas sales as the UK economy flatlines. An immiserated nation finally waking up to the fact that they can live without useless shit.

Posted by: Lev Davidovich | Dec 26 2024 20:14 utc | 160

Dear D. U. Drongo et al.,
I doubt Bernhard needs your defense. Nor do I attack. I simply point out that it’s false that the Roman Church ‘moved’ the birth to the solstice; that there’s no evidence that it did; and considerable evidence that the birth actually was on December 25.
Evidence for this also includes several references to the time and place of Christ’s birth as early as 200 A. D. by near contemporary Roman historian Tertullian—referencing the Roman Census of Quirinus mentioned in St Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 2 (I invite you to read it).
The difference w/Russian Orthodoxy that you mention is a canard, and is simply due to it following the Julian calendar, rather than the later adjusted Gregorian calendar, but the original date was the same.
You mention Tutankhamun, whose date of birth is of course unknown, year somewhere around 1345 and 1341 B. C., and frankly unheralded. Perhaps I missed the national holiday of King Tut Day down in Australia this year. (It wasn’t even celebrated in Egypt.)
Merry Christmas!
—B. B.

Posted by: Brother Beowulf | Dec 27 2024 3:27 utc | 162

Dear b,
thank you for your very nice wishes. Allow me to send you mine: all the best to you and yours !
And thank you again for your enlightening analyses that light up some darkness.
“Every man plunged into darkness widens his eyelids as if from more absorbed darkness light could be born.” (Barjavel)
Peace.

Posted by: Tak-Tik | Dec 27 2024 9:32 utc | 164

Dear D. U. Drongo et al.,
“I doubt Bernhard needs your defense. Nor do I attack. I simply point out that it’s false that the Roman Church ‘moved’ the birth to the solstice; that there’s no evidence that it did; and considerable evidence that the birth actually was on December 25.”
Posted by: Brother Beowulf | Dec 27 2024 3:27 utc | 167
Nonsense!
Christ’s birthday was given the same date as the Roman Saturnalia festival that celebrated the ‘rebirth of the sun’ (birth of the son)which the priest took over for Christ’s birthday as the tradition was already established.
“The main reason people accuse Christians of robbing the Roman sun celebration is because it coincides with the winter solstice. The winter and summer solstice, as well as the equinox, have been observed by people around the world for millennia. The Romans were no different and celebrated Brumalia (referring to the shortest day) starting November 24 and ending on Saturnalia December 23. Ancient Israelites considered these seasonal events important as well, but it does not mean they had the same reasons.”
T

Posted by: canuck | Dec 27 2024 17:35 utc | 166

Thank you for all your work keeping us up to date on our crazy world affairs. MoA is my first call of the day to catch up. My very best wishes to you this Christmas and new year. God bless you.

Posted by: Paul | Dec 27 2024 19:45 utc | 168

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to B and everyone. I agree that we are in need of constructive ideas and actions. The forces of destruction have expanded quite fast during the 21st century because of weaknesses of our societies one of which is the abuse of information control (monopoly) by the few including government agencies. Its time for the constructive people to team up together in new projects in new directions.

Posted by: Richard L | Dec 28 2024 14:02 utc | 170