Is Christmas About Jesus? Residential Christmas Light Displays Offer a Clue

To what extent is Christmas about Jesus? On evening of Dec 18, I conducted a survey of Christmas lights in south St. Louis. I walked through neighborhoods to photograph residential Christmas displays. I walked through several neighborhoods (in the vicinity Ted Drews, for those of you from St. Louis).

I photographed every front yard that had a person or a thing on the front yard, excluding houses that merely had Christmas lights without figures. I also excluded houses with only Christmas tree images and those displaying only angels. I wanted to know the percentage of homes that displayed Jesus or the Nativity Scene. If a house displayed Jesus plus other figures, I counted it as a house that displayed an image of Jesus. I'm fully aware that this was not a scientific survey. There are likely many religious people who choose (for many reasons) to refrain from displaying images of Jesus in their Christmas front yard displays.

Out of 164 Christmas displays I photographed, only 13 (8%) displays a representation of Jesus.

At the end of this article I’ve listed many of the other personalities and objects you’ll find on neighborhood lawns to celebrate Christmas. In addition to Santas and reindeer, these figures include Harry Potter, penguins, unicorns, pigs wearing sunglasses and the Grinch.

Why would I do this survey? I was not trying to point out America’s loss of religiosity. I’m an atheist. My position is to each to his or her own. Feel free to follow a religion or no religion as long as you celebrate the right of all other people to celebrate their own religion (or no religion).

My purpose was inspired by the following passage by Thomas Sowell, from Knowledge and Decisions (1980):

Perhaps the most important feature of the first half of Knowledge and Decisions is simply its analysis of decision-making processes and institutions in terms of the characteristics and consequences of those processes themselves—irrespective of their goals. As noted in Chapter 6, this approach rejects the common practice of “characterizing processes by their hoped-for results rather than their actual mechanics.” “Profit-making” businesses, “public interest” law firms, and “drug prevention” programs are just some of the many things commonly defined by their hoped-for results, rather than by the characteristics of die decision-making processes involved and the incentives created by those processes. So called “profit-making” businesses, for example, often fail to make a profit and most of them become extinct within a decade after being founded. In Knowledge and Decisions the owners of such businesses are defined not as profit makers but as residual claimants to the firm’s income—that is, to what is left over after employees, suppliers, and others have been paid. Put this way, it is dear from the outset that what is left over may be positive, negative, or zero. There is no more reason to expect "drug prevention” programs to prevent drug usage or “public interest” law firms to serve the public interest than to expect that most “profit-making” enterprises will in fact make profits. Whether any of these organizations do or do not live up to their expectations or claims is a question of empirical evidence. Pending the presentation of such evidence, such organizations can be analyzed in terms of what they actually do, not what they hope or claim to achieve.

Is Christmas about Jesus? Somewhat, but evidence abounds suggesting that Christmas is, mostly, for most Americans, about other things, including an orgy of consumerism. A Martian anthropologist who objectively studied Christmas behavior, including America’s choices in Christmas lights, would probably agree with me. Yes, Jesus is discussed in churches, but where are figurines of Jesus in grocery stores and hardware stores? Is Jesus discussed to any meaningful degree at family dinner tables? How often do people spontaneously discuss Jesus at cocktail parties?

Christmas, as a national institution, is mostly not about Jesus. It’s mostly about other things. It is my belief that it has become more and more about things since my childhood (I was born in the mid-1950s) and it has been a slow imperceptible drift. Jesus is the frog in the pot.

But the institution of Christmas is merely one example of many such drifting institutions. It appears to me that most American Institutions have been hollowed out over the years. They no longer do what they claim to do. Hence, the caveat offered by Thomas Sowell.

Wikipedia, which claims to offer a “neutral” point of view, is one of these hollowed-out institutions. And see here. 

Also note this about Wikipedia's annual budget:

Consider also the FDA, which is almost completely captured by pharmaceutical money. Consider the Department of “Defense,” which has waged numerous wars of discretion for decades, all of these wars supported by corporate media marching in lockstep.

And speaking of the corporate “news” media, it is clear that one can expect mostly to be misguided and propagandized by these institutions, not well-informed. Here are more than 300 examples of that.

Is a school functioning as a school?  You need to dig in deep to figure it out.  Don't just read the word school on the building and assume that children are being educated inside.

In conclusion, I refer back to the wise words of Thomas Sowell. Don’t ever assume that an institution actually does what it claims to do. I’m from Missouri, the “Show Me” state and I recommend that we all take on this attitude.

I decided to do my Christmas light survey because it was easy: people reveal in lights what is on their mind about the reason for the season. It’s much more difficult to tell what is really going on with most other institutions. Whenever institutions make claims that they are doing good things for society, demand that they open up and show you. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Merry Christmas to all, whatever that might mean to you!

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The U.S. War Machine is Itching to Go to War Against Iran

Jimmy Dore's Tweet shows that the U.S. Warmongers plan to go to war against Iran and they also plan to lie about why it happened:

This will never be shown on Corporate news channels.

Here is how the U.S. War Machine is going to start a war with Iran.

Patrick Clawson, a U.S. foreign policy insider, just blurts it out

I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough, and it’s very hard for me to see how the United States President can GET US TO WAR WITH IRAN. Which leads me to conclude that if, in fact, compromise is not coming, that the traditional way of America gets to war is what would be best for U.S. interests”

He’s telling us that the U.S. war machine wants a war with Iran, they have been planning it for decades, & the way they start it is by instigating a crisis they can use as the pretext to go to war.

This video should be taught in classrooms, but will never be shown on corporate news channels because they work for the war machine & this would make their job of lying us into war a lot harder.

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The War Narrative Concocted and Perfected by the United States

Jeffrey Sachs explains that we are being subjected to a war narrative, not meaningful discussions of the kinds of facts that nations should consider before deciding to engage in a war, especially a war of discretion:

The war in Syria. And you may actually hear from grown up reporters who are lying through their teeth or ignorant beyond imagining that, oh, the war in Syria? Yes, Russia intervened in Syria. Well, do you know that the Obama tasked the CIA to overthrow the Syrian Government, starting four years before Russia intervened? What kind of nonsense is that? And how many times did the New York Times report on Operation Timber Sycamore, which was the presidential order to the CIA to overthrow Bashar Al Assad? Three times in 10 years. This is not democracy. This is a game. And it's a game of narrative.

Why did the US invade Iraq in 2003 Well, first of all, it was completely phony pretenses. It wasn't, "Oh, we were so wrong. They didn't have weapons of mass destruction." They actually did focus groups in the fall of 2002 to find out what would sell that war to the American people. Abe Schulsky, the if you want to know the name of the PR genius. They did focus groups on the war. They wanted the war all the time. They had to figure out how to sell the war to the American people, how to scare the shit out of the American people. It was a phony war.

Where did that war come from? You know what? It's quite surprising that war came from Netanyahu, actually. You know that? It's weird, and the way it is, is that Netanyahu had, from 1995 onward, the theory that the only way we're going to get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah is by toppling the governments that support them. That's Iraq, Syria and Iran. And the guy's nothing if not obsessive, and he's still trying to get us to fight Iran this day, this week. He's a deep, dark son of a bitch. Sorry to tell you, because he's gotten us into endless wars, and because of the power of all of this in the US politics, he's gotten his way, but that war was totally phony. So what is this? Democracy versus dictatorship? Come on. This is these are not even sensible terms.

And consider this conversation offered 20 years ago by Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark:

About 10 days after 911 I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs, just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used used to work for me and one of the generals called me and he said, "Sir, you got to come in. You got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No. Said, no, no. He says, we've made the decision. We're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq. Why?"

He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do?"

So I said, "Well, did they find some information collect connecting Saddam to al Qaeda?" And he said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way, they just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only two you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He said. He reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper. He said, "I just, he said, I just got this down from upstairs," meaning the Secretary of Defense Office today. And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran."

George Carlin often discussed the power of words. I would propose that we re-re-name the Pentagon as the "War Department." In modern times, it rarely performs the function of a "Defense Department."

Carlin had it right so incredibly often:

What kind of wars do we typically fight? Carlin explained:

He goes on to describe that the U.S. government is especially fond of waging war against countries populated by brown people. He explains that bombing people is a good thing to be good at if you don’t have any other national talents.

Can’t build a decent car, can’t make a TV set or a VCR worth a fuck, got no steel industry left, can’t educate our young people, can’t get health care to our old people, but we can bomb the shit out of your country all right! Huh? Especially if your country is full of brown people—oh we like that don’t we? That’s our hobby! That’s our new job in the world: bombing brown people. Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya, you got some brown people in your country, tell them to watch the fuck out or we’ll goddamn bomb them!

One last thing: How to quickly turn a terrorist group into a group of fighter that are loyal to the cause:

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