#religion & holidays

[damiduck]

Damian, handing Bruce a piece of paper with a very neat calendar on it: father, I will be taking a step back from my participation in our nightly patrols. I have carefully considered factors such as, but not limited to, school tests, most likely days for breakouts and when other people will be available. Here is my schedule.

Bruce: any particular reason you are stepping back from Robin?

Damian: I have reached an acceptable age and am by far mature enough, so I will be participating in Ramadan this year, father. Afterwards I will pick my duties up as normal, but with changed sleeping and eating patterns, this is the most logical step for now.

Bruce, who grew up with a jewish mother and christian father who were intent to raise him on some weird mix of the two, then a second father who was atheist, proceeded to lose his entire way in any form of religion due to losing himself in his teen years, took in Jewish boy, then a catholic one with religious trauma, then an atheist one who had no idea how to even approach the idea of religion, followed up by a pagan girl and already making seven different mental lists of things he will need to research, how to add aspects of Islam into their weird family holidays and trying desperately to show his support for his son: ....hnn

Damian: thank you father

[gieoki]

tumblr gets uncropped version. have my dess interpretation

[itty-bitty-sunshine]

Happy holidays <3

They are fine. Probably

[beauty-funny-trippy]

[bebs-art-gallery]

The Song of the Angels (1881)

— by William Bouguereau

[chemicalarospec]

Scary Christmas

okay scary christmas. i wanna get on this early because I'll be disappointed if Scary Christmas happens but it's just Christmas But Make It Children's Horror Game and/or The Nightmare Before Christmas. Warning: I'm literally making up all of this as I go along.

I respect the scary but as a scaredy-cat, I would rather not go full horror. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention, we're throwing the Christmas part out the door. Vintage goth might be a good starting place for the aesthetic? Blood accents encouraged. Potential Scary Christmas colors:

idk i'm not an artist...

I'm imaging making old-web style "happy scary christmas" glitter graphics...

Scary Christmas iconography: spiderwebs are a good place to start. But more cobweb-y than spider-y. A line with a moon on top and a sun on the bottom, to represent the respective seasons of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The painting The Scream. Snowflakes? (Sorry Southern Hemisphere) My first concept art looks too much like Halloween.

Scary Christmas concept art:

Scary Christmas greetings: "Happy Scary Christmas!" "We're almost through January!" "May you face February unafraid." just "Face February unafraid!" in the cadence of an NPC. "Boo!"

Scary Christmas activities:

watching horror movies (with friends)

but if, like me, you are afraid of horror movies, then watching comedic kid's Halloween movies (The Nightmare Before Christmas included! I just want this to be MORE than that) or black and white films, particularly Alfred Hitchcock films, are encouraged substitutes.

gather around and sing SCARY songs or recite SCARY chants

or the Dune litany against fear

set a goal of doing something that makes you scared.

almost all holidays have traditional food so uh... okay apparently January is National Soup Month?? idk for which nation but soup it is. tumblr users love soup.

if there is no soup, there still should be a main dish in a bowl.

Scary Christmas goals are often (sorry my brain thinks it'd be really fun to write this like it's real but I don't want to confuse people) to live more authentically. Traditional Scary Christmas stories remind the listener that as scary as opening up as your true self is, the joy it brings is worth it. (transition. Scary Christmas is pro-trans.)

The meaning of Scary Christmas: Scary Christmas is a holiday that recognizes how scary life is. It is a day to acknowledge fear so we don't let it control the rest of our year. Celebrants are encouraged to share their seemingly-silly fears and realize they're not alone in them.

Scary Christmas recognizes that facing our fears helps us grow. On Scary Christmas, everyone is encouraged to take one step out of their comfort zone, whether it's trying a scary new food, watching a scary movie, or talking to a person (scary) -- but no one is forced to, because the Scary Christmas ideology also acknowledges that growth best happens under support.

Scary Christmas celebrates uniqueness and deviance. Catchphrase: stay scary, not scared!

Looking forward to celebrating Scary Christmas with you all on January 25th!

[chroniclesofajewishteen]

If Jews have to celebrate Christmas because "everyone does it" and "it's not even religious" or "it's just so commercialized to the point it's for everyone" then you need to celebrate Channukah. You need to sing all the prayers because "It's festive!" You need to light the menorah every night and buy it with your own money. You need to join a Channukah party with all your co-workers and friends because "It's really a holiday about family and getting together" and you need to explain 50 times why you're here if you're Christian. And at the party, we're all going to share the story of Channukah, and when you don't know it, we'll say "oh, but everyone knows it! Everyone celebrates Channukah!" Oh, does that sound a bit weird and frustrating? It's almost like stuff like this has been happening to Jewish people every year and you don't care.

[salvadorbonaparte]

Regarding my last reblog about Christian hegemony and holidays. Something I find really annoying is that Germany is officially secular but Christian majority and keeps forgetting it's secular (stores closed on Sunday etc).

And then people get really weird about immigrants and refugees because they think people from other cultures and religions are a threat to us. It's mostly Muslims they're worried about. And they're like "they need to integrate themselves" and I'm like yeah sure learn the language etc. But then they actually don't mean integration they mean assimilation. They want people to if not convert then at least to stop being Muslim because "we're a Christian Country" (we're not, we're secular).

So they get upset when people continue being Muslim and speak their native language at home. But then there are some immigrants, usually with children, who decide to go an extra step and they start celebrating Christmas and Easter. Usually so that the children aren't isolated from their peers at school. I think that's fine as long as they're having fun, you know.

But then some of the same people who want integration to be assimilation still are weird about that because oh? Those strange foreigners celebrate our holidays?? Despite not having grown up with the religion?? But aren't they Muslim??? A Muslim with a Christmas tree??? How strange how wrong!!

So people really can't win no matter what they do.

[blueskittlesart]

“did you really not know about the tower of babel” well i knew that it was a tower. that either existed or didn’t exist. (???? still unclear. also still don’t know what it was for) either way how the fuck was i supposed to make that connection with no context other than “spaceship stronger than jesus”

[shiftythrifting]

the greeters at the Marlborough Savers

[king-the-pathetic]

merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah folks

[zooophagous]

I cannot stand the discussion over 'Christmas stealing from pagans' every God damn year. I'm not Christian anymore but I celebrate the holiday with my family because they are and I love them and I find feast days with lots of singing fun.

Some moron is insisting that "well actually you're celebrating Yuuuule"

No idiot I'm inside a fucking Christian church singing songs about baby Jesus with my dad and addressing gifts from Saint Nicholas I am not celebrating fucking Yule. I know what I'm doing. If Jesus is mad at me for coming to his birthday party when I don't plan to hand my soul to him he can come down and stop me his fucking self I am watching The Grinch.

[notalostcausejustyet]

Behold and See if There be Any Sorrow

A bit late, but here's my holiday GO fic. This one is very, very personal to me. Many thanks go out to the @goodomensafterdark writer's guild and the always spectacular @adverbian for their help betaing and sorting my sorry lack of HTML skills lol.

Excerpt:

The vaults of St. Bartholomew’s transform the sound of the human voice like nothing else on earth, as the church has done since its inaugural services almost a millennia ago. Even from here, beyond the heavy doors, well away from the hallowed grounds. The ancient façade shimmers in the wavering illumination cast by  halogen streetlamps and the sound of the organ and chorus swells out into the frigid night air. It is forty-one minutes past midnight on the morning of December 25th and Handel’s Messiah is well underway inside the historic church.

A lone figure tips his head back to the night sky from where he is lounging against the side of a classic Bentley that is darker even than the shadows it sits in. Waiting, always waiting. He has stood sentinel over midwinter rituals longer than the gargoyles that flank the walls of the garden here, and he will stand guard over this one as well. London has blessed them with an unusually clear evening for December, and while the city will not grant him the stars he so loves, the brilliantly cold night has brought the moon into beautifully sharp relief, its cold glow casting diamonds into the frost that has formed on every surface, creating something miraculous out of the mundane.

Crowley looks upon the impassive face of the moon and reflects on the irony of how he worships still. He cannot stand in the nave, nor partake in the terrible, bone-aching beauty of the choir first-hand. Only once, in his long history on this pale blue dot, has he trespassed upon sanctified ground. His soles ache distantly at the memory; the scars of that night are deeper than the fragile flesh of this corporation. Cont. on A03, Link embedded above.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

This is an image of Jesus celebrating Hanukkah, but I think the AI may have got a few things wrong.

[bebs-art-gallery]

The Birth of Christ

— by Albrecht Altdorfer

[psalms-and-spells]

Can we stop pretending that Christian Holidays were all ‘stolen’ from Pagans and start realizing that Christianity actually had a good chunk of their history where pagans willingly converted and brought their culture into it. (With the larger church accepting these cultural differences btw)

Or even with Christian traditions that were started by colonized pagan groups it often wasn’t ‘theft’ but instead people mixing these religions and creating traditions and holidays they found comfort in.

Sincerely,

Someone who is tired of explaining that Christianity and Paganism aren’t like… spiritual mortal enemies.