A guest post by Rev. Howard Furst.

The Proprietor has temporarily let me take the reins of Sick Horses, for better or for worse, and today is a fine time to offer some (sadly) true observations about Christmas.

Back in days of yore, Persian culture was in vogue in future Christendom, and winter celebrations were centered around the solar deity Mithras. As the Romans took over stewardship of the known world, they took advantage of the celebratory disposition around the winter solstice, though switching the focus from Mithras to Saturn, hence the Saturnalia feasts and debauchery. As an improve- ment over midwinter sun worship, this eased conversion of common folk to the Roman way of life. Emperor Constantine thus engineered a makeover of the Roman Empire, still active to this day in two lucrative operating units, the Mafia and the Catholic Church.

Constantine embraced and subverted a growing populist movement, declaring Christianity the official religion of Rome. Out-of-work Roman Gods scrambled for new positions, with Jove muscling out Old Testament Jehovah; Cupid and his brethren became the putti that infested Cathedrals for centuries, starting in Italy and migrating north to the Netherlands as documented in contemporaneous paintings; and, as Botticelli revealed in paintings in the same gallery at the Uffizi in Florence, Aphrodite became the new face of the Virgin Mary. The same young Lady surfing ashore in a cockle shell is seen on an adjacent wall dressed as Mary, with her shell inverted overhead as a dome covering her little alcove.

As had been done with Saturnalia before, late December was designated as the time to celebrate the birth of the son of Jehovah and Mary (and adopted by the cuckold Joseph, after a vision of Angels threw him off the scent of Mary’s Centurion friend). The rubes in the provinces were just as happy to celebrate Christmas as they were to enjoy Saturnalia or Mithrasmas, with only minimal prodding by Roman spears. As a massive marketing effort with sales closed at sword point, the nature of Christianity quickly changed from actual direct communion with Jehovah to enforced embrace of a set of dumbed-down beliefs, an effective system of crowd control that served to funnel tithes and other wealth back to Rome.

Meanwhile, up north, the forest pagans also celebrated the winter solstice by coming together to share genetic material between tribes in free-for-all orgies, lest inbreeding diminish their hardiness. The horned deity of these festivities was known as Pan Pangenitor to the Greeks, Cernunnos to the Celts (who started out in central and eastern Europe, emigrating to the British Isles and Ireland as their last stand), and later as Herne. Herne was the old name of the character who became Santa Claus. However, the Romans marginalized and literally demonized virile Herne by inventing the Devil in the image of Herne. In recent times, as Christmas became repurposed to support retail commerce, Thomas Nast was commissioned to create iconic images for the advertising campaign, taking advantage of happy ancestral and archetypal memories about orgies sponsored by Herne. Nast’s first images of Santa were confusing mixes of Herne and Devil in the form of Black Pete, St. Nicholas’ swarthy reprobate companion who went down chimneys giving Dutch kids either sticks or salt in their shoes if they were bad, and Dutch kids back then were pretty much all bad.

The imagery evolved, finally crystallizing in Coca Cola advertisements in the 1930′s in which our familiar Santa was established as a jolly bearded gentleman in a red suit. We will save for later a sermonette on “Santa Claus and the Cola Holy Wars”, documenting the fierce competition between religious organizations using soft drink advertising slogans as media for increasing spiritual mindshare as they claim soft drink market share. Suffice it to say for now that Hindus made great inroads into American popular culture with Seven-Up (based on the yogic ascent up the seven chakras), Royal Crown (referring to the sahasrar, the seventh chakra depicted as an opening lotus in Indian iconography and as a halo in Christian imagery, and as a golden crown among royalty), and Sprite (“I like the Sprite in you” is based on the Sanskrit greeting “Namaste”, honoring the light within).

I offer these fragments of our cultural history to help us grasp and see how the same process goes on today, with nefarious, effective operators gutting traditions and institutions, using a veneer of familiar trappings and glad talk to exploit the unwashed masses. In keeping with the political orientation of this forum, we might reflect on these Christmas lessons to ponder the use of the trappings of patriotic representational democracy, Mom’s apple pie, eagles, freedom-guns, The Constitution, etc. as vehicles for siphoning wealth from one large group of people to another much smaller one, just as the simple spiritual help offered to his friends by Jesus of Nazareth to become aware of their essential identity with divine consciousness (and the teaching methods and transmission given by Jesus were essentially the same as those practiced by yogis in the Kashmir Shaivism tradition) has evolved (by guile, not by the “chance and necessity” behind Jehovah’s great process of natural evolution) into Balkanized factions of religious lunatics and their benighted ovine followers (in the livelier cases) or intensely boring organizations with rules and rituals that do rather little to support divine realization, but simply establish primate tribal identity. Like Christmas trees severed from their roots.

Merry Christmas to all!

Rev. Howard Furst

Quickly:

Carolyn Walker said she has been cleaning the convention center for 13 years. She had been making $8 per hour until a few years ago, when the cleaning contract went to another company, Cleanevent USA. The new company meant a new, downsized paycheck. She’s now making minimum wage — $7.67 per hour. But that wasn’t the only hit to her wallet.

Walker said the company charges her $6 per week for uniforms. “It stinks to tell you the truth,” she said. “We work very hard.” It effectively means she’s making less than Florida’s minimum wage.

Less than minimum wage. It takes an hour of Carolyn’s working to pay for the uniform she has to wear in order to keep working.

Asked about the details of his paycheck, one worker, who refused to give a name, replied “So much money for the haves and so little money for the have-nots. I want you to note that distinction.”

In 6 years of running for president what has Mitt Romney promised to do to help these people? Absolutely nothing. Not a single thing. Sure you can remind him of their existence and he’ll praise them to high heaven but nunca thanks. He wouldn’t dare.

There’s an amazing post-Civil War letter from a freed slave to his former Tennessee master that’s made the internet rounds the last couple of days. Read it here, and be amazed.

Excerpt:

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living.

Unbelievable. Lesson: Conservatives are clueless no matter the century.

Another part:

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters.

That struck me. I have no reason to believe Jourdon would lie about what he knew. I have every reason to believe Matilda and Catherine were victims of sexual assault by owners and/or their employees, and Jourdon would do anything to avoid having his daughters suffer the same fate.

Which brings me to more Tennessee, just modern day:

Tea parties issue demands to Tennessee legislators
Richard Locker | Tennessee Commercial Appeal

About two dozen tea party activists held a news conference, then met with lawmakers individually to present their list of priorities and “demands” for the 2011 legislative session that opened Tuesday.

Regarding education, the material they distributed said, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”

They could start with Jourdon Anderson’s letter to his former master. Plenty of truth for a Tennessee gentleman to chew on.

Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”

. . “made up” criticism? Perhaps, like calling the country’s president “socialist” when he’s merely “Democratic”? Or claiming he’s an “illegitimate African usurper” when he’s really “black”?

Fine, let’s avoid fantasies. Back in ‘history’ days, 46 year-old Thomas Jefferson impregnated 16 year-old Virginian Sally Hemings. Why? Because they were married? Engaged? No. Because Jefferson owned her. Sally was his slave. Nothing fantastic about that.

Hey, me? I’m not criticizing anyone. Banging teenage girls is a perq that comes with owning them. The Andersons would tell you.

I believe that your enemies reveal a great deal about themselves by the way they attack you. They often choose a means of hurting you which they themselves believe is painful and effective.

So the truth about President Obama’s mission to kill bin Laden (it worked) is killing Pam Geller. How else to explain her website’s playing up, full tilt, an obvious, comical lie from an unknown, third-party blogger? This guy and his anonymous “White House Insider” claim that Obama tried to stop the mission from going forward but was over-ruled — “obliged” — by senior White House officials. Sounds entirely likely, right? Presidents are obliged to do the will of their employees routinely.

Catch the comedy over at that other place, Liberaland. it’s a huge meme making its way through the right-wing community, if there is such a thing.

If it’s merely an historical account, then maybe I’d be interested in this ‘embarrassment’ test. But the Bible wouldn’t be much good to the faithful if they didn’t swear it was much more than that.

If the Bible isn’t divinely inspired, it’s just another epic, and a particularly disjointed one. It contradicts itself all over the place; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John don’t seem to have witnessed the same things. The book’s probably better than Gilgamesh, but it ain’t The Iliad and The Odyssey.

One thing’s for sure: if you ask Frank Turek who the real author of the Bible is, he’ll say ‘God.’ That guy certainly didn’t ‘embarrass’ himself in his book.

If it isn’t divinely inspired, then the authors are writing for their own purposes: to get the stories read — to spread the message so that the religion can grow. With that, how else can you set up the relationship between God and man? God/man, powerful/weak, perfect/fallible — that’s pretty much your only choice, isn’t it? If you want to picture the Jews as amazing and blessed all the time, aren’t you cutting God out of the sales pitch? You are.

Either way, Turek’s ‘principle’ application is silly. Imagine using it to see if an advertisement is fair and honest. “That guy didn’t seem to be very happy, but then he bought that Big Mac.” I think Frank’s just selling the booksellers.

April 13, 2010 12:00 A.M.
March Diary
John Derbyshire

The Left in power Watching the president’s strutting and preening after the passing of the health-care bill, I found myself thinking that the Left in power have a very characteristic kind of arrogant triumphalism.

“I’m in this race not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation,” announced Obama when declaring his candidacy in 2007. That’s what they’re like, all of them, always.

Everything and everybody on the left are always exactly like that all of the time. Well, that’s simple enough, that’s settled. Don’t know why he even bothers with the quotes to make his case since he’s just established all of it totally and eternally beyond the limits of clarity.

Surprisingly, John doesn’t completely bollix this first quote. Obama invoked the memory of Abraham Lincoln: “. . that there is power in conviction. That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people. He tells us that there is power in hope. That is our purpose here today. That is why I’m in this race. Not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.”

“We shall now create the socialist order,” Lenin is supposed to have said, following his 1917 putsch.

Quote: “We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order.” Don’t know why John is so allergic to the google.

After the British Labour Party’s 1945 electoral landslide, the new government’s attorney general declared that “We are the masters now.”

No.

(Wikipedia says this is a misquotation; but if so, it was, as misquoted, entirely in character for the socialist triumphalism of the time, as evidenced by the fact that that’s how everybody remembers it.)

Unbelievable. Now he googles. So he knows he’s made a mistake, but posts it anyways explaining that his mistake is actually right. “. . as evidenced by the fact that that’s how everybody remembers it.” Truthiness, everybody? That’s evidence, to him. Hey, as long as it’s popular, it must be true. If everybody remembered that Derbyshire were 110 years old, he’d immediately keel over and turn to dust.

The Shawcross Wiki says it was in 1946. But was it some of the give and take in the House of Commons about the usage of terms and words? Naw: it was a declarative statement of the eternally tyrannical intent of liberalism. Why? Because John Derbyshire made his memory the master of “truth.” Actually, it’s his memory of everybody else’s memory, but why bitch about it? It’s only reason number 1,398 of “Why Conservatives are Technically Even More Right When They’re Wrong.” Here’s the Humpty Dumpty passage:

Indeed. Why should any history matter, the actual events of life? The master’s perception of everything is a better indicator of truth than “truth.” Who says so? The master himself. And this post is about the way he remembers something. At least until he writes another post, that one entitled “The Evils Of Liberal Historical Revisionism.” It’s then that he’ll remember Truth is Sacred.

Oh, and incidentally, it doesn’t matter how many smoking hot young blondes Rod Stewart marries, he’s gay. Remember that whole hospitalized-with-a-stomach-full-of-goo thing? That’s the one and only way everybody remembers it.

Details of the former VP’s illegal secret ‘counter-terrorism’ program have now been made public: genies were employed overseas to annoy Arabs. At least one targeted family is fighting back.

Saudi family sues genie, alleges harassment

(CNN) — A family in Saudi Arabia has taken a genie to court, alleging theft and harassment, according to local media.

Many Saudis believe invisible genies live among them and are capable of demonic possession and revenge.

A new and fascinating perspective of one of the great American figures of all time, Benjamin Franklin.

Okay, enough pop culture–back to the substantial. Pencils and pens out, time to brush up on our essential American History.

Thanks to my buddy Aaron Williams.