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It’s Christmas time once again. It’s that period of the year when all the idiots and warmongers get together to fight about whether it’s politically correct to call it “Christmas”, or “Holidays”, or “Holy Hannukah”, or maybe just invent a completely new name that won’t satisfy anyone?

These arguments have nothing to do with Christmas, of course. It’s more about religious, or atheistic, hooligans allowing free reign to their egos. They love anything and everything that creates contention in the world, which is somewhat ironic when you consider they all plead a belief in the message of Christmas, if not the name.

Remember? It’s all about peace and goodwill towards men.

When I was a small boy I grew out of believing in a “Son of God” almost as quickly as I realized my dad was masquerading as Santa Claus. It didn’t diminish the magic one iota, though. For me, the magic of Christmas was its ability to transform people. I relished the tales of World War One soldiers leaving their trenches on Christmas Day, shaking hands with the enemy, and even playing soccer with them in No Man’s Land. The next day they’d be doing their utmost to kill each other, but for this one day of the year they became friends and shared a bit of love.

Now THAT’S Christmas magic.

Christmas transformations weren’t confined to the battlefield, either. Times were hard for most in Britain just after the end of the second world war, but everyone was happy around Christmastime, there was truly an aura of peace and goodwill on the streets. Strangers exchanged greetings, and a sense of camaraderie pervaded the land.

We didn’t hear much about the US in those days, but if Hollywood exported any accurate sense of America in the 1950’s, then there’s every reason to believe it was a similar situation over here.

The magic of Christmas isn’t reliant on Santa Claus or Jesus Christ being what we were once told they were. The spiritual messages of both are similar. Santa ensured that every child in the world had a toy on Christmas Day, and Jesus set out to teach us how to live together in harmony, peace, and goodwill.

In a sense, both failed. Millions of children get nothing but empty bellies and misery on Christmas Day, and the human race is further than ever from even an inkling of peaceful coexistence.

Can we blame Santa or Jesus for that? No, of course not. We only have ourselves to blame, because it’s not about Godly intervention, or magical reindeer rides, it’s about us – you and me.

Yes, YOU – Christian! And YOU – Jew! And YOU – Muslim! And YOU – atheist!

Since time immemorial we’ve all been side-stepping our responsibilities and blaming the other person for the problems in this world. We’ve all argued and bickered to achieve what we want, to the detriment of the other man, or woman.

There is no peace, or goodwill, or harmony at Christmas anymore. We don’t have time for such things. We’re much to busy slagging off the Jew, or Christian, or Muslim, or atheist, while pretending we’re all terribly politically correct by arguing that we should call it something other than Christmas.

I’m neither a Christian, nor a Jew, nor a Muslim, nor an atheist. I’m just a man who’s sick of war, sick of the stupid bickering that makes a mockery of the Christmas message, and sick of my fellow men and women convincing themselves they have a god-given right to slaughter their fellows without compunction.

The Christmas message from Sparrow Chat this year goes out to all you Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, or whatever you care to label yourselves, and whether you are black, white, pink, yellow, puce, or green with blue spots:

May you allow the True Spirit of Christmas, with its accompanying peace, harmony, and goodwill to ALL men, to descend on you and remain with you, not just for the short holiday period, but always and forever.

You don’t need religion to achieve this. The Spirit of Christmas doesn’t descend from Heaven, it’s in your heart. All you have to do is let it out, and stop believing you’re the bee’s knees and everyone else is shit.

If you really do, there’s just a chance you may change the world.

Or, you might end up crucified.

“MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL READERS”

Filed under: Christmas message

If there’s one thing you can rely on from the Pope, it’s to spread the message of Christmas throughout the world at this time of year. Of all the clerics, surely this so-called ‘shepherd of his flock’ is the worst Christian ever to don a holy robe?

In a speech to senior Vatican staff yesterday, Benedict XVI stated his belief that homosexual and transsexual behavior could lead to the self destruction of the human race, and saving humanity from such action was, he stated, “as important as saving the rain forests.” ^[1]

Frankly, most sane human beings would consider the escalation of nuclear armaments, the proliferation of wars, rapidly increasing areas of famine throughout the world, vastly shifting power-ratios between rich and poor, the ravishing of the world’s economy, and the ever-increasing threat from religiously-inspired terrorism, to be somewhat more likely reasons for the destruction of humanity than a couple of gays making out in downtown San Francisco.

The pope, it appears, is an exception to the rule. That’s fine. After all he’s entitled to his opinion. As the leader and appointed soothsayer to God knows how many of the faithful, however, his narrow-minded beliefs are almost as dangerous as any one of the threats listed above.

After all, there are millions of people worldwide quite happy to accept his mutterings as gospel, if for no better reason than it saves them the problem of cranking up their brains and thinking for themselves.

As an aside during the same address, Popey mentioned the Catholic church’s World Youth Day held in Sydney, Australia, earlier this year. He expressed concern that it was depicted as a spectacle – a, “variant of modern youth culture, as a kind of ecclesiastical rock festival with the Pope as the star.” This was wrong, he said, it should be viewed as the fruition of a “long exterior and interior path.”

Sorry, Popey, it was an ecclesiastical rock festival with you as the star. It was depicted as such because that’s exactly what it was. Believe me, I’ve been to a few rock festivals in my time and the only exception with yours, was that you’re bloody useless on guitar.

Personally, I’d have preferred Elton John – but, oh no, in your eyes he’s more dangerous to the human race than global warming, nuclear annihilation, and mass starvation all rolled into one.

It’d be fun to be around to see the faces of these religious idiots when they finally discover, once and for all, that “Heaven” doesn’t exist.

Frankly, if the rest of the human race continue to soak up their pathetic utterances as sacrosanct, that time may not be long away.

^{[1] “Pope attacks blurring of gender” BBC, December 23rd 2008}

Filed under: Love thy neighbor

Two items merited attention on the NBC Nightly News tonight, due entirely to the contrast between them. The first was a last ditch attempt by that wealthy scumbag presently occupying the White House, at salvaging something of his presidential legacy by offering a financial carrot worth around $17.5 billion to a terminally sick donkey, long abused and starved of sustenance by its masters to the point it will soon require euthanasia, and masquerading as the US motor industry.

American vehicles have long been viewed as tat by the rest of the world. Outdated, cheaply-made, prone to failure, and totally out of their league among the more sophisticated European and Japanese vehicles available, one only has to hear the experts’ opinions on products from the US motor industry to realize how grossly left behind by the rest of the planet this industry has become over the last twenty years.

Had the senior management of Chrysler and GM bothered to look beyond their own borders during the eighties and nineties they would have seen the R&D being pumped into Volkswagon, Toyota, Honda, Citroen, and other manufacturers. Instead, they sat on their buttocks and filled their pockets with cash that might have been better used funding similar technologies, rather than supporting the private jets and high-flying lifestyles of top executives.

Does George W Bush seriously believe $17.5 billion will save this dinosaur industry? Possibly, he’s stupid and arrogant enough to imagine himself saving GM at its last gasp, like some aging North American Saint George rescuing the damsel from the jaws of the dragon. Unfortunately, in this case the damsel’s already been eaten and the bones regurgitated.

The British motor industry suffered a similar fate twenty years ago after the government of the day poured billions of pounds into British Leyland in a vain attempt to keep it afloat. It’s demise was due to exactly similar circumstances as that of Chrysler and GM today – a senior management team that couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery, let alone run a major industry. Ironically, British Leyland lost out to the more advanced Ford and Vauxhall (GM produced) vehicles of the day.

The biggest stink, and the one most motivating to British politicians of the time, concerned the thousands of BL production staff who would be thrown out of work if the industry was allowed to die. It did die, and they were left jobless, but government retraining schemes meant most found work in other sectors. That’s what must happen in the US today. As green technologies gain ground in the marketplace, ex-carworkers can be trained to fill the many jobs created by these new industries.

To use life-support on a patient already dead reveals the stupidity of a president who insists that throwing money at an extinct dinosaur in the hope of making it breathe again is the ‘responsible’ thing to do. Of course, it has nothing at all to do with responsibility, but a great deal to do with one man’s over-inflated ego.

The second item from NBC Nightly News was more heartrending. It revealed some of the letters received by the US post office during its annual ‘Dear Santa’ campaign, and by so doing laid bare the heart of American poverty. When tiny kids ask Santa for clothes to keep them warm, and anguished mothers beg money to provide a meal for their child at Christmas, it not only tugs at the heartstrings, but exposes the true hypocrisy of that great marketing ploy, the ‘American Dream’.

Maybe there was a time when the ‘American Dream’ was more than hype, though delving through history fails to unearth it, but the last eight years has seen such a decline in this nation’s fortunes that the legacy of George W Bush will never be saved by postponing the demise of the car industry. His is a legacy of economic catastrophe, of millions thrown into poverty both at home and abroad; his is a legacy of five million orphans in Iraq and countless numbers of children brought to suffering in America.

George W Bush was happy to dip into this nation’s coffers to the tune of $700 billion for the purpose of saving his buddies in the banking industry, and now at Chrysler and GM. He was happy to spend a trillion dollars destroying a Middle Eastern nation, and unnecessarily slaughtering over four thousand Americans in the process.

If there’s one thing George W Bush can do well it’s spend money. Unfortunately, what he chose to spend it on has been highly detrimental to those people he was supposed to represent. What a different, and better, country this would be if he’d chosen to spend it ensuring American kids had warm clothes in the winter, and American mothers could afford at least one meal for their child at Christmas.

Filed under: Political scumbags