Alert: Another holiday in danger

It happened to Christmas right before our eyes: commercialization. What should be the annual celebration of the birth of Christ — a time for adoration, thanksgiving, and reflection — has become yet another chance for shopkeepers to profit in the year’s biggest sales quarter. Not only that. The junky load of lit-up plastic reindeer and singing Santas makes me scream. And then there’s the “support all this by spending even more on a little gift” parties. The L.L. Bean catalog arrived yesterday. P-l-e-a-s-e!

But Christmas isn’t the only holiday in danger.  I just heard about dog costumes for Halloween. That’s COSTUMES FOR DOGS TO WEAR not for adults to dress up in! Like Christmas, Halloween through the ignorance of those who need a reason to get out of the house or to make a little money, is being exploited and commercialized to the extent that its true meaning may forever be lost to the general population — its roots known only to the few who have sought out this knowledge.

There’s the junk — singing, bobbing, skeletons; fake spiderwebbing for the porch, plastic Jack-o-lanterns, and stupid superhero costumes! What has Spider Man or Dorothy from Kansas to do with a spiritual holiday with historical precedent and significance like Halloween has?

Parents are the worst. They profane Halloween by thinking that going begging from house to house for a little candy means nothing — that prepubescent children reciting phrases like “trick or treat” is repetitive nonsensical fun like chanting nursery rhymes.  They like seeing their babies dressed up as ax murderers. Good, clean fun. No real purpose or meaning. Well, thank you, Parents, for perpetuating falsehood and heresy.

Do some research and you can easily learn the real meaning of Halloween — the truth that in certain quarters has been known and preserved all along. Then, I’m sure, you’ll not want any longer to abuse this day, so important to so many around the world. 

It’s not too late. Just as there are still the enclaves of those who appreciate the true meaning of Christmas and rue its commercialization, devotees of Halloween are out there, too. And they are also serious about their holiday and don’t appreciate its degradation.

Believing Prince Caspian

As I’ve said before, I’m not a reader nor fan of fantasy preferring MY fiction to be rooted in reality. 

Hmmm . . .

Allegory, like the Narnia series,  majors on plot: it’s a representative fiction with the story employing symbolic events and characters along the way.  Prince Caspian, like the others, is specifically and unabashedly Christian — it’s all there — good v. evil, moral struggles, choices, human strength and weakness, Divine superiority with intervention and rescue.

Lewis believed in the importance of imagination and its part in believing the truth of Christianity. After all, as a faith there are some issues that do require, well, faith. Is there a cosmic struggle between good and evil? Is the end predetermined? Who are the players? Who wins? Why? Does Good triumph as events on earth and beyond play out?  Why do bad things happen? Why good?  Will God arrive on the scene at a designated time to right all wrongs and avenge his name defeating his emenes and fully redeeming mankind?

Some kind of faith is needed for all that. I’ve not seen “proof” beyond the metaphysical. And still . . . reason to believe. That’s what kept coming to me as I watched this film tonight. With ugly inter- and intra-kingdom battles and power struggles, murder and deception, violence and hatred in a dark world that has forgotten the “faith of its fathers,” represented by ruins and kingless, beseiged doubting creatures, there are true warriors -believers, the English wardrobe children, previously weighed and found worthy. They unite with Prince Caspian, who has what it takes, goodness, faith, character, courage, and proves himself able to lead the Narnians when the children return to England and Aslan is not physically present. 

I don’t care for fantasy. (Christianity is fantastic in some ways, but not fantasy. ) I couldn’t finish the Chronicles though I appreciate Lewis’s work. The film for me serves as an enjoyable reminder that, in Emily Dickinson’s words

“This world is not conclusion
A sequel stands beyond
Invisible as music
But positive as sound.” 

and in Shakespeare’s (Hamlet):

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Fantastic but not fantasy.

This is not a textbook review, so here are the Disney offical site with video and the review from today’s NYT.

Also, this week I picked up a DVD of “Beyond Narnia,”  a dramatization of C. S. Lewis’s life and transition from atheist to Christian. It’s good (cheap) background for children (or adults) reading the series, plus it was shot on location in Oxford, England.

Then is anybody wrong any more?

 The New York Times book review page (linked by RSS right) presents three editors’ lists of their ten recommendations for reading from 2007.  Most interesting is the editor’s note that “editing ain’t what it used to be.” A Harmony Books release displays a misspelled subtitle (since then corrected) on a hardcover book, “Finding Faith Without Fanatacism.” That in itself would make a good essay on carelessness, but it gets worse. The book, by Brad Hirschfield, has for its title, “You Don’t Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right.”Hirschfield is a renowned Orthodox Rabbi, speaker, activist, and author, who is committed to (from bradhirschfield.com) “teaching inclusiveness, celebrating diversity, and promoting acceptance. Grounded in biblical and Judaic scholarship, and interwoven with personal stories, You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right provides a pragmatic path to peace, understanding, and hope that appeals to the common wisdom of all religions, asking important questions like:

• How can we make room for other cultures and beliefs?
• How can we balance commitment and openness?
• How can we create a world with less violence and division?”

The world may not be completely black and white in all areas. Circumstances sometimes dictate deviation from conventional thinking. But when it comes to faith, (assuming he means religious faith — in God) everyone may be wrong, or everyone may be right. But if there is disagreement, somebody has to be wrong ultimately.  If we start there, I can get behind the “world peace” theme to a degree. 

When I see a title and blurb like this (I haven’t read the book and don’t plan to) I fear that the usual suspects (Americans, Anglo-anything, Christianity) may be blamed for the world’s ills. Or if not blamed, be called upon to engage in yet more citizen-of-the-world groupthink and swallow whole chunks of what we know to be false. Or smile politely while our fellow man, that we supposedly care so much about, walks in darkness.