As we all know (how's that for a generalization?), truth is often stranger than fiction.
And this particular truth started with a white lie. Read How A White Lie Gave Japan KFC For Christmas to discover what I'm talking about.
Speaking of Christmas and truth, Santa Claus does not have a ninth reindeer named Rudolph, I don't want a hippopotamus for Christmas, and Grandma didn't get run over by a reindeer. I only wanted my two front teeth for Christmas when I was six. The names Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen were all made up by Clement Clark Moore in 1823. Did you know that Donner and Blitzen mean thunder and lightning in German?
Next we'll probably find out that Santa cannot stand milk and cookies.
Rudolph, by the way, was created in 1939 as an advertising gimmick by the Montgomery Ward Company (remember their catalogues?) in Chicago.
Tradition is a tricky thing. And even though Tevye the milkman sang about it in Fiddler On the Roof and it is one-fourth of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (the other three parts being Scripture, Reason, and Experience), we could probably dispense with most Christmas traditions and be a lot better off.
The three wise men or Magi or kings or whatever they were were not named Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. It's just another tradition (translation: white lie) somebody started.
If people in Japan want to order "party barrels" from Kentucky Fried Chicken that also contain shrimp and tiramisu, they have every right to do so. God bless them, every one. But just like Rudolph and hippopotami and front teeth and Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, let us just remember that it has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas.
And that's the truth.
I find Christmas traditions like trees and decorations and obscene amounts of food burdensome. I'm a bit of a grinch I guess but that's ok if I don't poison others' feelings about Christ or Christmas
ReplyDeletekylie, you and I would probably have made good Puritans in 17th-century England.
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