dandv

“The heart-warming image of a family decorating a Christmas tree is a festive classic: stockings hanging above the fireplace as mom and dad arrange the tinsel; faces lighting up as twinkling lights are draped across branches; holiday tunes playing on the radio as cheerful children throw snowballs outside… yeah right.

The point is this cozy cliché is a load of movie malarkey.”

...says the product description for a Christmas Tree Poster” -

“Put simply, Christmas trees are a freakin’ nightmare. It’s a miracle if the lights work, there are needles and smashed balls all over the floor and you can never quite reach the fairy (insert your own joke here). And that’s after you’ve nearly broken your back carrying the thing home. Fortunately you won’t have to suffer any of the above this year thanks to the ingenious Christmas Tree Poster. Depicting a fully decorated tree in all its festive glory, this huge, high quality print is ideal for anyone who can’t be bothered to erect a real tree. Simply unroll it and tack it to the wall. Easy!”

Now let’s go one step further: how can we really avoid Christmas Day, like, at all? As in, December 25th did not exist!

Well, it turns out that an imaginary geopolitical boundary can eat Christmas, just like Grinch. If you take a non-stop plane trip from the US west coast to Australia, leaving on December 24th, you’ll arrive in Sydney on December 26th.

Brilliant!

(there will be about 8 hours of Christmas from midnight until you cross the International Date Line, but that’s about it)

This study is from “bread for the world”, www.bread.com, A Christian Voice for Ending Hunger:

http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-basics/hunger-facts-international.html

Hunger Facts: International

World Hunger and Poverty: How They Fit Together

• 1.02 billion people across the world are hungry.
• Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes—one child every five seconds.

Let me emphasize this:

one child dies every five seconds

To all people who thank God for blessings – isn’t it a little too self-centered to thank God for His blessings to you (what? passing an exam? not having pimples before that date? a better job?), while all these tens of thousands of children die? If God doesn’t listen to their prayers, what makes you think He’ll listen to yours?

26000 children die each day. Do you still believe in a good God?

The usual replies I get to this one:

• it’s actually our fault that the children die, not God’s, because: we have freedom of choice / rich nations don’t help the poor children / etc.
• we can never understand God / there is a reason for everything

Nobody, and I mean none of the religious people I’ve confronted with this sick truth even bother to say “Wow I had no idea about that” or “That’s really horrendous”. Nope. They all defended God in one way or another.

This just shows how brainwashed religious people are, and how beyond any hope of recovery. I’m thinking of giving up this goal.