Tuesday 15 December 2009

It's beginning to look a lot like

a late December religious festival of murky pagan∕judeo∕christian origins*.

If your festivities includes Village People-like prancers and flouncers performing a divinely exuberant choreography inspired by Riverdance, A Chorus Line and How She Move, we present once more: The 12 Gays of Christmas.



* Though this may not be the definitive essay about the origins of the celebration of Christmas, it certainly works for me.
How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year — than from paganism. Then again, in this notion of cycles and the return of God’s redemption, we may perhaps also be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood and claimed for their own too.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot the obligatory shriEEEkkk for the christofascists reading this post.

5 comments:

fern hill said...

Wow! A DAMMIT JANET War on Xmas Tradition!

I love that vid.

JJ said...

That's awesome

Alison said...

My very favourite Xmas vid.
Goes to show production values are not all that after all. Wonder if we'd love a more high tech version as much if one ever surfaced?

deBeauxOs said...

Yeah, I think that it's a decent, though not excellent, recording of a type of performance we all recognize and love: the variety-show-in-a-community-centre or student-recital-in-a-school-gym. That's what makes it so charming.

Bina said...

Tsk--that's SO gay.

(And that's why it's FAAAAAAAAAbulous!)

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