Reindeer Hoof Cuts Two Ways

... Jolly, jolly. We got Christmas Spirit, or do we? The spirit means a lot of things in common to many people, but also some peculiar things to almost all people. I don't know how sharp reindeers' hooves are, but I'm sure they'd cut two ways for Christmas spirit. Here are two examples, but I must add that I am in sympathy with both, no matter how contradictory that may seem after you read this.
... Case 1. Several years ago I read about a man hired to portray Santa Claus in the usual department store setting. In costume, he was seated in his chair. Parents brought their children and stood in line for each kid's turn to sit on Santa's lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. So far so good. As the kids spoke their wish list, Santa would occasionally comment when they asked for guns and other armaments and war memorabilia like GI Joe statuettes. He advised that good kids shouldn't want to bring violence into their play, etc. The manager got wind of this and fired him.
... Sometimes it's instructive to boil things down to their essence. In this case the man was hired to portray an actual historical figure: Nicholas of Myra, a third century Bishop and a saint. Santa Claus is the Dutch name we inherited for Saint Nicholas. So essentially the man was fired for doing what he was hired for: staying in character for a saint!
... Case 2. Fatherly love and upbringing can contradict a politically correct trend or dictum. (See this page) For years children, including my brothers and I, played cowboy and strapped on holsters and put spurs on our shoes and felt very Western. Toy pistols that completed the outfit had chambers to hold a roll of"caps," rolled paper strips with dots of gunpowder that were advanced for each shot by the trigger and gave off a blast that satisfied a little boy's heart. Sometimes we even skipped the gun part and smashed a whole roll with a big rock, for an extra nice explosion! There was little danger of burns or fire and our parents willingly bought all this stuff for us as part of a normal toy repertory.
... Fast forward to 2007 and that poor Dad in the cited web page, trying to gift his three boys with the same things he innocently enjoyed as a boy. You should read it for yourself and keep in mind not what the toys are supposed to symbolize, but rather the precious connection of fathers to sons, and the natural bond between all who are fathers.

Quintet of the Wise

... The only time I ever used a ouija board was at Christmas around 1976 or so, when my wife along with her cousins were visiting family. We were amusing ourselves with this novelty. Aunt Diana picked up the planchette, the oval device on which the participants place their fingers to operate the divination board. She shook it saying "That's to shake the spooks out!" Somehow this made intuitive sense, sort of like shaking down a medical thermometer to recalibrate it before taking a temperature.
... My question to the board was "Who are the Magi?" The answer was two letters: US. I took this to mean that either the Magi represent us all in visiting Jesus, or in some metaphysical sense we all are always visiting the miraculous birth.
.. It's odd that of the four Gospel writers, only Matthew mentions the Wise Men. Since his was the earliest of the four perhaps Matthew was aware of some information that became long forgotten when the other Gospels were written later, or maybe Mark, Luke and John thought the story insignificant since the visitors were foreigners. Scholars say that even their number is unknown, and their names are not specifically mentioned in the New Testament, though the Christmas carol "We Three Kings" assigns locutions to Melchior (bearing the gift of gold), Caspar (frankincense) and Balthazar (myrrh), perhaps based on oral history.
... Anyway it continues to fascinate me that in the time before telephones and email the ancients had their now-mysterious means of communicating nearly instantaneously over long distances. (It is claimed that modern Gypsies still do this, as they do not depend on the amenities of living in fixed residences.)
... So in my interpretation of the visit to Bethlehem five Wise Men appeared at the stable, including Albert Einstein (bearing the gift of space-time) and LaoTzu (tea ceremony and contemplation).
... Merry Christmas to all and may peace finally reign on Earth.

The Holy Land (An Oily Land)

... Those of us who crawled into the 21st century with five or more decades already under their belt may have a perspective on the energy situation in the USA not shared by the new generations. Into the early 70's gasoline was cheap, and service was big. Picture this. Attendants pumped your gas, checked your oil, washed your windshields. Road maps were free.
... On October 19,1973 -- a critical date -- the Oil Producing and Exporting (OPEC) nations in the Middle East declared an embargo on petroleum sales to the United States. Almost overnight everything changed. Our other suppliers (Iran, Venezuela and Mexico were actually our friends then) could never make up the shortfall. So supplies tightened, and prices soared for all oil products. A number of gas stations went out of business for lack of product to sell. Those remaining open had lines blocks long of customers waiting to fuel up. The dark side of this was that businesses learned people would wait in long lines, pay anomalously high prices and even pump the gas themselves with freebies no longer needed to promote sales. Real customer-oriented service never came back.

... For the first time car manufacturers shrank models. Parking lot operators even reserved spaces for the resurgence of "compact cars", happy to fit more paying customers into the same acreage. Among foreign imports Volkswagen "Beetles" were popular, and my very first car was a used 1963 model.

...Mopeds, already popular in Europe, first appeared in our country. Wind power and solar energy got a boost. This was over 40 years ago!

... Israel, then only a 25-year old state, was involved in its fourth war with its Arab neighbors. Though friendly to the USA it had no oil to sell and too small an economy then to buy much from us. Yet we suffered through an embargo directed at us for supporting that country in their wars. Of course there is more to this friendship than plain economics.

... What I'm getting at is that the present is not so different from the past after all. Sometimes the lessons of history are only learned the hard way. We had a chance then to learn real conservation. Instead we held our breath trusting that things would get better. And they did, for a while. Now we are back where we started with an even bigger appetite for petroleum.

The clock, the Pope, and the Stork

... Today I watched the Census Bureau's world population clock.  It brought home graphically what the human population explosion means.  During the minute while I read the page 149 babies were born.  I could visualize these little bundles arriving all over the planet!

... According to a Harris Poll:

... Birth control/contraception is supported by 93 percent of all [US] adults, including 90 percent of Catholics and 88 percent of born-again Christians, the "very religious" and Evangelicals
....Funding of international birth control programs is supported by 70 percent of the public, including 66 percent of Catholics, but only 53 percent of born-again Christians and 48 percent of Evangelicals.

... Now of course I understand that as humans we are creatures of contradiction.  But we do make sense at least some of the time.  So I am trying to see where anti-population control policies would lead us, as in this statement attributed to Pope John Paul II  "I resist the argument that we are poor because we are too many."

...I also remember a pronouncement from an Evangelical that went approximately as follows.  "Population control is nonsense.  The Earth could support five times as many people.  Look at the Netherlands.  They have over five times the density of the US.  I don't see them starving or feeling crowded."

...Hmm. The current world density is 125 people per square mile, with the US not far behind at 85.6.  Going to the logical extreme, that man would be OK with a US populace of 2.2 billion within a world that had burgeoned to 32 billion people.  Does he realize this, or care to?

...Given the support for birth control why is this topic completely off the radar screen in our  politics?

Travel time

. There are developmental stages even for late adulthood. You already know the usual ones. This one crept up on me without my really noticing it.
. The concept of "family" defies space. Modern people find all kinds of ways to shrink it back to manageable size: email, phone, jpg's and so forth. But until they invent teleportation, nothing can substitute for physical presence. With family scattered across three cities on two coasts the only way to shrink space for this purpose is jet flight. Of a sudden I am planning such jaunts as if they were bus trips. It's become a part of this phase of life.