Happy Circumcision Day!

  • Though I’m all for more Ortho­doxy in all aspects of life, I can see how ask­ing peo­ple to give up say­ing “Happy New Year!” in favor of “Happy Cir­cum­ci­sion and Nam­ing Day of Our Lord and God and Sav­ior Jesus Christ, and Com­mem­o­ra­tion of St. Basil of Cap­pado­cia Day!” would be a bit much. All the same, um, what I just said.

    Mak­ing the rounds of the blo­gos­phere and Orthobl­o­gos­phere, there’s lots of fun:

    • O those funny Prots.
    • O that clever (and hard­work­ing) Orthodixie. The whooole year in review. You know, if I were ever orga­nized enough to do some­thing like this, I’d prob­a­bly be too orga­nized to keep up with time-wasters like this blog. So it’s a bit of a Catch-22 for me.
    • Also learned from Orthodixie: The odi­ous daVinci Code movie will be com­ing up next year. But we also learn from Jim N. that there will be a “hefty new web­site” going up to com­bat the lies. Hooray for the new media; a pox on the old. What else is new?
    • Jan Bear’s got a hilar­i­ous exam­ple of demonic influ­ence in canines. Go look if you don’t believe me. I’m glad that who­ever is hold­ing the video cam­era is gig­gling. Me, I’d be send­ing for a priest-veterinarian. Something’s wrong with that doggie.
    • The Anchoress has 2006 pre­dic­tions. My favorite two:

      3) Pres­i­dent Bush will not be impeached over the FISE/NSA mat­ter; his poll num­bers will con­tinue to rise as Amer­i­cans – no longer dis­tracted with Christ­mas – fol­low the story and real­ize that the NY Times and much of the Fourth Estate have become a Fifth Column.

      4) The WaPo will pull back from that story. The NY Times, mad with hate, will run over a cliff with it. The L.A. Times will save itself.

    • I don’t know if I can share Anchoress’ opti­mism about the LA Times. Here’s a year-in-review of how they’ve skewed sto­ries to reflect their own agenda. Long must-read, and every one back up with links, in case you think he’s fib­bing:

      The paper has stead­fastly main­tained the fic­tion that estab­lish­ing democ­racy was not an artic­u­lated jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the Iraq war until it became clear that the U.S. was not going to find large stock­piles of WMD in Iraq. This fic­tion is eas­ily debunked.

      The paper also repeated the “immi­nent threat” canard. They stalled on a cor­rec­tion for days, and finally refused to issue one, claim­ing that the error was, and I quote, “not cor­rectable.” I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried, folks.

      The L.A. Times danced with joy when Bar­bara Boxer man­aged to annoy Condi Rice with a mis­lead­ing pre­sen­ta­tion of the facts lead­ing up to the dec­la­ra­tion of war in Iraq. Gloated The Times: “Boxer, the pas­sion­ate standard-bearer, had suc­ceeded in get­ting that woman’s [Rice’s] goat. Mis­sion accom­plished.” The Times did not bother to men­tion that “pas­sion­ate standard-bearer” Boxer had got­ten Rice’s goat by gravely dis­tort­ing the facts. That part was left for the blogs to handle.

      Lot of hard work in research­ing some­thing like this, and I admire any­one who could keep read­ing the paper day after day. I’ve found I can’t han­dle any of the big main­stream papers any­more — if I ever did read some­thing that seemed eye-opening, I’d have to won­der how much of it was really true. And since I’d go off to Drudge Report and other alter­na­tive media to check it out, it just makes more sense to start with them. On the other hand, I like get­ting the daily paper from nearby St. Joseph. It’s a small enough town that they just report on what’s going on with­out some daily dose of anti-Bush-dementia.

    • And speak­ing of the man the MSM loves to hate, here’s Bush’s New Year’s mes­sage:

      The great strength of our nation lies in the hearts and souls of the Amer­i­can people. …

      As we cel­e­brate the New Year, we give thanks to God for his bless­ings and ask for his guid­ance. We look with hope to the year ahead and the many new oppor­tu­ni­ties the future will bring.

      Laura and I send our best wishes for a happy New Year. May God bless you, and may God con­tinue to bless America.

      Yep, the man’s a dan­ger­ous eaves­drop­ping maniac, all right. I know that every­one (includ­ing myself) has some ax to grind with Bush, but really, when do we think we’ll ever have a pres­i­dent like this again?

    • The Catholics are doing away with limbo? Does any­one else remem­ber George Car­lin men­tion­ing this on one of his albums back in the ’70s, and then say­ing, “So what did they do with all the unbap­tized babies in limbo? Did they get pro­moted or what?” Which of course is com­pletely irrev­er­ent, but I have to admit it’s what I’d be ask­ing myself if I were a Catholic. There are some other things I’d be won­der­ing, like what else they were going to change their minds about. And I’d also be won­der­ing why it takes them 30 years to make a change. But then, the Ortho­dox aren’t exactly speedy either. (My favorite Ortho­dox joke — Ques­tion: How many Ortho­dox does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Change? )
    • Seraphim from Ancient Church offers this New Year’s bless­ing by way of Ser­a­pion of Thmuis : We beseech you, make liv­ing men out of us. Well, trust a desert father to take every­thing I would’ve come up with for a New Year’s Res­o­lu­tion, improve on it 100% and dis­till it down into nine words.

    Happy New Year, all!


    Related posts:

    1. Happy (belated) Blog-o-versary to me
    2. Why I don’t think the war is a failure
    3. Heck­uva speech going on
    4. The shame­ful story has a happy ending
    5. So are we doing “Merry Christ­mas” or “Happy hol­i­days” or what?

    January 1st, 2006 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • Jim N. 01.01.2006

    Drudge is my first stop news source, too. I have RSS feeds of the local rag, but I only go to Drudge. Some­times Fox for their videos, but even that is rare. “Happy Cir­cum­ci­sion and Nam­ing Day of Our Lord and God and Sav­ior Jesus Christ, and Com­mem­o­ra­tion of St. Basil of Cap­pado­cia Day, Grace!

  • Grace

    The RSS feed is a good idea. I prob­a­bly will get more into that as a way to tune in on these things.

    And Happy etc. etc. etc. Day to you too! (I don’t think it’ll ever catch on.)

  • Karl Thienes

    The proper gret­ting, as a priest in our city once put it (tongue in cheek):

    Christ is Circumcised!

    Indeed, He is Ban­daged!
    :)

  • Jim N.

    Bwah! that’s funny…

  • Grace

    Ouch!

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