Semi-Daily Journal Archive

The Blogspot archive of the weblog of J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and Chair of the PEIS major at U.C. Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Certainly Jonah Goldberg is well-intentioned when he writes:

Jonah Goldberg : It does't help if a conservative says "Merry Christmas" when he really means "Eat yuletide, you atheistic bastard!" If you're putting up a Christmas tree in order to tick off the ACLU, you've really missed the point....

He is performing a mitzvah. And any signs of intelligence from the National Review crowd are very welcome. But is it wise for him to mock all his yahoo friends in this way?

I mean, Jonah does know that "Yuletide" is the profoundly unChristian Saxon solstice festival, doesn't he?


Yule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : Though there are numerous references to Yule in the Icelandic sagas, there are few accounts of how Yule was actually celebrated, beyond the fact that it was a time for feasting.... It is, however, known to have included the sacrifice of a pig for the god Freyr.... [C]onfraternities of artisans of the 9th century, which developed into the medieval guilds, were denounced... for their "conjurations" when they swore to support one another in coming adversity and in business ventures... on December 26, the "feast day of the pagan god Jul, when it was possible to couple with the spirits of the dead and with demons that returned to the surface of the earth...." [T]he burning of the Yule log, the eating of ham, the hanging of boughs, holly, mistletoe, etc. are apparently derived from traditional northern European Yule celebrations....

So let's all get ready to celebrate the Twelve Days of Marduk!

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