I have some…potentially troubling… news about how they get communion wine and wafers to have that special messianic flavor… This is the height of the hunting season.
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Perhaps vandals will hide baby jesus some where so church goers can go “jesus- caching”
Of course, there’s much mischief to be had when vandals know someone will searching for baby jesus.
It’s only a matter of time before some vandal sends baby jesus on a near-space balloon adventure!*
*please don’t send baby jesus to near space, we’re running out of helium. Jesus-caching may result in arrest.
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JeezyJack!
Isn’t it obvious? That’s for the guys who go on a skiing vacation or get really excited about tobogganing and so on. And curling. Oh my, curling…
However, every time I pass a nativity scene of illuminated plastic figures one question pops up in my mind: how many watts should the lightbulb illuminating baby Jesus have in order to be appropiate in the liturgical sense?
watts? Surely you mean candles.
<\flamewarmode>> But if the [insert deity] really wants them to get their plastic figurines back, won’t he make it happen without a bunch of heretical atheist scientific tools involved? </flamewarmode>
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Setting aside it’s basically a theological question, not a technical one -
Watts. When you buy a lightbulb you check how many watts it ‘has’. The lightbulb’s brightness derives from that.
‘Candles’ is not a SI unit and shouldn’t be used. The SI unit is candela. It is defined as
‘The luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540×10^12 hertz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1⁄683 watt per steradian.’
And look - there are the watts again!
The definition describes how to produce a light source that (by definition) emits one candela. Such a source could then be used to calibrate instruments designed to measure luminous intensity.
If we want to discuss ‘brighness’, let’s first agree on whether we look at Luminous energy, Luminous flux, Luminous intensity, Luminance, Illuminance, Luminous emittance, Luminous exposure, Luminous energy density, Luminous efficacy or Luminous efficiency.
Or, to keep things simple: how many watts should the lightbulb have?
(edited for The Devil’s typos)
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Graven images, surely? They’re being done a favour, really…
Any more than 40 watts and ye’ll melt baby Jesus and burn in hell. None of those compounded fluorescents, either. They are the Devil’s spirals!
Now, now. Even the most ‘Graven Image Worshippers’ Catholic-critical hardshell Protestant will lighten up for a cute plastic nativity scene. You just jumped all the way into Jehovah’s Witness territory. Gotta get your Protestant nuances straight, man!
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You iconoclast, you!
(That said, back when ‘culture wars’ were something that churches fought with one another over theology, rather than being about gays and uppity women, Oh boy was that sort of thing a flashpoint. Your more hardcore protestant groups suspected (not always entirely without evidence) that catholics were little better than idol-worshipping polytheists, with their heavy encrustation of saints, their Mary cult, and their torture-porn jesuses glued to every available surface.
It’s probably good that most of the protestant strongholds were separated by a considerable distance from the eastern orthodox, who tend to make the catholics look like calvinists when it comes to graven images…
And, of course, the always amusing incident in the colonies, where christmas was banned for its pagan and irreligious character.)
I generally try to stay out of those firefights, it just isn’t a winnable game; but there are reasons why trinitarians can never quite shake accusations of dubious monotheism, and why religions with lots of saints always end up looking, protestations of their Sophisticated Theologians aside, surprisingly like syncretistic polytheism in terms of folk practice…
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They’ve lightened up a lot, as protestantism has continued its slide toward ignoring theology entirely in favor of divisions founded on The Culture Wars; but pretty much any protestant flavor identified as ‘Puritan’ used to be a real hardass about it, until comparatively late in the game.
Yes - very well understood over here. You do have to kind of keep in mind that many of the earliest colonists on this side of the pond were not only directly victimized financially by the Culture Wars, but had actually had family members and friends tortured and killed - thus the incredibly long run of resentments. And, as is so often the case with such things, the actual relative was forgotten long before the resentment. (I later discovered that 3 different grandfathers perished in this very manner, and gained a sudden insight to those views.)
In other news - in the early 1800’s, Congress and the State Legislatures stayed in session on Xmas. They considered their duties there more important than the family dinner (which might be held more miles away than they could travel after the working day ended).
Funny how times change…in some ways, but hardly at all in others, no?
Btw, if you just happen to be one of us weirdos who actually enjoys strange plastic and other Jeezy renderings, I strongly recommend jesusoftheweek.com No personal affiliation - just pages upon pages of awe and jaw-dropping wonderment to enhance the Xmas mood!
My reaction, actually, is that the Lo-Jack ™ company has been missing a promotional opportunity by not putting out a public announcement that, recognizing that religious vandalism does occur from time to time, they will be donating tracking services to some unspecified number of houses of unspecified worship.
Simply taking out the ad might discourage some idiots (and anyone who’s doing this qualifies as idiot, even if it’s the transient idiocy of being a teenager).
Relatively cheap goodwill campaign.
This will make Friday and Gannon’s job a lot easier this Christmas.
Pessimistic fucker that I am, I could see fake ‘ZOMG! There have been complaints about LoJack’s Nativity tracking scheme from the Christmas-hating Feminazi Muslim Atheists!’ all over talk radio, leading LoJack to pull the campaign because PR/Legal have got their knickers in a twist, leading to Beck et al feeling all vindicated and shit. Which would be very bad crack, and not at all christmassy.
I don’t care if it rains or freezes as long I’ve got my Lo-Jacked Jesus…
[I had half of the song “composed” in my head while trying to fall asleep last night, but now…]
I do recall a bit of the refrain.
Lo-Jacked Jesus, Lo-Jacked Jesus
Telling me if you are near or if you’re far
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Hidden in the back seat of my car.
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Still can’t remember my lines – they seemed quite clever in the twilight of sleep. Tried looking at the plastic Jesus lyrics, but that just replaced my fragmented memory with the real lyrics.
