Trees

Thursday December 1, 2005 - 3:10PM EDT

When I began to read about this talk about holiday trees and christmas trees I decided I needed to find out a little about the origins of the Christmas tree in the first place. The Christmas tree is a Christian tradition started in Germany. That is about as far as my quick lookup goes for now. It has now taken on a very secular tradition within the larger secular Christmas tradition which of course all goes back to the birth of the Christian messiah. It is a christian tradition so why would we not continue to call it a Christmas tree. It goes up around christmas. I think some people are too concerned about a name. It just seems that the line of reasoning for it to be called something than other than a Christmas tree is weak. The line of reasoning I hear is so that we don't exclude people. But it is already such a secular tradition so how a name like this excludes people doesn't make sense. All trying to change the name is doing is making a whole bunch of Christians angry for no good reason. We've adopted a Christian tradition into secular american society. I really don't see the point of further hijacking the tradition with a name change. It is just a name. A name that may or may not be kept in the long run. The name does signify the origin of the tradition. That is the kind of effeciency I like.

Just saw a headline that read "Urban youths show gains in math scores". I almost dread reading the article for fear of what kind a sewage-like analysis it will provide. Just read the article and there was no horrible analysis. A couple of sentences and points that could have been better served by further extrapolation but mainly the article just presented some basic findings.

I like what the French PM is saying in response to the rioting. Normally I'd think that politicians would not be so apologetic and say that they did things wrong. They would normally gives us a crapload of rhetoric to deflect culpability from themselves. I like what he is saying, but it still remains to be seen what he will actually do.