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makinglight has a note about groups putting together resources for the tsunami victims. I make meaningful gestures and blither a bit.Notes to me: add to quickie travel ritual set matches. There exist people who don't have them around, weirdly and mindbogglingly enough.
Also, remember to write the journal thing about polyvalent logic, chaos magic, and Sri Syadasti and the other journal thing about models of energy, self, and the water pumps and reservoirs.
In other news, I'm really quite fond of
oneironaut.In general crankiness, "Happy Solstice" as a nasty-intentioned comeback to "Merry Christmas" irritates me even more when people continue doing it well after the astronomical use-by date. I want to strap these people to an orrery and spin them around until they suffer from an understanding of astronomical geometry.
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As for that last paragraph... I really wish all of the "holidays as weapons" people need to STFU before I use Things that Go Boom upon them. (This year needs to end. Now.)
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My model of the universe is one in which people have matches. And books. I get confused easily when these subconscious axioms are shaken. :}
I don't have a problem with "Happy [my holiday]" as a response to "Happy [other person's holiday]"; what's good for the goose, y'know? But I run into folks who respond to "Happy [other holiday]" with a deliberately pointed "Happy [different holiday]" and it drives me bugfuck insane. Not just because it feeds into the "All December holidays are cheap Christmas knockoffs" presumptions by making a one-to-one substitution again, though that's bad enough.
But damnit, I was a fucking astronomy major. I flunked out of college, but when I was in it, I was a fucking astronomy major. And even when the solstice is late, it is over by the twenty-sixth of December. Damnit.
(Have I mentioned that I've been having suspicions that I actually hang out with Hethert-Nut? :P )
Preaching to the choir, I know. Or at least preaching to the agreeably cranky . . .
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That's what I meant by "holidays as weapons"-- not wishing someone a Merry (Whatever) because you mean it, but as a "take this holiday and shove it!" thing. All of y'all SHUT UP already.
(But isn't there a "Yuletide Period" type thing? I can't remember a single year when I actually celebrated the solstice *on* the solstice. Or pretty much any other Neo-Pagany holiday on the day. I'm happy if I can get "close enough." I mean, it's not like Light Returns overnight, after all. But then, I'm notoriously bad with date-based things in general. If I celebrate the birthday within a week or my anniversary sometime in October, that's good enough for me. :)
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Specifically, I'm starting from a place where I'm cranky at the whole mushing together of various holy days into some sort of Christmas-flavored mishmash celebrated on 25 December. I see a lot of stringing-together-holidays without any apparent knowledge or awareness of them. (There are people including Ramadan in their generic-holiday-well-wish-list this year. Ramadan! Which cycles on a lunar calendar. What will they do in a couple of years when it's cycled somewhere else in the solar calendar in order to make empty gestures to inclusiveness at Islam?)
So take that crankiness and include in it the fact that the solstice is an astronomical term. There are holidays that are keyed off the solstice, but they are not the solstice itself; the solstice is a fact of orbital geometry. The holiday mush is infuriating enough without having science treated as malleable mush.
Personal quirk thing, y'know? I'd still be cranky if they were wishing a happy Yule in the same way, but the crankiness wouldn't be manifesting as impulses to using orreries as torture devices.
Damnit, now I want an orrery again. Heh. A big one. (Shiny brass and stuff! Shiny shiny!) But I got given a sundial! And a book on the ancient Egyptian calendar system to go with it. Expect geeking out in the future sometime.
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Besides, 90% of people don't know to connect the word "Yule" with a Solstice celebration, they think it's another way of saying Christmas.
(Now *I'm* cranky, and I thought I was done being cranky about holiday stuff. I *really* want this year over.)
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You've probably seen one and just didn't know the term; I think there's a rule about having one in every movie that involves an Alignment Of The Planets, which is about 20%% of SF movies. They're working models of the solar system (or a subset of it), like globes for people who don't know when enough is enough. Here's some art depicting one. God intended them to be all brass and glass and exposed clockwork and intricate incomprehensible diagrams and ... I'll be in my bunk.
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I mean, I bet you're aware that some of the wintersolsticeholidayseason stuff falls at different points in the month. If someone commented that they thought that wishing them a happy Chanukkah a week and a half after it was over struck them as PCness rather than genuine pluralism, I'd expect you to be able to figure out where they were coming from.
BTW, I think this site may have a better image of an orrery than the one Squid provided. It's a little clearer what it is, at least, though Squid's image is, as ever, pretty.
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As for the "Happy Hanukah" late... I'd probably blink for a minute and say "it's over? okay..." Quite honestly, people (and that includes me) get so offended about holiday greetings that next year I'm inclined not to offer any, to anyone. I begin to think my husband has the right of it when it comes to detesting this entire time of year.
And yeah,
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I commented today when
Orrery shiny. I think it'd be really cool to have a big brass one with a motor in so it went around and around and around in all its mighty epicycles . . . Every mad scientist or evil genius needs an orrery!
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That snarky comment of
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At home we have groceries shutting down early on Thanksgiving too, which is sort of aggravating for the last minute realisations. Clearly we need to have last minute realisations by noon.
I so need to sit down with the Egyptian calendar system book that my mother-in-law gave me and work out the calendar structure, speaking of figuring out where to put the movable holidays . . .
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I'm trying not to be cranky: and then someone comes along who waits until Christmas day to wish a large group of people a happy "whatever you celebrate this time of year", which goes back to the assumption that all people celebrate either Xmas or an Xmas-equivalent.
Were I at all an observant Jew, I would wait until Purim or Passover and post holiday greetings with an appended "or whatever you celebrate this time of year".
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:: GRINS :: I'm going to have to remember this one!
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(My iTunes randomizer obligingly goes straight into "Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts" from Handel's Messiah as I type that.)
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Flint & steel. Older than matches. Matches have sulfur; bad for some rituals. And they don't work after getting wet.
However, I do tend to keep a book of paper matches in the travel ritual kit, because sometimes I'll loan out the lighter & not get it back. Paper matches don't go away 'cos I don't use them. (Find some goth club that gives away matches with nifty logo.)
Even the Christians around here tend to use "happy holidays;" the ChristmaHanaKwanzaRamaStice season is just a bit too much for most people.
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For Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist people, atheists, practicioners of minority and/or Native religions, etcetera, it gets to be more difficult, because unless you know what holiday (if any) they're celebrating around the Winter Solstice, you're never gonna guess right. So "happy holidays" is probably safest, but it does sound pretty wimpy and boring.
I tend to think "Happy Yule" is generic enough - if people don't like it, they can tell me what they want to be wished instead, and I will gladly wish them that. However, if someone says "Merry Christmas" to me, I say it back to them, on the assumption that it's the thought that counts.
Yeah, "happy Solstice" is a silly greeting even on the actual day of the solstice, let alone any other time, but... whatever, y'know?
"I want to strap these people to an orrery and spin them around until they suffer from an understanding of astronomical geometry."
LOL, actually, that sounds like it would utterly be a blast; I'd wait in line to ride that ride. Aughra's orrery in the movie The Dark Crystal, remember that? it wasn't this solar system, but it was cool as can be, and I definitely wanted one.
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And Aughra! That's her name! I couldn't remember it, but I did manage to google up an image searching on 'Dark Crystal'.