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Cicadas, reining in the crazy, nun embezzlement, Jesus gets an accountant
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Published Thursday, June 10, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT
Jun 10 2021

Reporters traveling to the United Kingdom for President Joe Biden's first overseas trip were delayed seven hours after their chartered plane was overrun by cicadas.

(Video) Rachel Maddow: GOP succeeds in wasting Democrats' time in power. You would think they would have learned something from the Obamacare debacle.

Jobless in PA livid over new unemployment system errors as state declares victory. When's the best time to migrate to a new system using an entirely different platform and paradigm? Probably not during a pandemic with a record number of claimaints. Duh.

Susan Collins sad that Joe Manchin has replaced her as most annoying Senator. "It's only fitting that the baton be passed to an obscure senator from West Virginia," she said. (Andy Borowitz)

Biden disliked Putin before it was cool. For more than 20 years, Joe Biden has questioned Vladimir Putin's true intentions.

US to buy 500 million Covid vaccine doses for world. But let's draw the line at free beer and lottery tickets, ok?

San Francisco may be first major US city to hit herd immunity, experts say. City still recording small number of Covid cases per day but they don't appear to be triggering wider outbreaks.

From Crazytown:

Trump returns as a diminished TV draw. Not having the nuclear codes kind of diminishes the drama, I guess...

QAnon at a crossroads: leaders try to rein in the crazy. With Q silent and Trump out of office, QAnon's heroes are trying to pump the brakes on the right's most popular nutty conspiracy theory.

'5G towers,' other conspiracies flourish at hearing on vaccine bill. "They can put a key on their forehead, it sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them and they can stick, because now we think there's a metal piece to that. There's been people who have long suspected that there was some sort of an interface, yet to be defined interface, between what's being injected in these shots and all of the 5G towers." (Video)

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

On this date:

Birthdays

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Miscellany

Rio de Janeiro's Christ statue: 'Thou shalt not bribe'. The Rio branch of the international accounting firm KPMG has signed an agreement with the administration of the Sanctuary of Christ the Redeemer to ensure operations are aboveboard.

Retired nun will plead guilty to stealing more than $835K from Catholic school ...to "pay for expenses that the order would not have approved, much less paid for, including large gambling expenses incurred at casinos and certain credit card charges..."

"Not a good day to get tacos..."two Florida men flying to get tacos when their small plane went down in the Everglades."

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KGB Cap
KGB Merch

Categories: Andy Borowitz, Cicadas, Clergy, Computers, Congress, Covid-19, Democrats, Donald Trump, Florida, Jesus, Joe Biden, Joe Manchin, QAnon, Rachel Maddow, Republicans, Susan Collins, Vladimir Putin

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Quote of the day
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Published Saturday, February 02, 2013 @ 12:58 AM EST
Feb 02 2013

When Jesus told us to love one another, He never said we had to like it.
-The Covert Comic

Categories: Covert Comic, Jesus, Quotes of the day, Religion

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Jesus was a Virgo...
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Published Tuesday, November 27, 2012 @ 7:15 AM EST
Nov 27 2012

... and you're all observing pagan rituals.

So it might not be a bad idea to acknowledge that our Christmas traditions are borrowed from a variety of non-Christian sources.

No one knows on what day Jesus Christ was born. From the biblical description, most historians believe that his birth probably occurred in September, approximately six months after Passover. One thing they agree on is that it is very unlikely that Jesus was born in December, since the bible records shepherds tending their sheep in the fields on that night. This is quite unlikely to have happened during a cold Judean winter. So why do we celebrate Christ's birthday as Christmas, on December the 25th?

The answer lies in the pagan origins of Christmas. In ancient Babylon, the feast of the Son of Isis (Goddess of Nature) was celebrated on December 25. Raucous partying, gluttonous eating and drinking, and gift-giving were traditions of this feast.

In Rome, the Winter Solstice was celebrated many years before the birth of Christ. The Romans called their winter holiday Saturnalia, honoring Saturn, the God of Agriculture. In January, they observed the Kalends of January, which represented the triumph of life over death. This whole season was called Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The festival season was marked by much merrymaking. It is in ancient Rome that the tradition of the Mummers began. The Mummers were groups of costumed singers and dancers who traveled from house to house entertaining their neighbors. The Christmas tradition of caroling was rooted in this practice.

In northern Europe, many other traditions that we now consider part of Christian worship were begun long before the participants had ever heard of Christ. The pagans of northern Europe celebrated the their own winter solstice, known as Yule. Symbolic of the birth of the pagan sun god, Mithras, Yule was observed on the shortest day of the year. As the Sun God grew and matured, the days became longer and warmer. It was customary to light a candle to encourage Mithras, and the sun, to reappear the following year.

Huge Yule logs were burned in honor of the sun. The word Yule itself means "wheel," the wheel being a pagan symbol for the sun. Mistletoe was considered a sacred plant, and the custom of kissing under the mistletoe began as a fertility ritual. Hollyberries were thought to be a food of the gods.

The tree is the one symbol that unites almost all the northern European winter solstices. Live evergreen trees were often brought into homes during the harsh winters as a reminder to inhabitants that soon their crops would grow again. Evergreen boughs were sometimes carried as totems of good luck and were often present at weddings, representing fertility. The Druids used the tree as a religious symbol, holding their sacred ceremonies while surrounding and worshipping huge trees.

In 350, Pope Julius I declared that Christ's birth would be celebrated on December 25. There is little doubt that he was trying to make it as painless as possible for pagan Romans (who remained a majority at that time) to convert to Christianity. The new religion went down a bit easier, with the people knowing that their feasts would not be taken away from them.

Christmas (Christ-Mass) as we know it today, most historians agree, began in Germany, though Catholics and Lutherans still disagree about which church celebrated it first. The earliest record of an evergreen being decorated in a Christian celebration was in 1521 in the Alsace region of Germany. A prominent Lutheran minister of the day cried blasphemy: "Better that they should look to the true tree of life, Christ."

The controversy continues even today in some fundamentalist sects.

(From here, via Grace McGarvey on alt.quotations.)

(Incidentally, acccording to this site and several others, Jesus and I share the same birthday. That somehow makes that date -September 11- a bit less onerous.)

Categories: Christmas, Jesus

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