So, apparently, there’s a Christian group that wants to replace Halloween with a new holiday honoring Jesus.
And here’s a video which explains their reasoning (such as it is)
This seems ill-thought out to me for two reasons. (Okay, there’s actually many more than just two – but these are the ones I wanted to remark on.)
1) All Hallows and All Souls Day are already Christian observances, even if they are adapted from the earlier Celtic Samhain. So really, there’s no need to invent something new here.
and
2) If you feel a strong desire to do so anyway (after all those tend to be Catholic festivals and everyone knows that the Papists are worse than heathens) for the love of all that’s holy actually pay attention to grammar and word formation. Halloween comes from the Evening (or e’en) of All Hallows – therefore the proper form of your neo-fest ought to be Jesuseen not Jesusween. Jesus Ween is just going to conjure images of this in people’s minds:
With all the child sex abuse scandals you Christians have had to deal with recently that just seems in poor taste.
Speaking of which … my, that’s a well hung savior there.
Hahaha love your reasons for not making it “Jesusween” *shudder*
A gift giving holiday huh. Don’t they already have one of those sometime in the winter called…oh, what was it…CHRISTMAS? I get that for “Jesusween” they want people to give out bibles and such, but they could just as easily do that on Christmas or even Easter or a birthday or just any ole day of the year.
Christian parents may like their kids receiving those things, but I’ll guarantee if that’s all that kids get when they go trick or treating, there will be a drop in the people that participate. Kids want candy, not books that tell them how wrong they are.
I love the Halloween episode of “King of the Hill” that had to do with a Christian nutcase wanting to get the neighborhood to stop trick-or-treating.
Does that picture make anyone else want to get on their knees and ‘praise Jesus’?? ;)
It does bring new meaning to that Christmas song that has the lyric “Down on your knees…”
LMAO at #2… My immediate thought when I saw the sign on the back of the bus was Jesus Peen!
Yes to everything you’ve written here…
My first thought was also “a holiday for Jesus’ penis…wait, isn’t that in early January, the festival of the circumcision of Jesus?”
I think we should start a counter-movement, and promote the hell out of “Christ–Cock Day”–what do you reckon? We can then all sing “O Cum, All Ye Faithful,” “Joy to the World, the Lord has cum,” and so forth…? ;)
Now that’s a *Soter* I can get behind! Or is that in-front of? Hmmm. ;)
Seriously though, Jesusween has to be the most terrible name for an idea ever. It’s like they’ve given up on trying to grasp straws.
[looks at photo]
Er…. Wasn’t Jesus supposed to have been Jewish?
Maybe I’m tired or my monitor is dying sooner than I thoughts, but I clearly see the end of the skin on the tip, and it’s just kinda “slim-fit” around the glans — not an uncommon thing, at all (take it from one who knows).
OK, gave the pic a blow-up; I was right.
Oh, and I was right about Jesus being a Jew, too. This man is clearly Notjewish.
Oh, but don’t you know? Jaysus isn’t Jewish…though he might be a Jew for Jaysus, ‘cuz, ya know, he is Jaysus after all…
*headdesk*
It annoys the hell out of me how often mistakes like this get made. I had to explain to “a certain someone” a few years ago (about 8 now, actually) that it was not right to continue painting Antinous as if he “was Jewish,” and the person said “I never really thought about it.” Based on the size of the dicks this person put on Antinous, I found that very hard to believe…
Thinking about it, though, it’s possible that model *could be* Jewish and haemophiliac or something, but yeah, that wouldn’t have flown in Nero’s time.
Honestly? I’m not surprised that people, especially Amerikans, don’t pay attention to the state of the penis in drawings and paintings. Compulsory secular infant circumcision is less common in Canada, and has been virtually unheard of in Europe and Oz since the 1940s (when government programs stopped paying for it, after concluding it’s really not “cleaner” and serves no medicinal purpose — and that smegma actually protects the genitals more often than not), so I doubt the mistake you describe was made by, say, a Brit or Franc. Most people kind of ignore details, in general, so failure to realise what has the potential to become a major focal point such as the state of the penis in a full-frontal male image is going to be lost on them. I could also wax on about the inherent homophobia in the way English-speaking males are raised, that even gay men are not immune to falling into the entrapment of, but I’m not writing a theses here.
No, it was just a stupid American not really thinking much in his size queendom about what was historically accurate for the subjects with which he dealt. That was something lost on him in general, though…
Well, I can certainly forgive re-interpreting classical male nudes in modern sensibilities — but at the same time, compulsory circumcision is only really a religious stance to Judaism, Islam, and a few (at best) African tribes, it has no place in Classical polytheism. Granted, if one wanted to counter that, therte’s no place in classical polytheism for religious tattoos or piercings, as the Greco-Roman world found the body beautiful enough as-is, and there are many remarks about how the Keltoi habit of tattooing was ugly — and yet I have tattoos with spiritual significance planned. Still, I’d argue that there’s a big difference between permanently marking oneself with symbolism of a certain deity as an act of devotion, and one exalting the mark of The Covenant of Abraham as “beautiful”, when re-interpreting polytheistic divinities. Then there’s the fact that pretty much the ultimate reason that the U$ practises the compulsory and oddly secular circumcision of infants can be directly traced back to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a staunch anti-sex crusader who first termed masturbation as “self-abuse”, recommended that infant girls have their clitorae burned off with carbolic acid, and proudly never consumated his marriage (all ten of his and his wife’s children were adopted, and since his death and the examination of his journals, it’s been widely speculated that he replaced his sexuality with enemas) It just seems a tad disrespectful, in my mind; the former reason for circumcision is, basically, a standard of male “beauty” allegedly given down by the god of Abraham, who’s more easily congruent with the monster Typhoeus than with Zeus/Jupiter while the latter gives hardly an adequate reason to pay tribute to gods that are clearly approving of a full sexuality in such a despicable manner.
Well, remember though: the Egyptian did it, too, and they were considered quite respectable by the Greeks and Romans, for the most part–though that particular custom of theirs was not really up their alley, as evidenced by some vase paintings, etc.
Egyptians did what? Cut penises or tattoo? I’m genuinely confused on this. Regardless, Egyptians also shaved their heads and wore wigs over it (I can’t say I’m sure why, I’ve seen more than a few suggestions as to why), so clearly mimicing another culture was not a prerequisite for evidence that the culture in question was respected by Hellas or Rome.
They circumcised.
Oh, and you reminded me of this one: http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly050504.htm
Don’t know why it took me until just now to look that one up again. :-)
Though your picture is much better, I was totally picturing Jesus fronting the band Ween for one night only…singing Homo Rainbow…
Just yesterday I was remarking to my mother that, since it is one of the most overtly still-pagan Christian holidays with the least Jesus in it, there are probably Christian groups who want to change it. I hate being right. :/ That’s even worse than my neighbors who turned off all the lights in their house and hid in their bedrooms all evening on Halloween, because it was “Satan’s Holiday.”
The thing about the history of Hallowe’en, though, is that it’s been relatively recent in its “re-paganisation”. True, there were a few small pagan elements even when it was more overtly “Christian”, but it’s mainly been since the mid-19thC that more overtly pagan imagery has been a focus of the celebration in the dominant Anglo culture. Thinking about it, I’m pretty sure (I’m going on memory, here) that the re-paganing of All Hallows seems to be somewhat coincident to the Irish famine, but I can’t be sure if this is correlation or causation. *shrug* Still, it’s an interesting point of reference.
…which reminds me of one of the Pentecostal kids I went to high school with. She and I were working on some project, paired up by the teacher, and she asked to look through one of my personal books, and saw a topigraphical map of the Great Britain and Ireland (so marked to show mountains and valleys, not necessarily cities). She stopped dead at that page and, apparently not reading any of the text along with it, and asked me what that was a map of, and why it was in that book. I told her, and pointed out that she’d picked up a book of Celtic history — that’s where the Celts settled after being driven from mainland Europe by Rome. Her response? “Mah Sunday school preacher showed us a map just like this. She said this is where the Anti-Christ will be born.”
Then I was all:
o_O
…and said, “Yeah, that’s where my family is from — and I have the best grade in this class. If you don’t want to be re-assigned, then if I were you, I’d think twice about who you’re implying to be Devils.”
That’s definitely accurate. Since it was never “de-paganized” in Ireland, and many of these customs persisted in Ireland and the outer isles of Scotland through that time (and beyond), that’s when it became more of an issue.
But… don’t they already have Christmas and All Soul’s Day?
By the way, JesusWeen totally does bring up that image. It was the first thing I thought of and I could not stop giggling like a school girl/snickering whenever the name popped up. I am totally mature. :|
That hung jesus isn’t from that gay porn video “Passio” directed by Mattias von Fistenberg?…LOL
You have given me something to look up. I hope you’re happy. :-)
Don’t give me that “the devil made me do it” defense… You like it anyway hahaha…
Honestly, I do! Some of the best Jesus slash art is on y!gallery (Yaoi Gallery), by the way. And I’m completely fascinated by even the most vaguely homoerotic or otherwise Queer re-imaginings of Biblical stories: Jesus Christ Superstar, The Apple, Godspell (if you’ve ever seen the film version, I dare you to explain to me how that’s not one of the queerest things, in all senses, in existence). Of course, I’ve also, in the past, explained Rocky Horror Picture Show as a Christ allegory, when a friend noticed that I’d accidentally filed it under my section “Goofy Movies about the God of Abraham”. And hell, if casting Willem Dafoe as Jesus, and David Bowie as Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ isn’t some kind of Jesus slash waiting to happen, I don’t know what is.
[...] at the House of Vines comments on certain Christian groups trying to replace Halloween with JesusWeen. Yes, that’s the actual name THEY picked. Warning, link is extremely NSFW. More on JesusWeen [...]
[...] been sanctified by the Catholic church way back in 609 CE, rightly mocked by Christians and Pagans alike. But the impulse to cleanse Halloween of its (perceived) Pagan/occult atmosphere has a darker side. [...]