Hey, how 'bout that cookie recipe of your mom's? And a Sacred Solstice to you and yours.

Hey, how 'bout giving up your momma's cookie recipe?
And a sacred solstice to you and yours...

@paulthetall is so confused. He thinks Mr. Savage (!) should be polite when responding to a bigot who promotes criminalizing Mr. Savage (!) for being gay and for having a family.

What a whack job.

Here I was offering up my "Dan is acting like a douche again, serving up the same kind of hate he says he hates so much" when in pops the right-wing brigade, through some link I suppose.

I was looking forward to being pilloried by Dan's fawning faithful but got swallowed by the masses. Damn.

@238, 261

I was thinking the same things. I try to remind myself that such idiots don't spend time on the rest of SLOG, and are only here in answer to some idiot pastor or conservative radio show/blog's call to action, and they'll be gone again by the new year, if not before.

It's kind of odd that the Savage haters seem to just not get styles of writing, and yet insist on reading his column in the Stranger. Dan, in articles like this, writes in a kind of smart comic hyperbole. All forms of humor are not contained in Reader's Digest Humor In Uniform.

"Christmas" is just a word to me, associated with Santa (distantly based on a bishop, but only distantly), the decorated tree (of pre-Christian soltice festival roots), relatives, gifts, lights, snowpersons, carols (some referencing Christ but that's not the only imagery in them, some totally secular), the manger, etc. It could just have well been still called whatever it was before the Christians added the Jesus birth to it - WinterFest or SolsticeFest or whatever.

If you want to read more about the lovely Sarah's fab new book, check out the reader reviews on Amazon. I got through about the first 100 and each one was more vicious and hilarious than the last. (Warning: Mostly in styles of humor you Savage haters probably don't understand.)

And you can Look Inside and read the whole introduction.

I'd like to mention a few points, based on history, agreed by most religious scholars (not in Sarah's dictionary)
1) there is NO proof that Jesus was born on Dec 25. It more likely occurred in spring, when shepards would actually be tending sheep - not in winter, a time which early Christians typically celebrated as Easter.
2) For political reasons (to keep the peace) Pope Julius I chose, around the 4th century, the most popular Roman holiday on Dec 25 to absorb pagan festivals as a Christian celebration, which evolved into Jesus's birthdate. The bible doesn't not indicate a date of Jesus's birth, so the holiday isn't even really a "Christian" holiday, nor is it the date of Jesus's birth, but rather, in its truest form, a winter celebration of all combined festivals!

@47 longwayhome: Ya nailed it!!

haec tota mihi quis non bonus valde erat

My Latin construction of Dan's suggested motto for Pain's family: "All this for me when I wasn't even very good." If applied to Palin herself, of course, it would have to be "bona"