You know that December 25 is not the birth date of Jesus, and that many religions do not consider Jesus as the Messiah. Islam recognizes Jesus as an important prophet, but not as God. The truth is that around the end of the year we all celebrate some kind of holiday, mostly in the form of massive commercial ventures designed to increase yearly profits for the corporations and with little more than a quick nod to any social or religious significance to the holidays.
No wonder Republicans are touting Christmas.
It seemed clear that the “war on Christmas” was a commercial ploy which attempted to link religion to capitalism and lead the rubes and deplorables in a non-existing rumble with godless anti-patriotic liberals. Besides, Coca-Cola owns Christmas, right? Perhaps some festive revelers say Happy Holidays so as not to violate any copyrights.
But many, like the Obamas, openly wish everyone a Merry Christmas … as did I and all my liberal heathen friends.
Now if Christmas is the time for giving, I can attest that I gave away hours and days of my time celebrating, eating, visiting, drinking, traveling, and doing a lot of pleasurable things that didn’t involve reading and keeping this website up-to-date. It’s now the first day of the new year and I have to get busy. They were big but I only read two books last month in between cookies and Christmas cards.
You might have noticed also that my daily reading suggestions often didn’t make it online in a timely fashion. For those suggestions you might have missed, or I might have failed to post, here is the complete suggested reading for December 2017.
12-01-17 – 50 Things To Do with a Book (Now That Reading Is Dead) — Bruce McCall
12-02-17 – Borne — Jeff VanderMeer
12-03-17 – Fool For Love — Sam Shephard
12-04-17 – Blurred Lines — Vanessa Grigoriadis
12-05-17 – Home Fire — Kamila Shamsie
12-06-17 – Draft No. 4: On the Writing process — John McPhee
12-07-17 – Winter’s Tale — William Shakespeare
12-08-17 – One, Two, Three, Eyes On Me! George Duoblys
12-09-17 – You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me — Sherman Alexie
12-10-17 – The Party — Elizabeth Day
12-11-17 – Causing Death and Saving Lives — Jonathan Glover
12-12-17 – Sun & Steel — Yukio Mishima
12-13-17 – No Country For Young Widows — Robert Olmsteaad
12-14-17 – Autobiography of Red —Anne Carson
12-15-17 – The World of Henry Orient — Nora Johnson
12-16-17 – Words Are My Matter — Ursula K. Le Guinn
12-17-17 – Spoon River Anthology — Edgar Lee Masters
12-18-17 – The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By — Georges Simenon
12-19-17 – The Kites — Romain Gary
12-20-17 – Doting — Henry Green
12-21-17 – The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire — Aimé Césaire
12-22-17 – The Red Haired Woman — Orhan Pamuk
12-23-17 – Easy Street (the Hard Way): A Memoir — Ron Perlman
12-24-17 – African Nights — Kuki Gallmann
12-25-17 – A Brief History of Drugs — Antonio Escohotado
12-26-17 – Flight Behavior — Barbara Kingsolver
12-27-17 – Michael Faraday and the Electrical Century — Iwan Rhys Morus
12-28-17 – The Plot To Hack America — Malcolm Nance
12-29-17 – Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams — Sylvia Plath
12-30-17 – The Chinese Orange Mystery — Ellery Queen
12–31-17 – Raising Hell: Christianity’s Most Controversial Doctrine Put Under Fire — Julie Ferwerda
A Celebration of Reading 