Merry Christmas everyone! This is my last day on the computer until after New Year. Harpists are busy this time of year, so I've have no time to breathe, or add much to the JMDL. (Did I just hear a sigh of relief, Colin?) Favorite Christmas songs... The Christmas Song, Nat King Cole River, Joni Mitchell Gabriel's Message, Sting Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Frank Sinatra and Cyndi Lauper Winter Wonderland, by just about anyone Almost made it to the top five... Feliz Navidad, Jose Feliciano Least Favorite Christmas song and absolutely the worst song ever composed in human history... Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time, Paul McCartney. YUCK YUCK YUCK YUCK! Nice try, but you really didn't pull it off as well as you could have, Toots, Christmas song... Silent Night, Stevie Nicks Please don't make another Christmas record ever because I can't stand when your nasally, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard voice gets all that airplay in the same month... Gloria Estefan Best Christmas song, even though the writer allowed his crushing childhood trauma from discovering there is no Santa Claus to color his perception of the Christmas message... Father Christmas, Greg Lake Best Christmas song by non-human characters... Chipmunk song Best Christmas instrumentals... "Linus and Lucy" and "Christmas," composed by Vince Gueraldi for the Charlie Brown Christmas special Have a Merry Christmas and a Harpy New Year! Harper Lou P.S. What would a post from Harper Lou be without some kind of spiel.... I hope you all are using an "X" to write Christmas because of weak typing skills and not to make a political statement. It's so sad to see certain political forces insisting that Christian beliefs are offensive and that we need to remove all signs of our faith from public view in the name of "tolerance" and "diversity." Especially considering that all core Christian teachings emphasize tolerance of others and appreciation that we are all different. Some Christians might be too zealous, and some even make major mistakes, because we're just people. Who doesn't make mistakes? What group of people in history has not included a few real jerks? These days, local governments refuse to allow public nativity scenes, public schools have renamed the "Christmas holiday" to "winter holiday," and some crazy people are now fighting to remove Christmas trees from public display because it represents Christianity. (How stupid, the tree is a non-Christian symbol to begin with -- we just think they're pretty so we like to put them places!) I would hope that the politically correct hypocrites who are fighting to remove any symbol that could be potentially "offensive" to non-Christians realize one thing: freedom of speech and freedom of expression apply to our celebration and belief in Christmas as much as they apply to your belief that our belief is offensive. If you are truly fighting to avoid offending humans, don't X us out, because, duh, Christians are humans, too. Christ's message was to "love one another," even when we don't agree with one another. True Christians, even those who are stringently opposed to certain behaviors, are going to practice that love. When we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate our love for all other people -- so if you're offended by Christian symbols, you're offended by symbols of love. We don't care that you are Buddhist, Islam, Wiccan, atheist or what. We don't put little Darwin feet on your Mogen Davids and Pentagrams and Seven-Pointed Stars. We don't call you narrow minded because you aren't open minded enough to accept that we have a right to choose a narrower walkway. Our public displays of Christmas aren't there to offend you, and you can walk right past them. Likewise, if you think some Christian ideas are wrong, you are free to walk away. We will still love you no matter what. Start there, and work your way back to reality! Merry Christmas!
