{"id":1674,"date":"2008-12-24T18:00:16","date_gmt":"2008-12-25T00:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamingwithchildren.com\/?p=1674"},"modified":"2008-12-24T18:00:16","modified_gmt":"2008-12-25T00:00:16","slug":"and-to-all-a-good-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/24\/and-to-all-a-good-night\/","title":{"rendered":"And to all a Good Night…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I believe in Santa Claus. I celebrate a secular Christmas and enjoy its trappings. Yes, it’s materialistic but materialism is fun, drives art and entertainment\u00a0and creates jobs. Yes it’s gaudy, but people are gaudy, I don’t mind gaudy so much. It’s aimed at kids and, beautifully, makes them believe in wonder and magic. And then when they mature, when they pull aside the curtain, they can feel grownup. Magic isn’t real, but there’s a magic to maintaining the illusion for the next generation. No offense, I ignore the “war on Christmas.”\u00a0 For me it is a secular holiday, so I guess I’m on the “anti-Christian” side of the war. But I’m not here to preach and I personally don’t take sides. Worship as you like. I just wanted to stand up for my own non-religious reason for the season.<\/p>\n

It’s the night before Christmas and all through my house<\/p>\n

Not a creature was stirring, not even my mouse<\/p>\n

The controllers were hung in the cabinet with care<\/p>\n

Their cords twisted and tangled, a pile I can’t bear<\/p>\n

Anyway, I forget how the rest goes and I’ve got to get back to Christmas Eve. Let me explain better about secular Christmas. I believe it’s more important to live like and with the advice of Jesus Christ (among others) and to be a good and just person at all times. That’s my commitment and it’s fundamentally Christian. Where I differ is that I don’t think it matters if I do this for a higher power, because it feels right, or because some cosmic authority figure has rules. I think you should be good, for the sake of good.<\/p>\n

So I love the concept of Santa, the magic kids love about it. I take the Jesus out of Christmas and I’m left with a pretty tree, decorations, Santa Claus, generosity, charity, good food, family, and love.<\/p>\n

So I say -warmly- Merry Christmas to all of you. Whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jedi, Mormon, or secular.<\/p>\n

GamerMom is what’s called a “recovering Catholic” – she still believes in treating people right, she seems on board with my views, but the most important thing about her is her genuineness. She spends Christmas morning, with the kids, delivering meals to elderly shut ins. She still believes in Jesus, so she thinks this is a better way to serve him than plopping your butt down on a pew. I think she’s right and I love the impact it’s having on our kids.<\/p>\n

The kids spent today watching the Grinch cartoon and then the Jim Carrey monstrosity (which they like), then we played about an hour of Mario Kart on the Wii, then 2 hours in the snow, now mom’s home so it’s pierogies<\/p>\n

I’ll be back tomorrow with a Christmas story or two. For now, keep your eyes on the skies! And tonight when you’re saying your prayers – or wishing upon a star – hope for the poor and unemployed. They’ll need God and Luck to survive the coming economic storms.<\/p>\n

Ugh. Downer. Sorry.<\/p>\n

Merry Christmas from the GamerDad Family!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I believe in Santa Claus. I celebrate a secular Christmas and enjoy its trappings. Yes, it’s materialistic but materialism is fun, drives art and entertainment\u00a0and creates jobs. Yes it’s gaudy, but people are gaudy, I don’t mind gaudy so much. It’s aimed at kids and, beautifully, makes them believe in wonder and magic. And then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}