Posted on 12/26/2004 3:59:12 PM PST by schaketo
She calls herself "Satanta." And she's on a mission this holiday season to urge people to turn a blind eye to those glittering mall windows, to forget about making a wish list, to just say no to Hallmark and above all, to resist Christmas.
While some people may think she's a Grinch, 36-year-old cartoonist and animator Nina Paley, mother of the Christmas Resistance Movement, says she actually used to be a devotee of the holiday. That is, until it let her down repeatedly.
"I love the idea of Christmas," Paley said, speaking from her home in Brooklyn, New York, where she hands out "Boycott Christmas" stickers every year. "I always wanted to have this perfect Christmas, and every year it would fail."
Eleven years ago the final straw was broken in San Francisco. Already troubled by the holiday's devotion to excessive spending, waste and tit-for-tat gift giving, Paley watched a debt-ridden friend plunge deeper into the hole buying guilt-ridden gifts.
"There was so much about Christmas that wasn't working for me that I decided to write the whole thing off," Paley said.
On a recently refurbished Web site http://www.xmasresistance .org there are print-it yourself "End Compulsory Consumption" posters and stickers available and a link to a French spin-off version called "Mouvement Anti Noel.'
"We're not really out to convert anybody. We're just here to support people who don't want to participate," she said. "We don't really think we're going to keep Christmas from coming."
I'm thinking this is a big part of the problem.
This isn't the worst of it in San Francisco. One bar, called the "Elbo Room," had a Church of Satan "party" on Christmas Day. This is an ordinary, mainstream nightclub in S.F. The party featured some woman named LaVey. (Sp?) Apparently her father was a famous (infamous) devil-worshiper. This stuff doesn't even raise an eyebrow in ol' Frisco.
How long has this woman been a desperate attention-seeking nutcase?
The backlash includes more than just Christians ... Just about everyone with common sense believes this anti-Christmas garbage is just that -- garbage.
The name "Elbo Room" suggests to me that it's actually a lesbian bar.
The party featured some woman named LaVey. (Sp?) Apparently her father was a famous (infamous) devil-worshiper.
Anton Szandor LaVey established the Church of Satan in 1966 in San Francisco. He died in 1997.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Satan
This stuff doesn't even raise an eyebrow in ol' Frisco.
A more appropriate city could not be found.
Please take this as intended, since it's coming from a Jew...
If people would simply take a look at what Christmas is supposed to be all about, then this shouldn't be an issue.
Christmas isn't about giving presents. If it is about giving, it's giving to make things better for other people. Unless I'm mistaken, the idea of giving at Christmas comes from the belief that G-d gave his Son for humanity. For example, my family has a long tradition of volunteering at hospitals and at the Salvation Army, in hopes of giving a Christian a bit of time off to celebrate Christmas with his or her family. I think that even though I'm not a Christian, the "Christmas Spirit" is a wonderful and special thing, and if more people were to act on it, the world would be that much better a place.
I think that this lady really needs to see "A Charlie Brown Christmas," to see what Christmas is really supposed to be all about. Secular society has made Christmas the commercial event that it's become, and that seems to be what's gotten her pantied in a wad. If she would simply either celebrate Christmas the way it was supposed to be celebrated, as the birth of the Christ Child, or ignore it, she, and everyone around her would be a whole lot happier.
Mark
LOL, exactly. If she can't have it her way, no one should have it at all.
Being a comic book artist and in that loop for nearly twenty years, I am not unfamiliar with Nina Paley. She is also involved with the Voluntary Human Extinction movement, which explains a LOT. She's always been a drama (or trauma) queen.
She has been living in Brooklyn for the past 12 years. Hardly a hot-bed of liberalism.
Well, don't blame yourself!
At least she'll never have encephalitis.
Nina also has problems with husbands, never able to find the perfect one.
It sounds like she is not exactly a role model for that movement, if we're still reading her whining. Leaders are the ones who go out in front, and show the others how to do it.
My thoughts exactly. Somebody didn't give her the perfect gift and now she wants all of us to feel her pain.
Well, there were those Wise Men before St. Nick, but I guess the Orthodox remember them in January, not Christmas. Still, gift-giving could theoretically come from the wise guys.
I think you're absolutely right.
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