A Thought

As Husserl's phenomenology stresses, prior knowledge and beliefs play a constitutive role in determining what we observe and experience.
-Alister McGrath. The Genesis of Doctrine. (71)

And Still More Dobie

In the days of Washington and Jefferson and on through the years till the Civil War, the ambition of able- and many not able- young lawyers was to be a United States senator and to help in a grand way to govern their country. By the time big business took over government, the usual ambition of a bright young lawyer became, as it still is, to get himself retained by some corporation. The desire to serve his country had changed to a desire to sell his soul to a rich corporation....Not all of the first age could be John Randolphs or Websters, or all in the second age draw salaries from Standard Oil, but all got the kind of thing they wanted to get.
- J. Frank Dobie. A Texan in England. (79-80)

More Dobie

I have been struck how through the repeated decades of American history the people have got what they wanted. In the beginning they were greatly concerned with "the rights of man" and with not only freedom but enlightenment. They got noble Washington, great and thoughtful Jefferson, righteous and unyielding John Quincy Adams for their leaders. A hundred years went on, and the people were all mad for "normalcy." Democracy consisted no longer in their "unalienable rights" of man to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" but in having things. The American way of life became the business way of life. And the people got as their leader a business man- Warren G. Harding, as sorry and muddleheaded a character as ever occupied the sorriest throne of the most rundown principality of Europe.
-J. Frank Dobie. A Texan in England. (79)

Dobie on Government

What a decent world it could so easily be if public spokesmen, instead of stirring up the people to distrust and shortsighted grasping, would allow the natural goodness in human hearts on both sides of the Atlantic to operate. The kind of people we can trust humanly are the kind of people we can trust governmentally.
- J. Frank Dobie. A Texan in England. (94-95)

William Hogarth

Men's passive submission to the temptations of the corrupting material world was one of Hogarth's prime concerns. He was an artist whose social agenda was focused on alerting his peers to the dangers of being morally devoured by a world of material consumption. His art marks the emergence of a world in which consumer goods came both to define personal aspirations towards free will and to subjugate the individual in a new system of slavery, conformity to fashion and irrational codes of taste.
-Michael Craske. William Hogarth(12-13)

A Tidbit

Socialization has to be transmitted from the old to the young, and habits and ideas must be maintained as a seamless web of memory among the bearers of the tradition, generation after generation. If this does not happen, community will break down into factional wars and the new generation will be faced with the task of rediscovering, reinventing, and relearning by trial and error most of what it needs. No one generation can do this.
-Walter Lippmann. The Public Philosophy

Vintage TV Christmas Cartoons

I want to take a look at four Christmas classics and define what is the message they are sending out at this time of the year. Specifically, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Little Drummer Boy. Each of them had an impression on me in childhood but what is the message relating to Christmas?

The Little Drummer Boy is not shown much anymore. The story of a little boy who loses his parents in a fire, the only joy he has in life is playing his drum. He happens to be present at the arrival of the Magi who bring the gifts of gold, myrrh, and frankincense. The Little Drummer Boy wants to present a gift too. All he has is his music, which he proceeds to play (rumpaparum). The message is it is not the size of the gift it is the heart and it is presented in a biblical manner.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas also relates to gift-giving, albeit in a much more secular context. The Dr. Seuss character decides the Whos in Whoville are entirely too joyful on Christmas Day. He believes it is due to the toys, the food, and the music. His devious plot is to steal all these things and thus steal Christmas. Lo, to his surprise the Whos greet the day not with tears but with joy. It is then that the Grinch realizes Christmas is not a matter of things but love. Amazing how in the world of 2011 this cartoon is still shown.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is actually prophetic. It was politically correct 35 years before there was such a thing. All the people who don't fit in have a place at the table. Rudolph, Herbie, Yukon, and even the Abominable are just misunderstood or different. We won't even go into the Island of Misfit Toys! But is there a message related to Christmas here?

Finally, we have A Charlie Brown Christmas. At first glance, this might seem similar to Rudolph in its emphasis on the other, but it is actually the most Christian of them all. It is an attack on materialism and aluminum Christmas trees. It is also the only one that directly references Scripture with the story of the Shepherds and the Angels.

People today may gripe that Christmas has lost its meaning, but that is nothing new. The four animated features discussed above are all more than forty years old. It has been a long time coming.