Category: Get off my lawn!

Why don’t people talk on the phone anymore?

September 9, 2025 • 11:30 am
Source

I’m sure everybody over 50 has noticed the trend of younger people—and by “younger”, I mean even up to age 40—avoiding making phone calls. Instead, people email or text, and the younger they are, the more they use text. I’m sure there are kids who never talk to anybody on the phone, except perhaps their parents when they have to.

I’ve long noticed this trend, but I can’t explain it.  There are certain conveniences to emailing and texting, like getting your thoughts off into the ether immediately instead of waiting for someone to answer the phone. But texting or emailing doesn’t guarantee an immediate response, especially with emails, which at least require some thought on one’s part instead of a kneejerk response. The less thought you need in a medium, the more the younger people use it.

And that leads to one of my (probably incorrect) explanations for this trend.  The reason I prefer the phone over text is that phones allow for continuous conversations, which are more unpredictable, which can be way more fun, and allow more social connection (and bonding) with others. Talking on the phone also conveys nuance through the tone of your voice—nuance that’s not only absent in written communication, but can be misinterpreted in texts and emails and cause trouble. (This is why the younger generation uses emoticons: to avoid miscommunication that wouldn’t occur in phone calls.)

But using the phone requires you to implement a number of social skills—those involved in direct interpersonal interaction—that you don’t need in short written communications. And that’s apparently too much trouble for a lot of people.

This is my theory, which is mine, but I’m sure it’s been suggested before, and I’m ignorant of the literature on exactly why younger people love to text and intermediate-age people to email.  It’s clear, though, that teachers and others see a detrimental effect of incessant texting on social interaction among younger folks. That’s why Jon Haidt, supported by every teacher on the planet, wants to keep cellphones out of school.  That way you can still talk to your classmates, but you can’t text anybody you want and avoid social interaction.

The title above is actually my question to readers: why, do you think, people of many ages are inexorably moving towards short electronic written communication and avoiding either vocal communication or face-to-face communication?

Here’s a short video of Sherry Turkle, whom I’ve met a few times, telling us why conversation is better than texting. She’s mainly talking about face-to-face conversation rather than phone conversations, but some of the advantages apply to telephone conversation vs. texting.

This is part of what Sherry works on as an academic at MIT, and so her views deserve a hearing.

Movie dancing set to Steely Dan

September 8, 2025 • 11:30 am

Andrew Sullivan posted this video on his column this week as a “mental health break”. It comprises old movie clips of great dancing, all set to Steely Dan’s “Only a fool would say that.” Wikipedia says this about the song:

“Only a Fool Would Say That” is a song with lyrics rumoured to mock John Lennon’s 1971 song “Imagine“. In 2024, American Songwriter claimed that the lyrics were chiding Lennon for “being out of touch with reality.”

But it’s a great song, and there’s some great dancing below. How many can you recognize? Still, I prefer the originals. The first clip of Astaire and Rita Hayworth is one of my favorites (see the original, ” The Shorty George”, here). And I hope you recognize Cagney in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Finally, one of the greatest movie performances of dance was the Nicholas Brothers, shown young and old. The original is here.

They don’t dance like this no more.  And why has dancing disappeared from the movies? Would people rather see car chases and shootings?

Words and phrases I detest

September 5, 2025 • 11:30 am

It’s time again to vent our spleens by giving the words and phrases that we find detestable.  Today I have four single words. I know I’ve put at least one of these up before (“fam”), but never mind. There is a theme today: short words or contractions used to make yourself look cool. Here we go (I give examples of each).

1.) Inspo: This is short for “inspiration”, but “inspir” would be better. “Inspo” is in fact so truncated that its meaning is not clear.

Here’s an example I found on my computer’s news site under Tasting Table. It’s about what drinks you should not order at Starbucks because they are complicated for the baristas to make and thus and hold up the line:

Another challenge is that many of these viral recipes include syrups or ingredients that are either seasonal or have been discontinued. Now, add in AI. Some customers walk in with AI-generated inspo scraped from social feeds and get upset if their order isn’t an exact match. These drinks are confusing, hard to memorize, and exhausting.

That word curls the soles of my shoes.

2.) Merch: You all know this one because it’s everywhere, and stands for “merchandise”. Somehow I find it demeaning to sellers. HuffPost, which I no longer read, is a good place to find such “we’re so cool” language. Here’s one article; click to read, though you don’t have to.

 

3.) Fam:  I find this contraction the most offensive of the three. And it came, of all places, from the New York Times food column, recommending a bodega in the invaluable “where to eat” column.  This one hasn’t been posted on the paper yet.  Note that there may be a bit of racist language here, with “we all” perhaps stemming from black English.  But bodegas are a Hispanic site, not a black one.


4.) Mood.  No, this is not the past tense of a cow sound; it is used to mean something like: “Here’s something [usually a feeling] that I can relate to.” Like the ones below.  As Sophie Chew, a lady after my own heart, wrote on yahoo! life,

For example: as I write this, I’m hungry, cranky, and stressed out, but I am also Meryl Streep’s scream in Big Little Lies, a glass of wine on the beach, an obese Golden Retriever, a yawning hippo, Detective Pikachu drinking tea, Elmo shrugging, pink hair, a guy giving the finger, the weather, and a cat in a watermelon.

All of these are moods. Some are even big moods or mood AF, depending on how intensely you’re feeling it.

. . . The term is so liberally applied that while browsing Twitter in the name of research, I came across everything from porn to puppies. When I checked a minute ago, #mood had clocked over 77 million uses on Instagram—not including instances where the term is used without the hashtag.Most frequently, it’s used as an expression of like-mindedness or sympathy. Say you’re scrolling through Twitter on Monday morning and see that your friend has posted a photo of Spongebob being buried alive. You get it immediately. Mood AF, right there.

Ms. Chew gives several examples; here are three:

 

If you want to see 50 of these Gen Z words, go here.

Your turn. Give us the modern language that turns your stomach.

 

Do not do what I did

September 2, 2025 • 7:40 am

A few weeks ago I bought this “ice cream”—at least I thought it was ice cream—because it was on sale. (Now that I’ve discovered the fabulous Tilamook ice cream, I don’t think I’ll be buying any other brand, though I do recommend Trader Joe’s Super Premium Ultra Chocolate Ice Cream, which is not that expensive). I had a look at it this morning in the lab freezer (I put it there because it was too hot to carry this home), and, sure enough, it wasn’t ice cream. Look at what I’ve circled:

What is the difference? Mental Floss tells us:

Food labels aren’t filled out on a whim. They’re the product of standards and guidelines issued and overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is charged with making sure we have at least some idea of what we’re consuming. (The FDA’s roots are in the government asking volunteers to eat small amounts of poison, but that’s another story.) For ice cream, the FDA has a mathematical formula. Products bearing that label must contain at least 10 percent dairy fat and must also weigh 4.5 pounds to the gallon. The latter is important because no ice cream can have more than 100 percent overrun, or the amount of air equal to solids. In broad terms, the FDA wants to make sure anyone selling you ice cream is selling you sufficient dairy milk fat and not a carton full of air.

If a product flunks on both these counts, it can be sold—but manufacturers can’t call it “ice cream.” It’s now a frozen dairy dessert. Thanks to more air and less milk fat, it’s likely cheaper to produce.

. . . Perry’s ice cream makes a point of boasting of their true ice cream status and also points out some variations within that definition. Some ice cream might be labeled “economy,” which meets the bare minimum standards. “Regular” ice cream falls below 100 percent overrun while adding a bit more milkfat. “Premium” ice cream might have as little as 60 percent overrun. “Super-premium” is as low as 50 percent, with milk fats as high as 18 percent.

Other companies may offer both. Breyers, for example, offers ice cream and frozen dairy desserts, a distinction that may not be apparent unless consumers examine the packaging carefully.

Because I wasn’t paying attention, I bought myself a carton of what is largely air. Do not make this mistake: examine labels carefully. Breyer’s Ice Cream, once my favorite, now has a lot of flavors that are actually “frozen dairy desserts.”  Caveat emptor.

And, of course, real ice cream used to come in half-gallon cartons. They’ve reduced that by 25%, and now you’re buying 1.5 quarts, or, in the case above, 1.44 quarts. They’ve chiseled us down another 0.06 quarts.  Since nobody looks at this stuff, we become victims of greed (one might even say “duplicity”).

Changes in orange juice and other foods coming from the FDA, and not for the better

August 11, 2025 • 11:00 am

Here’s an article from Food and Wine that simply gives more of the bad news that I thought I was avoiding by reading “regular stuff.” Click on the screenshot to read it. The upshot is that foods—and not just OJ—are going to be diluted and their quality reduced, all supposedly in the name of consumer welfare. Yes, I know that government agencies are doing a ;pt worse stuff, but anybody who beefs that this post is trivial compared to that other stuff risks dire punishment, for I post what I want.

As you probably know if you’re American, the Food and Drug administration sets standards for how food is constituted if it’s going to be labeled one way or another.  For example, the standards of “ice cream” specify that it has to have a certain percentage of milk solids and milk fat. That’s why, before I buy ice cream in a store, I inspect the carton to be sure that it’s labeled “ice cream” rather than “ice milk” or, Ceiling Cat help me, “frozen dairy dessert”. (This is, of course, independent of the ever-shrinking volume of containers, like the half gallons of ice cream that have morphed into 1.5 quarts.) So check what’s written on your carton of Breyer’s to ensure that you’re buying ice cream.

Now the FDA is changing the standards for other foods, and of course not for the better. Quotes from the article (indented):

As Food & Wine previously explained, the FDA began setting standards of identity in 1939 to promote “honesty and fair dealing” and ensure the “characteristics, ingredients, and production processes of specific foods were consistent with what consumers expect.”

Back then, the FDA added, companies often sold products “that were represented as jams containing fruit, but the products contained little fruit,” so it established baseline rules for certain foods to be labeled as such. For example, the Oregon Growers explained that “preserves” and “jams” must contain at least “55% sugar and 45% fruit. If a product does not meet these requirements, it must be called by another name.”

With this new update, jam makers may no longer be required to adhere to these percentages if their standard of identity were to go away, meaning your next jar could be more sugar, water, or some other ingredient entirely than mostly fruit.

Be sure to start inspecting your jams. However, looking at a few of mine, they don’t list the percentage of fruit versus sugar: they just give the ingredients in order of predominance, and sugar is first, even in good jams. But how much sugar are you spreading on your toast? The FDA will ensure that it can increase without your knowing. You’d have to write to the manufacturer to find out.

As for orange juice, well, that’s gonna be diluted:

On Aug. 5, the FDA announced that it’s proposing to amend the standard of identity for pasteurized orange juice, which has been in place for six decades, in an effort “to promote honesty and fair dealing for consumers.” It added that the proposed rule change will “provide flexibility to the food industry.”

Why the change now? As the FDA explained, it’s in response to a petition by the Florida Citrus Processors Association and Florida Citrus Mutual, which is asking for the change, as the current standard of identity has a minimum Brix requirement, “a measurement that indicates the sugar content of a liquid,” at 10.5%. It wants to reduce this requirement to a flat 10%. That’s because the state of Florida has been ravaged by citrus greening disease, which has caused a lower crop production as well as fruit that has less sugar than before.

“The FDA’s pasteurized orange juice standard of identity, when originally promulgated in 1963, was carefully constructed to reflect the qualities of U.S. oranges,” the petition by the two organizations states. “It should now be updated to align with the properties of the modern U.S. crop. Without these changes, manufacturers of finished pasteurized orange juice products must increasingly rely on higher Brix imported juice to meet or exceed the U.S. minimum Brix for pasteurized orange juice.”

The FDA further explained that the change shouldn’t affect the taste of orange juice and will have “a minimal impact on the nutrients found in orange juice.”

What a load of bull! The way you reduce sugar, of course, is to add more water.  “The qualities of U.S. oranges” have changed because of the disease and lower crop production. Granted, perhaps a half percent of lower sugar may even be better for some people, but those standards were there in the first place. And you can bet your tuchas that when the disease goes away and they can once again make OJ to the specificiations, they’re not going to go back to the old standards. But wait! There’s more!

Other foods that may have their standards of identity change soon include several types of canned fruits and vegetables, including artificially sweetened canned fruits (apricots, cherries, pears, peaches, pineapples) and select canned vegetables, such as field corn and dry peas. More than a dozen dairy products are included in the list, including low‑sodium cheddar and colby cheeses, along with cream cheese blends, and frozen desserts like goat milk ice cream and mellorine. Milk breads, rolls, and buns are also on the list, as are enriched macaroni and frozen juice concentrates.

Now I don’t know what the changes are, but you can be sure that they are not going to increase the quality of the product. What are they going to do to breads and macaroni? The mind boggles.  The only worse thing that this reduction of food quality is the way they justify it. There’s a quote in the article that apparently comes from the FDA:

“The FDA’s Standards of Identity efforts have helped ensure uniformity, boost consumer confidence, and prevent food fraud. But many of these standards have outlived their usefulness and may even stifle innovation in making food easier to produce or providing consumers healthier choices,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary added in the July press release. “Antiquated food standards are no longer serving to protect consumers. It is common sense to revoke them and move to a more judicious use of food standards and agency resources.”

Stifling innovation? Giving consumers healthier choices? “Antiquated standards”? Excuse me, but I’d rather have more fruit in my preserves.  This paragraph is a prime example of duplicity masquerading as good intentions.

You can find the new FDA standards here and here, which, I suppose, are driven not by consumer demand but by corporations, and if you want to go through them, see if the changes conform to the explanation above.

Oy! My kishkes!

Beyoncé wins Grammy for album of the year, despite her so-so music

February 23, 2025 • 11:40 am

Beyoncê (real name Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter) is wildly popular, but it’s a popularity I find baffling. I have listened to a fair amount of her music, trying to understand the key to her musical fame—perhaps the use of catchy tunes or inventive lyrics—but I have come up dry. It is, as modern rock and pop tends to be, formulaic and trite. But most such music vanishes without a trace, yet forgettable songs like hers get Grammys. 35 of them!

Take, for example, song below, “Texas Hold Em”, the flagship song of her recent Grammy-winning album, “Cowboy Carter.”  As Wikipedia notes:

Music critics praised “Texas Hold ‘Em” for its playful tone, authentic sound, Beyoncé’s vocal performance, and its celebration of the Black roots of country music. Country artists and country radio managers also praised the song for elevating the accessibility of country music for a wider audience. It ignited discussions on Black musicians’ place within country music, boosted the listenership of Black country artists and country radio in general, and increased the popularity of Western wear and culture. It was nominated for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Country Song at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards.

I am stymied. The “playful tone” involves rhyming words like “Texas” and “Lexus”, and it is not in any sense authentic country music: it just uses country tropes and a country rhythm to convey essentially meaningless sentiments. I suspect the vocal performance is autotuned. The only part I like is the banjo introduction.

The song is a failed attempt to meld two genres, but the critics love. love, love it.  As for igniting interest in black country music, well, this is not black country music (see Charlie Pride for that); it is standard pop music striving to be countrified. It’s like putting a drop of Cointreau in a cocktail and calling it French.

But listen for yourself. Is this a song for the ages? I don’t think so.

Here are the lyrics, and—please forgive me—they seem so incompetent and ham-handed that I laughed when I read them. The first verse, with its risible rhyming of “Texas” and “Lexus”, is especially rich. Likewise rhyming “panic” and “dramatic.” I’ve put the dumbest lines in bold:
Lyrics
This ain’t Texas (woo), ain’t no hold ’em (hey)So lay your cards down, down, down, downSo park your Lexus (woo) and throw your keys up (hey)Stick around, ’round, ’round, ’round, ’round (stick around)And I’ll be damned if I can’t slow dance with youCome pour some sugar on me, honey tooIt’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedownDon’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now, woo, huh (woo)
There’s a tornado (there’s a tornado) in my city (in my city)Hit the basement (hit the basement), that shit ain’t pretty (shit ain’t pretty)Rugged whiskey (rugged whiskey) ’cause we survivin’ (’cause we survivin’)Off red cup kisses, sweet redemption, passin’ time, yeah
Ooh, one step to the rightWe headin’ to the dive bar we always thought was niceOoh, run me to the leftThen spin me in the middle, boy, I can’t read your mind
This ain’t Texas (woo), ain’t no hold ’em (hey)So lay your cards down, down, down, downSo park your Lexus (woo) and throw your keys up (hey)Stick around, ’round, ’round, ’round, ’round (stick around)And I’ll be damned if I can’t slow dance with youCome pour some sugar on me, honey tooIt’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedownDon’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now (woo)
And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with youCome pour some liquor on me, honey tooIt’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedownDon’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now (woo)
Woo-hooWoo-hooWoo-hoo
There’s a heatwave (there’s a heatwave) coming at us (coming at us)Too hot to think straight (too hot to think straight)Too cold to panic (cold to panic)All of the problems just feel dramatic (just feel dramatic)And now we’re runnin’ to the first spot that we find, yeah
Ooh, one step to the rightWe headed to the dive bar we always thought was niceOoh, you run to the leftJust work me in the middle, boy, I can’t read your mind
This ain’t Texas (woo), ain’t no hold ’em (hey)So lay your cards down, down, down, down, ohSo park your Lexus (hey), throw your keys up (hey)Stick around, ’round, ’round, ’round, ’round (stick around)And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with youCome pour some sugar on me, honey, tooIt’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedownDon’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now (woo)
And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with youCome pour some liquor on me honey, tooIt’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedownDon’t be a-, come take it to the floor now, ooh
Take it to the floor now, oohHoops, spurs, bootsTo the floor now, oohTuck, back, oops (ooh, ooh, ooh)ShootCome take it to the floor now, oohAnd I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with youBaby, pour that sugar and liquor on me tooFurs, spurs, bootsSolargenic, photogenic, shoot
Unlike some of the hard-to-understand songs of, say, Steely Dan, these are just a bunch of fragmentary thoughts strung together, and one sense there’s no message beneath them. Now some of her songs, like “Lemonade”, do tell a story (in that case, the unfaithfulness of her partner), but I find the music lame.  And while words can be lame in a song that’s nevertheless good, it is good because of the music.

But is there a greater meaning here?  A site purporting to give this “meaning” resorts almost completely to simply reiterating what Texas tropes appear in the lyrics. For example (lyrics in bold; dodo’s interpretation in plain text):

“There’s a tornado (There’s a tornado) in my city (In my city)
In the basement (In the basement), that shit ain’t pretty (Shit ain’t pretty)
Rugged whiskey (Rugged whiskey) ’cause we survivin’ (‘Cause we survivin’)
Off red cup kisses, sweet redemption, passin’ time, yeah”

Texas has more tornadoes passing through it than any other US state, and here, Beyoncé regales the listener with a tale of how a twister has forced her and her partner underground.

She subsequently paints a visceral picture of a crude, sparse setting, as they resolve to get through the violent weather with the help of country music’s No. 1 – or perhaps more accurately, No. 7 – painkiller: some good old Jack Daniels whiskey.

Beyoncé throws in another country trope by referencing the red solo cups that regularly pop up in Friday night anthems by the likes of Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen and more.

“Ooh, one step to the right
We headin’ to the dive bar we always thought was nice
Ooh, run me to the left
Then spin me in the middle, boy, I can’t read your mind”

Here, Beyoncé details some of the moves as she guides her hesitant partner through the dance in their local dive, putting him at ease. She again underlines her hopes that he’ll open up to her more, as she frustratedly highlights how she can’t read his mind.

Well, isn’t that special?  I wanted to listen to this song again, for the fourth or fifth time, before I posted this, but I find I can’t bear to hear it again. If any reader wants to tell me why this is such a great song, I’ll be glad to hear it—but I doubt I’ll agree.

I’m not alone in my criticism here; just read the Washington Post‘s article, “Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ isn’t a country album. It’s worse.”

This is an album that posits its lack of ideas as big ideas. Only in its final seconds, when Beyoncé sings about how “old ideas are buried here,” does “Cowboy Carter” start to feel less like an extravagant awards telecast, and more like a clear-eyed comment on the state of the nation — a grand, sprawling, overcrowded place with nowhere else to go.

Freddie deBoer  gives us what I think is the main reason why Beyoncé is so lauded (his piece is largely about Kendrick Lamar, but the lessons apply). The bolding is mine:

We’re left in this bizarre space where no one is willing to flourish, to succeed, without simultaneously calling themselves an underdog, their talents unrecognized and their tastes disrespected. This is planet “Nobody believed in me!,” and facts never get in the way.

Thus, to pick a paradigmatic example, we still get a thousand thinkpieces a year arguing that Beyonce is terribly mistreated and overlooked – Beyonce, a billionaire with the most Grammys in history, every other kind of award that humanity has to bestow, influence in every sphere of human achievement, multiple films and books about her genius, every material, social, artistic, and cultural laurel we as a society can give. Look how fucking long this list of awards is! The only human being on earth who enjoys a combination of celebration and wealth and access and privilege and power that equals that of Beyonce is Taylor Swift, and both are constantly referred to as disrespected and marginalized underdogs in our most prestigious publications. Beyonce has thirty-five Grammys. What would be enough? Seventy? Seven hundred? Honey, the whole point is that nothing could ever be good enough for her. Indeed, the evidence that Beyonce is an immensely lauded human being is so vast that this kind of talk inspires an admonition I get a lot in my career – you’re right, but we don’t talk about that.

. . . . The idea that your moral value is determined by what you do has given way to the assumption that your moral value is determined by what you like. If you’re an aging dad who likes Sabrina Carpenter, you must be an open-minded and discerning feminist. And if you’re a white person who likes Kendrick Lamar, well, you must have all the right attitudes about race.

And so it is with Beyoncé. Calling her mediocre, as I just did, is just asking for vilification.

 

h/t: Greg Mayer for the deBoer reference

Is belief in belief part of anti-wokeness now?

December 24, 2024 • 11:30 am

It’s not surprising to me that a mainstream liberal newspaper, the New York Times, would publish an op-ed on Christmas Eve that assumes the reality of Jesus as the son of God. There are of course endless lessons one can draw from this myth, and the NYT has always been soft on religion. Remember the op-ed column by Anglican minister Tish Harrison Warren, in which we were subject to a weekly dose of anodyne pap? (The paper apparently ditched her after a while.)

But today we get an essay from Peter Wehner that, to me, seems arrantly stupid in its very thesis. For that thesis is that IF you believe in Jesus’s genealogy, and IF you think that one’s genealogy beyond one’s parents could be a source of shame, THEN you could draw lessons from the story of Jesus as told in the Bible.  Every one of these links is weak, and yet the paper published the essay anyway. I’ll give a few quotes below (click below to read the article, or find it archived here, but don’t bother):

Wehner was impressed by a semon her heard at a Baptist Church, and simply draws on its content to show that Jesus was amazing in overcoming his lineage:

One of the forgotten facts of the story of Jesus’ life is that he came from a profoundly dysfunctional family.

I was reminded of this while listening to a sermon this month at Groveton Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va. Chris Davis, the pastor of the church, took as his text the first 17 verses of the Gospel of Matthew, known as the genealogy of Jesus. Those verses, a long list of names that ties one generation to another, are often skipped over in favor of the story of Jesus’ birth. To the degree that they have any meaning at all, it’s usually because for Christians it establishes Jesus as the heir to the promises God made to Abraham and David.

But as the pastor pointed out, Jesus came down to us through broken families: “one generation begetting brokenness of another generation begetting brokenness of another generation begetting brokenness of another generation.” There were murderers, adulterers, prostitutes and people who committed incest, liars, schemers and idolaters.

Now I’ve forgotten my New Testament (yes, I read it), but I’m not sure how broken Jesus’s fictional ancestry was. But let’s assume it was pretty screwed up. From that Wehner ()and Davis) draw the following conclusions, all based on assuming the truth of the New Testament). I’ve indented the quotes; bolding is mine:

1.) The disreputable lineage of Jesus reminds us of something else as well: Past is not prologue. If Jesus himself came from a line of murderers, adulterers, cheats and frauds, the Rev. Scott Dudley, senior pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Wash., told me, “then there is hope for all of us. He’s a cycle-breaker showing that generations of dysfunction don’t have to be predictive of future events.

The next lesson is pretty much the same:

2.) A Jesus who showed up from nowhere, fully grown and without ancestry, might have too. The actual Jesus, though, shows us something different. We are not our bloodlines or our family histories.

And the lesson in wokeness:

3.) But Jesus’ awareness of broken lives wasn’t restricted to his family tree; it defined his ministry. He identified with the least and the lowliest, not just those in his lineage but those in his life.

4.) The genealogy of Jesus is also a story of radical inclusion. Several of the women listed in the first chapter of Matthew are Gentiles [non Jews]. This incorporation has significance, according to Craig Barnes, a former president of Princeton Theological Seminary.

And that’s about it. Is there anything new here except to draw lessons from a work of fiction? Those lessons, in fact, are purely made up, and the last two are simply wrong. Yes, you could couch Jesus as a Social Justice Warrior, who included everyone in his great love, except for the fact that he stated that he himself was the only way to get to heaven. Remember John 14:6 in the King James Bible?

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

That alone should dispel the idea that Jesus’s teachings were inclusive, for what about all those nonbelievers outside of the Middle East who had no opportunity to accept Jesus. Further, Christian theology tells us that these were tainted by Original Sin, and, as unrepentant sinners, were doomed to fry for eternity in Hell.

Yes, what we have here is a believer cherry-picking Scripture to tell us something that everybody knows (if some of your ancestors—but not your parents!—were dysfunctional, you can overcome that); as well as telling us something that isn’t true (Jesus’s love extended to everyone), But yes, it’s the Christmas season, and it’s grinch-y to even say that Jesus might not really have been the wonder-working Son of God.

************

Well, of course the MSM has always been soft on religion, adhering, even if atheistic, to “belief in belief”. What bothers me is that one aspect of my own ideology, which is opposition to the performative and ineffectual forms of wokeness, is also getting soft on religion. I’m not referring to right-wing media like Fox News, which of course won’t go after religion, but to the liberal form of anti-wokeness. Like this article that just appeared in the Free Press (click to read). In some ways this one is worse than above, for it demonstrates the regret of a mother (the author) for not having imbued her children with more of the Jesus-y aspects of Christianity. And that despite the fact that author Larissa Phillips (founder of the Volunteer Literacy Project) and her husband are atheists. (This article isn’t fully archived.)

The thesis here is that yes, Christmas is a great time to get together with family, celebrate in traditional ways by opening presents, having a big feed, and socializing with others.  But this still leaves a God-shaped hole in one’s persona.  Now a mother with kids in her twenties, Phillips regrets not having injected more traditional religion into her kids’ upbringing. And remember, she and her partner are atheists. What gives?

Of all the treasures that came out of the cardboard box of Christmas decorations every December of my childhood, the nativity set was the best. Joseph, Mary, the kings, the shepherds: Our tiny figures were made of clay with a white glaze that looked like icing. I treated them like delicate, special dolls, rearranging them and moving them around the living room, from the coffee table to the stereo console, to the mantle. I might add a blanket for the baby, sometimes a scarf for Mary, cut from scraps of velvet or felt.

These are experiences that my own children, who are now 21 and 25, never had. Their father and I are atheists who, without debate, raised them entirely without religion. At Christmas, we still did the tree and the lights and the presents—all the secular parts of the holiday—and my kids knew the Christmas story, the way they knew about Greek myths. But there were no religious symbols in our home, and no going to church. In recent years, I’ve begun to regret this.

Apparently problems arise if you bring up your kids without Jesus. One of those problems is the Santa myth:

But right away, there were problems with secular Christmas, and they got worse every year.

Santa Claus, for example. If you’ve decided to raise your children without God because you are into truth and reason and rationality, are you going to tell them that Santa Claus is real? And refuse to budge even when your kids become stout little rationalists demanding answers? I thought it was bizarre to lie to your children, but by the time they started asking difficult questions, we were committed to Christmas. We went half in on the Santa delusion, referring to Santa with a wink.

Yes, but kids stop believing in Santa after a while, and you don’t see Santa-believers doing bad stuff to others. This isn’t always the case with Christians.  And then there is the Present Problem:

The problem with presents was worse and ever-worsening. I love presents. I love buying gifts and wrapping them and hiding them in secret places. I love the sight of a Christmas tree surrounded by presents. I love Christmas morning, sitting around in pajamas opening all the gifts. And when the kids were still little it was simple: Fill a stocking with a few chocolates and trinkets and wrap up some presents. Preschoolers are easy to impress. They like boxes more than anything else. (“Mom!” my 4-year-old daughter stage-whispered to me one Christmas morning, having peeked under the tree. “He brought clementines!”) But older kids always want more. By middle school my daughter had graduated to texting me an extensive shopping list with links. She once told me that her friends’ parents spend $1000 on each child. It made me wonder whether I should give up on presents completely.

Seriously? I know families whose present-giving is minimal, and I doubt that Amish or Orthodox Jewish families engage in this sort of wholesale gift-giving.

But the biggest problem is that God-shaped hole:

Maybe we didn’t have to reject every aspect of the religious traditions.

I’m sure my kids would have had complaints about church on Christmas Eve. I’m sure I would have too. I can imagine sitting in a pew silently grumbling about the minister’s call for obedience. My husband might have sighed pointedly when the man behind us sang too loudly. It wouldn’t have been perfect. But lately I can’t get those services at my grandmother’s church out of my mind. Even as a teenager it was impossible not to be moved by the sight of the familiar building at night, dressed up in garlands and ribbons, the stained glass windows in dark shadows, the altar flickering with candlelight, everyone in velvet dresses or ties or even suits. I remember the voices of the choir vibrating in my chest and the feeling of something very big and old and special.

My generation had the best of both worlds. We played in the crumbling remains of Christian traditions without realizing how much structure and beauty they gave us. I’m still an atheist, but I’ve come to believe that taking religion out of my children’s Christmas was a mistake. They never really witnessed the celebration of a miracle that goes back two thousand years. They didn’t have a nativity set, even though I loved mine, because when you scrub God from your holiday celebration, it’s strange to give your kids a tiny baby Jesus to play with. Isn’t it?

I’m not sure anymore. I couldn’t pass on to my kids a faith in God, but I could have shared the traditions that have always shaped and enchanted childhoods in this part of the world. The remnants were still there, and they were good. To today’s young atheist families building their annual rituals, I offer this advice: It’s okay if you don’t believe in God. Go to the Christmas Eve service anyway. Learn the carols, even the religious ones. Get the nativity set.

Yes, you have to let your kids see that celebration of a delusion.  But what Phillips is mourning here is not really the lack of traditional religious beliefs. She’s mourning what Richard Dawkins likes about Church: the ceremony, the incense, and the singing. What she’s talking about is not a god-shaped hole but a hymn-shaped hole.  The problem with this article is just that: it confects a problem that really doesn’t exist. Does atheist Phillips want her children simply to know more about religion? If so, give them a Bible? Or, if she wants her kids to hear hymns and sniff incense, well, that’s simply ceremony.  Yes, I went to midnight mass at Notre Dame when I lived in Paris, and it was quite the spectacle, with the swinging censers, the music, and the beautiful cathedral. But not for a minute did I believe what they were celebrating, and I could get the same feeling by going to a concert of Tagore songs.

Of course Bari Weiss, the founder of the Free Press, seems to be religiously Jewish; as far as I can see, there are aspects of Judaism that she believes in. But she’s not explicit about it, and so I can’t be sure that she’s not a secular Jew like me.  I’d like to ask her exactly what supernatural stuff she believes in, and what about this article merited its publication.

UPDATE: This just came up: an interview of Tom Holland by Bari Weiss:

An excerpt. Bolding is mine:

Whether you believe in the story of the virgin birth and resurrection, or you believe that those miracles are myths, one thing is beyond dispute: The story of Jesus and the message of Christianity is among the stickiest ideas the world has ever seen.

Within four centuries of Jesus’s death, Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. It had 30 million followers—which amounted to half the empire. Today, two millennia later, Christianity is still the largest religion in the world, with more than 2 billion adherents.

How did the radical message of Christianity catch on? How did it change the world? And how does it shape all our lives today?

These questions motivate the latest episode of Honestly. My guest is the incredible historian Tom Holland, one of the most gifted storytellers in the world. His podcast, The Rest Is History, is among the most popular out there. Each week, he and his co-host, Dominic Sandbrook, charm their way through history’s most interesting characters and sagas. I can’t recommend it more highly.

I also recommend Tom’s book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. In it, he argues that Christianity is the reason we have America, that it was the inspiration behind our revolution. He also argues that Christianity is the backbone of both “wokeness,” as an ideology, and liberalism, which so often sees itself as secular.

Oy vey! Something is going on at the Free Press. I guess it’s the claim that Christianity is the backbone not just of wokeness, but of liberalism.