Why are you making a Breaking Bad reference? With Jesse Jackson? It just...WHAT?

--Ls

It's certainly not the average bit of PPC writing, but it...has very little to do with the PPC. In-universe presence or not, it's not exactly connected to HQ. Maybe New Cal, if you stretch it a lot and add in a highway (or a smaller road) called the Queensway, but I think that's pushing it.

I obviously don't agree with a lot of what he's written, other than (very generally) a bit about holidays being increasingly commercialized and that if you're celebrating them as religious holidays you might ideally know at least some of the relevant history and traditions, even if you choose to celebrate it differently than your ancestors did (though if you don't know, I'm not about to think worse of you, or anything - it's just that I have a background in both history and Jewish Studies, including the religious side, so historical memory is especially important to me and I feel there's a lot of richness that can be added from that cultural history).

I might be mildly off topic. My point is: I don't feel like this piece is for me. I don't celebrate Christmas. Judaism is agreed that Jesus holds no religious significance to Jews. I...don't especially care here. Maybe I would have cared a little if I was a Boarder at the time and felt this was somehow aimed at all of us - and for all I know it was! Christianity does allow proselytizing (Judaism forbids it) - but I think it's more likely I would have had the same reaction, which is: okay, this is clearly not for me. I can see a few cross-religious echoes in a sentiment and a half of what you've written, and while this maybe wasn't the most relevant place to post this, so long as you don't try to proselytize to me or badger people about this, I don't really mind all that much that this is your viewpoint. So long as you can continue to engage with others respectfully, this basically just means I now know you're more religious than I'd realized.

I read AW's MSTs back in the day. I don't remember much, just that I enjoyed them at the time and was sad when the website went down. I don't remember his writing being some kind of proselytizing tract. I just remember enjoying it. It's possible that if there was anything there I just missed it, and would be more likely to catch it now (the Narnia allegories felt far more blatant to me a couple years ago than they did when I was a pre-teen, for example), but...yeah. My point is, apart from being connected to an in-universe PPC publication, this is basically just a religious opinion piece that found its way in, presumably around the relevant holiday. I don't agree with it. I can see y'all don't all agree with it. Odds are at least a number of Boarders at the time didn't agree with it. But unless it became a bitter argument rather than an expression of opinions and mutual agreeing to disagree (if a discussion around it even got that far) - or took a proselytizing turn that was difficult to shut down - I just...don't feel especially harmed by it. I can see the potential for feeling harmed in some way there, but giving the benefit of the doubt (to someone I don't remember anything particularly negative about, though it has admittedly been many years), my response is kind of just...cool, that's your opinion. Not sure this is entirely the right forum for it, but so long as you aren't about to get on my case in some way over, say, running a Purim RP or having my characters celebrate Jewish holidays on and off screen (written in a way that's hopefully reasonably accessible enough to people who don't know much, if anything, about them), then whatever. Believe what you believe. It is my deeply held hope, wish, and belief that, in this day and age, we can coexist in peace.

So yeah. Religious Christians exist, including in the PPC. The PPC probably wasn't the best audience for a religious opinion piece, but so long as there wasn't ill intent and it didn't blow up into something big and hurtful (which...I guess we can't know, at this point), then...whatever. It only affects me in the sense that it's yet another bit of Christmas stuff in my vicinity, which is a whole other topic that boils down to that if you live somewhere the majority of people are religious or secular Christians, including the people who had the majority presence at the start of what became the current culture, and you engage with pop culture even a little bit, it's very difficult to avoid both things like knowing some of the music and traditions and feeling absolutely surrounded by it when you go out of the house at the relevant time of year. But that's a whole other topic.

~Z, clearly not the target audience for this piece and trying hard to stay hopeful for the future