Toadcast #51 - The Yulecast

Oh thank fuck it's Christmas.  Or, any holiday really.  I am so fucking incredibly tired I could pitch face first on the tarmac and sleep for six months without so much as coming up for air.

I have been reading, with some amusement, the bickering over the religious nature of Christmas which seems to take place in the American press with monotonous regularity.  Apparently the Christians are adamant that we remember the religious nature of a pagan festival, which seems a little odd considering that the Christianisation of Christmas itself was basically the Christian colonists' acceptance that they could never defeat local pagan religions.  So basically they adopted Yuletide and tried to wedge their amusing Biblical myths into a story that their conquered people would never give up, and then waited a few years for it to degrade into some sort of carnival of aquisitiveness which they could have a tantrum about.

So it's a pagan festival which has turned into an unbridled celebration of Western consumerist greed... erm, which part of this came up in the Bible again? 

Personally, as an atheist, I love Christmas.  It's got nothing to do with that Jeebus character, it's closer akin to the the pagan celebration of light and life in the middle of the darkest part of the year.  As a family we have always come together and spent peaceful time together at this time of year.  We play music, we read books, we cook together, but above all we rest.  We get together and enjoy one another's company.  Mrs. Toad and I will, this year, be doing nothing more than snuggling up on the couch and wasting time.  And that time wasting together is oddly one of the most important things you can do to forge a strong relationship.  Just taking time to be together and enjoy one another's company is, after the year we've had, going to be a rare treat, and one which I intend to enjoy immensely.

Toadcast #51 - The Yulecast

01. Yo La Tengo - On Our Way to Fall (03.12)
02. Tom Waits - Soldier's Things (07.21)
03. Pale Young Gentlemen - We Will Meet (15.23)
04. The Felice Brothers - Greatest Show on Earth (19.15)
05. Eels - Beautiful Freak (27.27)
06. Clem Snide - The Dairy Queen (35.25)
07. Bob Dylan - Tangled Up in Blue (43.13)
08. A.A. Bondy - Black Rain, Black Rain (48.45)
09. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Brompton Oratory (54.19)
10. Sufjan Stevens - Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother (60.06)

Song, by Toad