I know! That was part of it. Is caroling becoming a thing? I've never seen carolers in my entire life.
Also I presume that our adventures on Sunday will be half-assed - we're starting actually not near any neighborhoods, and I half-assume it will fall apart before we get to an actual house. But who knows. Then this was all organized and earnest. Who knows.
The caroling is coming from inside the blog!
Drink a little sparkling grape juice for thy stomach's sake!
They are probably still going to pray for you. Seems weird that they asked.
Do people really pray for everyone they say that to, one at a time, or do they just lump each day's commitments together, or have some other workaround?
A macro in MS Word seems in the wrong spirit.
...the most exciting moment being their stop in River City. They stood on a porch and sang for 3 heathens that had no running water Christmas lights and had never seen a caroler.
I think if all the lights are blue, it means they are for Chanukah. (Spelling approximate)
Do people really pray for everyone they say that to, one at a time, or do they just lump each day's commitments together, or have some other workaround?
No, I'm pretty sure if we would have said yes, they would have bowed their heads and it would have been a big group prayer of the "Bless this family as they do X Y and Z this holiday" variety.
I thought being drunk meant I could recognize Skynyrd songs, bit I was wrong. Related: the Outlaws are under appreciated.
No, I can't actually tell what they are. The blurb that pops up on Google says "charismatic" in parentheses, and they definitely seem literal Bible people, but aside from that they don't claim a denomination on their website.
Charismatic, as a proper noun, is what they are.
The difference between carol and hymn* is in the ear of the beholder.
* Pun away, degenerates.
I kind of thought that Charismatic meant something specific, but that it was generally applied to a church which was also some denomination.
I think even professed Charismatics and Pentecostals have trouble with, and arguments about, definitions.
19: Yes, there are narrower and broader definitions. Discussed along with "fundamentalist" and a bunch of other religious shit in this thread from '09. I'm going to guess they are a neo-charismatic denomination.
I know! That was part of it. Is caroling becoming a thing? I've never seen carolers in my entire life.
I used to do caroling with my liberal mainline denomination. Mostly at retirement homes, not knocking on random people's doors. It might seem out of place when it's 60-something degrees outside at Christmastime.
I went caroling with massively drunk cousins. I was sober and ten, so it wasn't much fun for me. We only went to houses of people they knew.
They weren't usually massively drunk. There was a wedding that weekend also.
It might seem out of place when it's 60-something degrees outside at Christmastime.
Also, it seems not that crazy that earnest young Unitarian friends of mine would decide to go caroling, and not crazy that this charismatic church would as well. But the idea that our random house or street got selected to receive all this effort and gigantic gift bag and Russell stover chocolates...that seems completely weird and surreal.
that seems completely weird and surreal.
I Can See.
Denominations tend to be mainline. When someone says they're nondenominational Christian it might mean that they're New Age or liberal, but most often it means that they're pentecostal or charismatic or fundamentalist. They're hard core and not open-minded, but not exclusionary on denominational lines. Those churches especially despise the liturgical churches (Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal). Sometimes they seem friendly to the hyper-liturgical Orthodox, because the Orthodox are so crazy.
23: Don't enable your cousins, Moby.
They are my best cousins now that I'm older.
We're here for you, Moby. ("We" = Emerson.)
31: If you spool a tapeworm on a reel-to-reel machine, it plays "Carol of the Bowels".
The term "charismatic" was originally used to describe individual congregations and groups in mainline denominations in the '60s. The big non-denominational push came later and in some cases were formed as splinters due to real and perceived hostility in mainline denominations. A minister from the mainline Presbyterian church of my youth formed one after losing a relatively vicious battle for control of the congregation. Split my parents (who were active in the ouster/defense of the status quo) from a number of their friends.
32: My word Stanley, you've not been around much recently. How ever did we manage?
34: I know. It's been hard on us all.
hyper-liturgical Orthodox
You're not kidding. There's a bit in some Orthodox liturgy cursing a series of millenium-odd-old heresies. It goes on for a while.
The one you have to spool out is the guinea worm.
36 confuses me. There are two Orthodox cathedrals near my office, stop maybe I will ask them.
37: In for a pence, in for a pound and a shilling?
Speaking of nondenominationals, I wonder whether Tim Tebow follows a lectionary calendar in his eye-black citations.
27.last: Sometimes they seem friendly to the hyper-liturgical Orthodox, because the Orthodox are so crazy.
Yes, the splinter group in 33 ended up as some manner of "Orthodox" denomination.
It's weird because the Orthodox reading of Scripture is highly symbolic and not at all fundamentalist. I think that the difference is that Orthodox symbolic readings are not usually devised to bring scripture into harmony with science.
37, 39: Stamping a guinea worm is pretty rank.
Speaking of Orthodox sectarianism, I'm pretty sure the young family who were in front of me in the JCPenney checkout line the other day were Old Believers.
42: This group (Evangelical Orthodox Church ) was a main link into the Orthodox world having its roots in the Campus Crusade for Christ--and I believe it is where the disenchanted Presbyterians in 33 landed. According to Wikipedia most of the denominations joined the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America in the late '80s while others ended up in the Orthodox Church in America (descended from the Russkies after the revolution threw everything into disorder) but not to be confused with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia or the "walled off" Russian Orthodox Church in America. I'm sure I have some of that wrong--Orthodox Church organization here.
44: Forgot you were in that part of the US. Camped a couple of nights right by this beautiful old Orthodox church in Ninilchik down on the Kenai. I'm sure you'll get there at some point; it's on the way to Homer.
The situation is complicated by the fact that Syrian Orthodox are NOT Orthodox except to themselves, ie, not theologically like Russian Orthodox at all. The Eastern churches in Egypt, Ethiopia, the Middle East, and India are actually HERETICS!!
46: I've been meaning to get down to Homer at some point, and to stop at Ninilchik on the way. I'll probably do it when my mom and sister come to visit next summer, but maybe before too. Probably not before spring, though.
Ninilchik, though it has a strong Russian heritage, is not an Old Believer community itself, instead dating to the Russian colonial period. The Old Believer villages are further south, near Homer. One of the reasons I'm so sure the family at JCPenney were Old Believers is that when the clerk asked for their zipcode it was 99603, which is Homer. Also the husband was wearing a sweatshirt from an ATV dealership in Homer.
Orthodox Christians Against Polyphony!
I've never seen carolers in my entire life.
Didn't you see The Adams Family?
I may be just a nasty suspicious person but there is no way in hell that I would eat any of the stuff in that bag.
There's plenty of carolling going on in London, but not door to door, at least not seen yet - mostly in public for charities. I admit that jolliness is starting to creep up on me.
32: no, everyone knows that it will produce a sonnet in Italian. ("Man's Friend", Primo Levi.)
Is caroling becoming a thing? I've never seen carolers in my entire life.
Is it not a thing over there? It definitely is here and has been for ages. Ususally without the praying though. More often a collection.
There's plenty of carolling going on in London, but not door to door, at least not seen yet - mostly in public for charities.
I've had door to door carolling in Kentish Town before, and it's very common where my parents live in Surrey.
52.2: yeah, I've seen it in previous years, just haven't seen any this year yet.
all the people in the glee club and/or choir of my school would get together to do caroling. it was fun. only hymns, strictly speaking, since we were all toting hymnals around. we had george steel to whip us into shape with 40 minutes of practice before we set off. naturally I was drunk, but not everyone.
he's not remotely as douchey as he looks in that photo, either. really, he's a stand-up guy, and hilarious. the NYT decided to make him look douchey, what can you do. well, he was a whiffenpoof, so...
I've seen Criminal Minds. I'm not opening the door for any potential crazed killers.
55: A lot of people are not so thrilled with him for presiding over the probably final decline of City Opera (not entirely his fault, not entirely not) and, in the process, doing a lot of what looks like union busting. He's done plenty of douchey things in the last few years, from what one reads. After leaving the Miller Theater, where he was the perfect man for the job, he ran Dallas opera for like a month, was not well liked, and then made a beeline back to New York when NYCO tapped him. (This season we can thank him for the New York premiere of Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna--commissioned by the Met and then rejected when RW insisted on writing it in his semi-native French.)
What they never tell you about is the three or four 7 or 8 year olds who manage to sing half a chorus of "Oh come all ye faithful" before forgetting the words and collapsing in giggles, and who then expect you to pay them to go away. (Money well spent.)
yeah, it sounds like its been pretty ugly. ditching texas like that was lame also. it's been unclear to me what exactly was going on, reading about it only casually.
we accepted pay in bottles of booze. but we chose known houses for the most part.
basically george's a childhood friend and so I love him forever, but I have read some legitimate-seeming complaints. RW is my cuz and I am thus obliged to throw down for him too, but in truth it sounds like an awful idea.
RW seems to be involved with someone called an "arts administrator". That's a bad sign if you ask me.
Loudon Wainright I has no Wiki, and apparently there will be no Loudon Wainright IV.
"Martha composed the song "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole" about, according to her, her father."
The Wainrights are apparently intertwined with the Roches too. Altogether that's quite a wad of singer-songwriter there.
another of my cousins inexplicably legally changed his son's name from xx xxx V to some lameass name. so not cool. I mean, VI is stupid, but I feel V is still OK. and he already had named him it--what with the changing?
63: no, rufus could have a son and name it after his dad. sincerely doubt that happening though.
A parliament owls, a pride of lions, and a wad of singer-songwriters.
Singer-songwriter is a mass noun that doesn't take plurals.
I mean, VI is stupid, but I feel V is still OK.
Hey, where do you get off saying VI is stupid?
If you're allowed to skip generations I could probably call myself John Emerson VIII. I'm at least John Emerson III.
Mostly the same boring John Daniel David names all the way back, with an occasional Hepzibah or Mehitabel sneaking in.
67: It tends to be a mass of something, all right.
71: Did you see the PG today? O'Neill's column was all about geology.
... the idea that our random house or street got selected to receive all this effort and gigantic gift bag and Russell stover chocolates...that seems completely weird and surreal.
And they didn't even ask what you would have liked. In the parts of the internet I mostly visit, it's traditional around about now to link to Mencken's A Bum's Christmas:
By noon the next day he had rented the largest hall on the waterfront and sent word to the newspapers that arrangements for a Christmas party for bums to end all Christmas parties for bums were under way. His plan for it was extremely simple. The first obligation of hospitality, he announced somewhat prissily, was to find out precisely what one's guests wanted, and the second was to give it to them with a free and even reckless hand. As for what his proposed guests wanted, he had no shade of doubt, for he was a man of worldly experience and he had also, of course, the advice of his friend the lieutenant, a recognized expert in the psychology of the abandoned. First and foremost, they wanted as much malt liquor as they would buy themselves if they had the means to buy it.
I've taken a liking to Maker's Mark, myself.
A mating ball of rock'n'rollers. As I understand that describes Fleetwood Mac.
Somebody should have mentioned Fleetwood Mac in the previous thread as an example of stupid 70s clothing.
LW's Daughter and The Swimming Song are two of my favorite songs.
We used to get together a little brass band and do some simple caroling, mostly at the Sororities and women's dorms. Yeah, we had segregated dorms. Cold weather plays hell with the tuning, and I was always having to drain the condensation out of my French Horn. You can proclaim as many times as you want "Its NOT spit!" but you'll still here the "ewes."
And I freakin' missed the chance to properly use "It's" instead of "Its," dammit it all! That kind of thing matters to me, and I blew it!
I may be just a nasty suspicious person but there is no way in hell that I would eat any of the stuff in that bag.
Seriously? This is an earnest bunch, from a super-religious church in the hills. The Russell Stover chocolates and clementines are completely, completely safe. These people are being totally sweet and generous.
Clementines are the best fruit in the store in the winter. Oranges are just too much work.
Plus I'm not showing any symptoms of having been poisoned.
Well I didn't mean to slag on an old friend and a relative in the same comment. I suppose that's new heights of tacky. If it's of interest, here's a pretty thorough piece by a friend of mine on the whole NYCO mess.
no, don't worry about it--it's just random odds. or else only 5 people live in new york, which is how it seems sometimes.
This is an earnest bunch, from a super-religious church in the hills.
And if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that earnest people who belong to super-religious churches would never go around poisoning people through the medium of sweet-tasting soft drinks...
Srsly - if you recognised them that's completely different of course. I thought they were just random people coming to your door.
We're not supposed to eat food given to us by random people now?
Paranoia about Halloween candy has transformed Halloween. No reason Christmas should get off.
I suppose somebody should start a story about their cousin's friend who took a candy cane and woke up in a hotel bathtub full of ice with a note on the mirror saying "Call 911 to keep from off the capital crime part of the naught list."
Srsly - if you recognised them that's completely different of course. I thought they were just random people coming to your door.
We did not recognize them. They were random people coming to our door. But 99% of extremely religious people are not in cults, let alone cults which dabble in death.
We did not recognize them.
Sure. Hockey masks are traditional for that kind of thing.
But 99% of extremely religious people are not in cults, let alone cults which dabble in death.
I still wouldn't eat the Russell Stover chocolates. Expected utility is not in your favor.
You can just poke a hole in the bottom if you don't want the coconut cream or whatever.
Russell Stover was one of my earliest disappointments about moving to the South.
"Oh, it's like Fannie May candies—nicer chocolates in a box. [Eats one.] Oh. Never mind."
I do not like conservative Christians of any sort, but I would never suspect them of going door to door in groups poisoning people. In fact, I wouldn't suspect anyone of doing that.
Jim Jones was a very exceptional case, with a highly original syncretic Christian-Stalinist theology. He also sufferered from some sort of organic mental illness.
I do not like conservative Christians of any sort, but I would never suspect them of going door to door in groups poisoning people. In fact, I wouldn't suspect anyone of doing that.
Jim Jones was a very exceptional case, with a highly original syncretic Christian-Stalinist theology. He also sufferered from some sort of organic mental illness.
Chanting is a sign of cult-like behavior.
The double post is John's way of letting us know he's posting at gun-point.
96: When I was a kid and we'd visit my dad at work, his boss would give us Fannie May candy. He kept a box in his office at all times. He either saved them for guests or bought them by the ton.
Oh, it's like Fannie May candies--nicer chocolates in a box.
Fannie Mae candies: "We've taken two and a half pounds of fine dark chocolate and half an ounce of albatross guano, mixed them together, and formed them into our AAA-rated Chocolate-Backed Securicandies!"
But 99% of extremely religious people are not in cults, let alone cults which dabble in death.
Well, that's not actually the population in question. The question is "what percentage of people who go around late at night offering strangers free candy are dabbling in death or other worrying things"?
As I say, I'm probably just being Cynical McParanoid here.
103: praise from the master is praise indeed.
Maybe this is a Blue-Red divide. In Heebie's area there are probably people who will pull a gun on you, or who will accost you at gunpoint if you cross their property line uninvited, but I don't think that you worry about poison cults. Murderous people, sure, but a different profile.
Actually, I'm not sure that there's anywhere you'd need to worry about poison cults. There are unsanitary people whose hand-prepared food you wouldn't want to eat.
Probably including me, I suppose, if I started offering people food.
There are unsanitary people whose hand-prepared food you wouldn't want to eat.
I wonder how many "peanut allergies" are really "I don't trust your home-baked goods because I assume your countertops are swarming with e coli."
I am impressed by the trust shown by 105. You mean that if anyone, anywhere, came up to you and said "Here, eat some of this!" you'd eat it, as long as you thought they looked reasonably clean?
107: I think it's more that I've literally never heard of door-to-door poisoners. There aren't any substantiated stories of people handing out poisoned Halloween candy, for example -- poisoning strangers is a very, very, very unusual thing to do.
Ajay has never been to potluck dinner, I'm guessing.
109: I am a bit unclear on what it involves; from previous threads it seems to be some kind of religious ceremony involving Jello.
Everybody brings a dish to the basement of the church and puts it on a table. If you have to carry any of your food home, it means you suck as a cook.
Well, if I was on the scuzziest streetcorner in the scuzziest neighborhood in NYC (or any other city), probably not. Where I live now, no problem. Besides the local context in Heebie's story, which she knows better that i do, there's the Christmas context and the caroling tradition. After living in a place for awhile you develop a profile, and while there are many bad things in TX, groups of children poisoning people isn't in the profile. Psycho killers are actually rare anywhere, even in scuzzy urban neighborhoods.
Again, context. In scuzzy neighborhoods strangers rarely talk to you for any good reason whatsoever. I've never been offered food; panhandlers, drug dealers, con men, prostitutes, pcychotic babbling, pickup offers and unmotivated aggression I've all experienced.
Actually, I'm not sure that there's anywhere you'd need to worry about poison cults.
Hey, there's been at least one poison cult in the US over the last 30 years, which is more than the number of poisoned Halloween candy incidents.
Probably just avoiding millennial Stalinist-Christian cults will protect you adequately.
Has there been a cult that poisoned anyone but its members and their children?
Yes, the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's cult in JE's old stomping grounds of Oregon. I know it well from endlessly rereading my parents' Bloom County collections as a kid.
There aren't any substantiated stories of people handing out poisoned Halloween candy, for example -- poisoning strangers is a very, very, very unusual thing to do.
Well, no, not Halloween:
117: Oh right. The Case of the Poisoned Salad Bar.
I can't believe we've gotten this far without someone mentioning the grating of dried feces onto baked goods.
We don't all you the same cookbooks as you.
We don't all have the same cookbooks as you.
Pick whichever of 121/122 makes most sense to you this holiday season.
A fine gift for anyone on your list.
118: Free ecstasy is a far cry from poisoning.
Oh wait, it's GHB. Decidedly closer to poisoning.
The poisoned salad bar was a commercial operation, though, not poisoned by the owners. Likewise the feces on baked goods. Someone who actually wants to poison someone will do it surreptitiously.
So we've got the Berlin Santa.
Probably just avoiding millennial Stalinist-Christian cults will protect you adequately.
It would be a wise course, even if you have absolutely
Probably just avoiding millennial Stalinist-Christian cults will protect you adequately.
It would be a wise course, even if you have absolutely no intention of eating or drinking anything.
[no idea what happened at 128]
Unsurprisingly, snopes.com has a very good treatment of the Halloween poisoning stories. The "closest" to a real example did take place in Texas (Houston) in 1974, where a father handed out poisoned Pixie Stix to several children to cover up his poisoning his son by Pixie Stix to collect insurance money. None of the other children ate the candy. Monstrous and the scheme was doomed to discovery. He was tried convicted and executed.
Has there been a cult that poisoned anyone but its members and their children?
Aum Shinrikyo.
