Coke & Santa… A Holiday Tradition

Monday, 12 December 2011

I was the last person to arrive to a meeting at work today. Technically, I was late, but I was only about two minutes late and so my status for punctuality remains in tact.

However!

Being the last person to arrive meant that the beverage selection was meager. In fact, there were only two cans left in the ice-ridden bin: some form of Mountain Dew and some form of Coke.

And I just couldn’t do it.

I mean, I was thirsty. And I do enjoy having some sort of liquid to accompany my lunch, but I just can not consume Mountain Dew or Coke.

By way of estimation, I’d say I’ve consumed three cans of Mountain Dew in my life – and zero in the past 15 years. I’ve probably had 100 or more cans, glasses, and bottles of Coke, but none in the past 10 years – unless we count Coke’s appearance in various alcoholic drinks.

I’m kind of a beverage snob, in fact, and I believed I’ve touched on this before, but I’ll spell it out here:

-Water is always fine, in any sort of beverage container.

-If it’s not too late in the day (say, after 6:00), I’ll have iced tea. But NOT in or from a can, and not that Nestea shit. Arizona, Tazo, even Snapple are fine.

-Lemonade is great, too, but any lemonade in can or plastic bottle form is guaranteed to be nasty; it’s like drinking sugar water.

-I do like root beers in all formats – from that high quality organic stuff in glass bottles, to a simple can of Mr. Pibb. In fact, I think root beer is the only liquid I can drink from an aluminum can without practically gagging.

-Anything alcoholic is fine, but of course not at work, or if I’m driving, or too early in the day (like, say, before 5AM). I dislike straight-up hard liquor, drinks that are really creamy or coffee-y, and cheap ass beer in a can. If it says “Budweiser” on it…Yuck!

-No coffee

-No soft drinks (unless we include the root beer varieties, noted above)

There. I think that settles it. Now, feel free to offer me something to drink. As for today’s meeting, I went beverage-less; bolting to the water fountain shortly after adjournment.

Tuesday, 13 December 2011

Click on this: THIS RIGHT HERE, and take this Word Association Study. I had fun with it. According to the site:

On average, an adult knows about 40.000 words. Researchers in psychology and linguistics are interested in how these words are represented mentally. In this large-scale study we aim to build a network that captures this knowledge by playing the game of word associations. You can help us with this project by participating in this short and fun study.

Also: Here’s a photo gallery of protest signs that will be missed if gay rights become law of the land. It includes this hilarious gem:

Ha! Hilarious.

On a completely unrelated note, my wife posted about Isla’s surgery. It uses all the correct terminology that I can never remember, and it includes awesome photos of ureters. HERE’S THE POST.

Wednesday, 14 December 2011

So, today, during Toastmasters, the Table Topics featured a Christmas theme. For those who don’t know, Table Topics is the portion of the meeting where one assigned person has selected a subject unknown to others. He or she then calls on members to deliver 1-2  minute impromptu speeches.

I was in charge of Table Topics about a month ago, and my topic was famous movies. I had the title of popular films written on little cards, and I called on people to come up and pull one out of the hat.

Anyway, today’s topic was, appropriately enough, Christmas. One person got up and pulled out a card that said, “tell us your favorite Christmas gift you’ve ever received.” When it was my turn, my card said, “What is your favorite holiday-themed movie?”

The last person to be called up selected a card that said “Tell us why it’s important to believe in at least the spirit of Santa Claus.”

Yikes. I’m glad I pulled the card about the movie.

Maybe you can ‘blame’ my viewpoint on my Witness upbringing, but I just can not get the idea of Santa Claus. Sure, it’s a cute story, and I don’t mind reading a storybook to my son about Santa, just as I don’t mind reading him a story about the Cat in the Hat.

But I can’t lie to my son and tell him that Santa is real and has all these great powers.

I can’t fathom the idea of purposely transferring the gratitude and appreciation my children have for me onto a pretend character. It would be like if I got my son a bowl of cereal and then he thanked me and I just said, “Hey, it wasn’t me, it was the Cereal Fairy.”

My wife and I make an effort to get Owen to say thank you and to realize the hard work and effort that people put into things – we want him to know that food doesn’t just magically appear on the table and that clothes aren’t dropped down our chimney at night.

But while desiring my son’s love and gratitude may be passed off as selfish, a more insidious aspect is the flat-out lying. Like I’ve heard so many times, you can’t prove Santa isn’t real. That’s true. But like everything else, the burden of proof is on the person making the positive claim. And, just like any other deity, people put forth claims as evidence of Santa’s reality: He’s the one who brings the gifts. He can fit down chimneys. He is the sole owner of a species of flying reindeer. He can make it around the planet – with millions of stops – in a single night. We even know his address: the North Pole, smack in the Arctic Ocean. These are testable, verifiable claims, and as most adults attest, they often had a hard time reconciling Santa’s existence with the facts about the world as they were discovering them.

Why do adults think this is cool / okay / fun for kids? My children are learning about the world, trying to figure out how everything works, and are using the patterns they find to extrapolate even more about the world. Why would I put up a mental road block by saying, “Here’s how the physical world works, but Santa can violate all of that”? Why lie to my kids and stunt their powers of critical thinking?

And for something even scarier:

“He knows when you are sleeping / He knows when you’re awake / He knows if you’ve been good or bad / So you better be good for goodness’ sake”

That is creepy.

On my way home from work this afternoon, I had the misfortune of hearing a radio program in which people called in and offered tips on how to use Santa to get good behavior out of children. Yuck! How about, instead of bribery and lies children, we model the good behavior we’d like to see…starting with being honest.

Why would a parent want their little son or daughter to think some old man watches them sleep at night? Further, why is it his job to reward or punish children according to his standard of morality? Sounds an awful lot like Jehovah/Jesus/Allah/God, if you ask me, so maybe the Santa lie is good conditioning to get the youngsters to buy into the parents’ religion. In any other context, lying like that to one’s children would be considered poor parenting.

Santa doesn’t exist, thank God. Neither do the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, or God. My son knows that, and so do his parents. I’m not gonna lie about it to my kids. And don’t expect me to lie about it in front of your kids, either.

[gets down off soapbox]