[From the diaries by susanhu. Perhaps Mr. Boma was inspired by my December 2nd tome on “Taking Christ out of Christmas“? I’ll pray with you, Mr. Boma.]
The secular humanist left is at it again. While the upstanding religious folk have been fighting the blasphemers in their attempt to take the Christ out of Christmas, another threat has slipped by under the radar. I am, of course, talking about the effort to take the Cross out of crossing.
It is clear the devil worshipping, atheist, liberals are behind this effort. We all know that the left lacks any new ideas, so they have simply repeated themselves by replacing everything Christian with the letter X, as if they are symbolically x-ing out all religion. By now, we are all familiar with their blasphemous “Xmas”, but now the secular left has replaced the Christian cross with an X, creating the bastard term “Xing.” They are evil twins: Xmas and Xing, and we must fight back.
Perhaps you have seen a sign like the one at left? If you haven’t yet, I’m sure you will soon. These signs are springing up everywhere. Follow me across the break to see more examples of this quickly spreading evil.
A quick Google images search turned up more examples of this festering blasphemy:
It isn’t just for humans that they have taken the cross out of crossing:
.
.
It is time we put an end to this. I am asking everyone to start tearing down these signs anywhere and everywhere you see them. Write to your city councilman (that’s right, liberal left, councilMAN). Write to your local newspaper op-ed pages. We must not let this continue. Please, help put the cross back in crossing.
OH gawd .. not when I’m eating, please! :):)
…by the milk through my nostrils on this one. Great job MrBoma.
Besides spouting “The Bible is the only book I need to read” at least ten times per visit, my stepfather’s mother loved, more than all her presents, to use the December holidays warning her 13 grandchildren that they had better never take “Christ” out of Christmas the way the heathens were doing. She meant this metaphorically, of course. Don’t forget Jesus on his birthday, although she loved the material side of the …er…holiday season. But she meant it literally even more.
X-mas? Blasphemy in her eyes. Christ himself lifted letter by letter right out of Christmas. And nobody in all her 93 years had the heart to tell my stepgrandmother that the church where she had worshipped her entire married life of 63 years bore a great “X” carved into the stone pulpit, “Chi” and “Rho,” first two letters of Christ in Greek, abbreviated centuries before she was born. Indeed, Constantine, first Christian emperor, wore the ChiRho as his monogram.
Sure, this is funny – especially the marmot crossing picture. Heh.
However, there is a bizarre disconnect of this piece with the on the ground political battles ongoing as the religious right and theocratic right movements continue their advance. It’s good to laugh, but if one does not know the exact nature of one’s adversary and is aware of ongoing campaigns to significantly change the overall balance, one could be likened to someone who is warned “beware the guy in the chicken suit” and then – on seeing that giant chicken – falls over over laughing, to get clubbed in the head by the chicken and robbed.
Right now, for example, Massachusetts is in the religious right’s crosshairs. There soon will be new “godcasting” radio networks springing up in the Bay State ( to the immanent dismay of the wine, cheese, and public radio set ) and the local affiliate of James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” is organizing the effort to ban gay marriage in Mass.
There is – of course – more going on than just that : but those battles and tactical advances are alone bad enough, and pitched battles are going on all across the US. Mass. should be a stronghold of the secular, religious liberty supporting left. It is not. Mass. is under siege.
The have been minor victories, yes : Fred Phelps recently came to Mass. to kick off one of his execrable gay-bashing hatefest tours through NE, and some quick thinking by Lowell based activist Lynn Lupien ( blog: LeftinLowell ) sent Phelps packing. But, that was one small victory amidst many defeats.
Laughter is blessed, sure. But, the Christian nationalist right generates so much which is – on the face of it – absurd to the left that I don’t find it necessary at all to resort to parodying the movement and – furthermore – I don’t consider it wise to mimic the rhetoric of the religious right on secularism when key advisers to the Democratic Party, on religion, are already doing that and presenting it not as parody but as sober, cutting edge political advice.
that should read – in the first paragraph – “is unaware”
Thank you for the much-needed laugh–I’m sure we’ll be seeing the “marmot xing” sign on a regular basis.
For give my x-sins
What was that Little Rascals joke:
The teacher asked Buckwheat to make a sentence using X-mas and he replied : “X-mas be my lucky day”
The levity is really needed ’round here tonight, & AndiF’s gonna be all over that marmot xing sign…:{)
Peace
What dada said!!
And yes–this is just too damned funny!
Oh my goodness mrboma that is just too funny
Marmotdude says that crosses are for people and he doesn’t need no stinkin’ signs ’cause he ain’t walking nowhere.
Nope, if he’s going anywhere, he’ll take his wheels.
Mrboma, you are so right.
Why, just this week, I was driving past a church whose parking lot was across from the street from it. Our secular local government had put up a sign reading “XIAN XING”. (And there are NO Chinese people in our town at all!)
And then, just down the street, there was the self-described “12-step group for recovering Christians.” They had a sign reading “X-XIAN XING”.
Where will it all end?
I’m grateful for your “X” communication.
A funny culture jam would be to put the Chinese characters that closest sound like xian xing below the sign.
Well, as a student of Chinese, I can tell you there are many choices. A TON of characters associated with both “Xian” and “Xing.” Put the two together, “Xianxing,” that can mean (depending on combination of characters/context) current, active, or precede others, or to show one’s true colors, reveal one’s true self, thread or thread-like, dominent – and if you combine that with xingweiju, it means “explicit performance.” And, um, let’s see…linear.
Well done, mrboma. This is really funny (and much needed, for sure).
If I could I would rate this X. Unfortunately the ratings only go to IX.
Uhhh…. that is IV not IX
For the longest time, when i was younger, I always thought that XING was some Chinese name 🙂
Indeed, this is Da Xing, one of two newborn panda cubs being hugged by her mother Xue Xue in August this year.
If the liberals have their way, we’ll no longer be able to curse properly, either! One can’t say “God damn” any longer–it’s only “damn!” or the far less effective “There may or may not be a Deity, but I in no way wish to impose my religious beliefs on those who do not share them DAMN”. By the end of the curse, one will forget the original cause FOR it.
I do a lot of cursing these days, btw.
Luv ya Mrboma. Ridicule and satire are great weapons for the political and hearts-and-minds struggle we are in. Plus, we need the laughs. Great stuff.
“X” is an ancient symbol for “Christ.” So any wingers objecting to the use of the word “Xmas” is showing their ignorance.
mmmm…yummy, yummy snark!
It sounds like a terrific idea to boost the profits of a traffic sign industry which is threatening to overtake Halliburton by sending them into a herd of viscious marmots.
or “vicious” marmots. If we are talking about viscous marmots here then we are talking about marmots who didn’t make use of the marmot crossing, and thus have become somewhat transformed in consistency–I mean a little goopy.
Mrboma, thank you for the most hilarious Sunday morning in memory.
Might that be? Hmm. Y’all know all those puritans watching smut? Maybe that’s because it’s X-rated?
Xing. Are you being funny or serious? The general word crossing on a street sign or as in “I’m crossing the road”, pray tell what does that have to do with Christ, Christian, Jew, Hindu or heathen? While the object ‘cross’ does, the word crossing is not exclusive to Christian as in some quarters would hold.
cross as in [v]verb, [a]djective, [n]oun. Religous ‘Cross’ in Latin forms is represented in Greek + , in St. Andrews X. Then there’s St. Anthonys or Tau and Maltese. Cross can also be a decoration. My keyboard is without the original Latin symbol found in Episcopal/Anglican/Catholic churches. So really as noted upthread if the beef is religous, for those believers, the cross is there as X.
Speaking of crosses as in affliction, let me throw in one more nugget, we are really in a religous war continum. No really.
Do you know the red cross symbol is to be replaced?
Heard last night the BBC worldservice segment on religion; this week in Geneva there’s a meeting to unveil the new symbol for the Red Cross. Most of the world uses the red cross, in Turkey it’s the red crescent. In Israel, they decided against putting the star of David in red.
With the rise of many religious sects the fear is ultimately too many different symbols on the battle field and that’ll be confusing.
So there’s a compromise. The new symbol is a crystal that hopefully will overtake the red cross, the red crescent and star of David.
What will this crystal look like? Take a picture frame and stand it on one point.
There, a religous war treaty is signed. Peace.
When are you going to do one on putting Christ back in the phrase “X marks the spot”?
There is an editorial in today’s NY Times about how the campaign to “restore” Christmas at stores like Target is really a distortion of the history of the holiday. And is actually promoting turning the holiday into an even more commercial event.
This seems part of a program of the fundamentalists to keep their base energized. As one program after another starts to lose resonance with their supporters new items are thought up to replace them. This has a long history, to cite a few examples:
There are two things to notice about this list. First, almost all the earlier items have become non-issues. The religious basis for them has been defeated by the popular will.
Second, with the possible exception of the abortion debate the current hot-button issues are relatively silly. There is an “attack” on religion in the US (and the rest of the industrialized west) not by “liberal” swat teams, but by the demographic trend that the young don’t take religion as seriously as their elders. Not only are they less interested in participating in organized religion, but they don’t feel as worried about the religiously inspired social restrictions. So in a few decades, at most, things like gay marriage will be as big a non-issue as the the blue laws are now.
In several European countries church attendance is in the 3-5% range. This is what the religious right is afraid of and why they are staging a last-stand, rear-guard action to legislate restrictions on future generations before they fade from the scene.
It won’t work.
I see that someone has a creative sense of humour…
Nice diary. Excuse me while I clean the coffee off of my keyboard now.
Hope this helps. Gotta go repent now.