An atheist group in Virginia crucified a skeletal Santa as a way of showing…well I’m not really sure what they were saying to be honest.
The Loudon Times of Virginia reports:
It’s that time of year again, where holiday cheer fills the air and the Loudoun County Courthouse lawn is scattered with potentially offensive displays and outraged citizens.
But one display has already received some extra attention. The display in question may have been spotted on the way in to Historic Downtown Leesburg where a skeleton Santa is on a crucifix, but it was later torn down by a vandal around noon on Dec. 5.
According to Rick Wingrove, president of the Virginia Chapter of American Atheists, the skeleton Santa was dismantled by a woman as a Loudoun County Sheriff’s deputy watched.
According to Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office Spokesman Kraig Troxell, the dismantling of the skeleton Santa displayed occurred around noon on Dec. 5.
I’m not sure what they were trying to get across here at all. It just seems so adolescent to me. But it seems that just like adolescents they don’t really have a well thought out point so they just act out for attention.
But what else would you expect from people who define themselves by what they are not, rather than what they are.
December 6, 2011 at 5:40 pm
The skeleton clearly represents Halloween. The Santa Suit, Christmas. Atheists, too, are fed up with Christmas advertising starting earlier and earlier every year.
December 6, 2011 at 6:32 pm
Perhaps it is some kind of a Jack Skellington statement? I'm not sure if it would be pro- or anti-Jack, though…
December 6, 2011 at 6:57 pm
"The fact that on one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist"
December 6, 2011 at 6:59 pm
ACK! This is why I always feel like Bill the Cat.
Let me see if I can understand how this works – You can only put a cross on government property if you want to offend the people who want to display the cross. Santa can only be displayed if he's dead – let me guess, that's *for the children*.
I love atheist, they make me laugh. I know a lot of agnostics and their lukewarmness is much more difficult to deal with. Atheists are always thinking of God and religion – bless their little hearts!
December 6, 2011 at 8:11 pm
The application, which was one of the first nine to arrive at city hall, stated that scene would depict a santa nailed to a crucifix in a santa suit to metaphorically represent that the meaning of what christmas is really about is dead and lost and instead replaced and covered over by commercialism. The author felt that christmas was really about love and family. I think that this display was not offensive as envisioned (not as placed) as a christian because it shows a clear line between good and evil, between our faith and love during the holidays and creates a dialogue christians and catholics have argued about commercialization.
The failure of this display was that the author only did it to stir up anger, and not to create true dialogue and reflection. It was not nailed, twined, tied, or glued. It simply was a skeleton dangling by an arm and some positioning on a wood cross. A wind, rain, even a blue bird landing on it could have knocked it over, and there in lies the unsurprising response by the creator of the display; to take it away!
In the past christmas displays have blown across town, been painted, chopped in half, burned, and much more their creaters simply rebuild. The creator of dead santa did not both to as much as pick it up nor take any reasonable action to keep it up in the first place. Therein lies by concern, that this person would hate to see anyone truely respect their idea because even though she meant it in a mocking and insulting effort, she can not mock our lord savior, knock our faith, or disuade the faithful. Her image merely strenghthened my own veneration of the lord and my own desires to see Christianity restored in christmas.
December 6, 2011 at 9:13 pm
As an atheist I find it polarizing to insult people. I would normally condemn the atheist group (assuming I could ever figure out what their point was and I disagreed with it's intent or methods) but when you say things like "what can you expect from atheists?" I have no desire to defend you. In order for there to be progress among groups we all have to speak a little more respectfully to each other. I don't define myself by what I'm not and even if I did, it shouldn't be reason for you to judge my character.
December 6, 2011 at 9:27 pm
Those guys are punks.
We Catholics crucify Christ everyday when we sin.
Because we know better, this makes it more grievous than anything atheists could do.
Atheists telling God they hate Him and don't really believe in His hurts Him less than when we do it.
*
December 6, 2011 at 11:38 pm
@Nerdista, you just identified yourself by what you're not, in the first three words of your comment—or did you actually not know that the word "atheist" involves a negative construction? That's what he was referring to.
Incidentally, given that the few atheist states of the 20th century killed roughly an eighth of a billion people in just 72 years—more than all religious violence killed in 6000 years—I have no desire to be defended by you.
(It's actually worse than it sounds: the figure above compares only mass-murders committed by atheist regimes, to all religious killing. If we add in the dead from the wars started by atheist regimes, the number hits a whopping 200 million, or a fifth of a billion. Atheist regimes, that is, are responsible for deaths equalling 2/3 the current population of the US, in a mere 72 years—an average of 2.8 million people per year. That's like the entire population of Utah, or the city of Paris, being killed every year. Nearly three times the death toll of the Crusades, which took 300 years. But no, man, religion is totally the dangerous thing.)
December 7, 2011 at 12:29 am
@Nerdista: Sovereign personhood is endowed by our Creator. The state is constituted by the sovereign personhood endowed by our Creator. The state may recognize and acknowledge sovereign personhood. The state may not deny sovereign personhood without forfeiting its own constitution. Another person's good fortune in having the gift of Faith is not a crime. Being offended by another person's good fortune in having the gift of Faith is called JEALOUSY. Jealousy is not a civil right to be protected by law. Jealousy is not a reason to deny persons their civil rights to express their freedom of religion or speech or peaceable assembly. You sound like a normal person. Enjoy your God-given human rights and endowed personhood.
December 7, 2011 at 12:36 am
I hope Santa does not stop at their house on Christmas Eve. Serves them right, or if Santa does stop, I hope he bings them a load of coal and chicken coop cleanings. MERRY CHRISTMAS
December 7, 2011 at 1:15 am
Wars have killed millions.
However, it was not an Atheist majority that has done the killing.
It was people that know beyond a shadow of a doubt there is a True God.
They are mostly known as Freemasons, the head of which are Jews.
They have used war, among other things to fight the will of God.
The story of Clair Ferchaud is interesting:
http://www.stjoan-center.com/cf/SacredHeart.htm
Christ wanted the French to put His Sacred Heart image on the French flag so no harm would come to it.
The Freemasons in charge of the French Government refused; France fell, and her gold treasury was looted, many French died.
Many Atheists are decent peace loving folks.
They are just mistaken in their assumption.
*
December 7, 2011 at 1:52 am
So avant garde and meaningful!
December 7, 2011 at 3:22 am
This is why any government official with two or more brain cells just bans any and all "holiday" displays on government property…..
You want XMas? Do it on Xtian property.
Y'all want Hanukkah? Do it on Jewish temple property.
Solstice for the Druids? You know the drill.
Why is this so hard to understand?
December 7, 2011 at 2:35 pm
@ Anonymous 12/6/11 10:22 PM: No, that's not why government bans holiday displays on government property. Government officials ban it because crybaby atheists have sued over even the most tasteful religious displays and won, on the theory that such displays constitute "establishment of religion". By contrast, flag-burning, a deliberately offensive act, has been ruled an exercise in free speech.
It's hard to understand because us religious people are citizens too, with free speech rights; not only are courthouses our property, too, we pay the vast majority of the money used to build and maintain them.
Why is this so hard to understand?
December 8, 2011 at 12:11 am
@St. Michael Come to Our Defense,
What in the bloody hell are you talking about? There were certainly no Freemasons in Stalin's Russia, Lenin had had Russia's few Freemasons killed. There were not and never had been any in Mao's China. And while there was definitely a Masonic element in the secret societies whose members founded Nazism (the Thule Society, for instance), Nazism was mostly of orthodox Marxist origins, deviating solely in its retention of "Bourgeois nationalism".
Those are the atheist regimes I was talking about. And there were also no Freemasons in the Sonnô Jôi movement that would eventually become Japanese Imperialism; though it propped up the cult of the Emperor, the movement was actually Neo-Confucian…and Neo-Confucians are atheist (they prop up state religions for political reasons).
The three most murderous regimes in history—Communism, Nazism, and Japanese Imperialism—are all atheist, in Marxist or Neo-Confucian forms.
The attribution of French and American politics to Masonry has been thoroughly debunked, incidentally. Certainly the Freemasons had far less influence in Revolutionary France than they did in the England that went to war against it.
Freemasonry is a relatively harmless, albeit erroneous, form of Hermetic pantheism.
December 8, 2011 at 12:20 am
@Most recent anonymous,
I'm curious to know, by what logic must a community that is 80% Christian be forced to have absolutely no reflection of that fact in its public life?
I don't know what you'd call that ideology, but "democracy" ain't it. Actually it sounds more like a tyrannical secularist minority. And, for your reference, tyrannical minorities are called "oligarchies".
PS. There has been no Jewish temple since the Second Temple was burned in 70 AD. Did you maybe mean "synagogue"?
December 8, 2011 at 12:28 am
@Anonymous: PPS. Druids did not have Solstice as a major holiday; their major feasts were Bealtaine, on May 1, and Samhain, on November 1. The solstices are June 20 or 21, and December 21 or 22. Scholars actually find little evidence of any druidical religion having a solstice observance.
Sorry to everyone else—by which I mean the actual people who signed in with names—for triple-posting, but I just noticed another glaring flaw in Nameless Mental Colossus' post.