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Christians Execute Santa by Firing Squad
December 24, 2010 By 38 Comments
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He’s rather eloquent. And actually correct. If it weren’t for the REALLY loose interpretations of the bible and the hoodies I might show this to my kids someday.
I said this on another site when I saw it a few days ago, while I really don’t advocate Jesus or Repent Amarillo (for their other deeds), and aside from all the christiness in this video (that you should preach to others, giving the gift of salvation), the other parts were nice. I guess I could point out that they really do think they need Jesus to remember to help the needy, but it is important to remember… I liked this video better than the usual “war against Christmas” defense, like the American Family Association making a “nice or naughty” list, pressuring stores to feature Christmas instead of the more inclusive “holidays.” I mean, as far as a holiday is “holy” to anyone, at least for some people, have good reasons why the overbearing commercialism offends them, or especially that they find fault with Christians who focus on it. http://www.popehat.com/2010/11/19/jesus-may-be-the-reason-for-the-season-however-jesus-is-not-the-reason-you-are-shopping-at-dicks/
I’ve always liked that expression, “unto the least of these, you do unto me,” however that goes… it’s one of the better sentiments attributed to Jesus and Christianity, and it would be a lot nicer world if it were evident that was important to more Christians, rather than focusing on how stores greet their customers.
So, yeah, it’s been brought to my attention these people are terrible human beings, but my comments were for this video in particular. The only problem I had the first time I watched it was that Santa was executed on the crime of creating himself, and for the purpose of obscuring Jesus and being a false idol, because I don’t think he’s created as a false idol to distract people from Jesus…. perhaps Christmas used to be a little more dull because Jesus is boring (and untrue), so he may be more right about that, you know, from his perspective.
Other people hated and/or were horrified the “coexist” symbol crossed out. I don’t expect Christians to be any more tolerant of other religions than I am, so that didn’t bother me as much as the additional scripture. Tolerance of religions protects them from challenge mostly. It’s not ideal. It’s nice to be nice to the nice, but that also prevents criticism when they’re awful, so I’m not too horrified… they only believe in one more god than I do. I can’t really criticize this video, but I wouldn’t hesitate to criticize these people. I’m limiting myself to commenting about this video.
I didn’t feel HATE coming off this – I guess the hoodies combined with guns indicate an intolerance so strong they want to shoot others who don’t believe in Christ, but they also made a joke and they explained it was just a joke – they expressly mention shooting a non-life-sized Santa so no one would mistake them for shooting a person. I don’t love Christmas, myself, I don’t love feeling obligated to present a gift to someone that I’m not sure they’ll like. “It’s the thought that counts,” not when they are returning the item or storing it in the attic or giving it to someone else who doesn’t like it either. Would it be selfish to give everyone permission to spend $X on everything they want instead of buy it for someone else? Why do we cherish this custom? It’s nice to see something in a shop you know someone would love and surprise them with it, but for people on your list you don’t know so well, it’s difficult when you feel obligated to read their minds, and you know, end up with stuff you’re not that crazy about either. It is a lot nicer to give to the least of these, would you give more if you didn’t have to budget for people who can afford to buy themselves stuff (they could afford it if they weren’t shopping for the acquaintances on their own list). To me, this is a better meaning of Christmas, but since I don’t believe “the least of these” is Jesus Christ, I’m not celebrating anyone’s birthday, I can do it some other time of year, and I think they’ll like it because I’m hungry every day, not once a year.
Sorry, but we do celebrate gluttony, have to agree with a hardcore Christian about that, and it’s rough because the economy seems to depend on that we do. Christmas comes on the calendar and by social agreement, not anything we particularly decide to do. It impels us to force our way through obligations and do it with cheer, and I don’t like feeling this way (aren’t the holidays stressful for a lot of people? Deadlines always take at least a little fun out of it). People who believe in Jesus seem to do it for the same reason they buy their mother flowers on Mother’s Day and take her out to dinner. It’s designated and out of your control, it’s the right thing to do, or she’ll think you forgot her. Another instance of how baffling to me the beings of earth are.
The “coop duh grace”?
Ya, I imagine “Freedom Grace” didn’t quite have the ring too it. You can only be soo redneck.
i think he meant ‘cup de grass’ anyway Santa didnt die he stood steadfast against the murderous crusaders. and how did they miss at so close a range. maybe some of the “executioners” had a sneaking belief in Santa. after all they already believe in another fictitious character.
I’m kind of disappointed. These guys need to watch a few episodes of Mythbusters in order to learn the cool way and exciting way to demolish stuff.
I like how on the first salvo the beard falls away and there is a big grinning face behind. It looks like he’s laughing at them while being shot.
Oh ya, “Coop Duh Grace” funny funny funny!
Daniel, It’s a paper mache Santa… learn your materials, guy!
:P
LOL!
(paper mache Santa = pinata Santa, which means he would have been beaten until his stuffin’ came out anyway!)
Yeah you’re right. I should have noticed that.
Since it’s a piñata, I did wonder why they didn’t bother to stuff it with something, maybe not candy for this purpose, but I was unimpressed with the effects of the shooting because it could have been a lot more violent, effective, and awesome.
Red velvet cake or red jello comes to mind…
Those hoodies they’re wearing are woven out of pure ignorance.
Ah, yes, but they have the power to repel so much more than mere mustard stains.
Indeed. Reality, for a start.
Horrible, horrible people. They certainly don’t make Christianity look good or appealing in any way through these ridiculous actions.
These must be the stupidest people I’ve ever seen. ‘We don’t advocate violence..’ said right after shotgunning a pinata. ‘Santa doesn’t exist, he’s not real…’ spoken with a straight face by a guy who believes the ancient myths he reads in the Bible, a Bronze Age document. Honestly, they don’t get how truly frightening they are in their ignorance. I fear these kind of Christian zealots, these domestic terrorists, far more than any Muslim extremist. I weep for their children, bathed in the same ignorance. Stunning.
(facepalm… deep sigh)
Do you think a piñata is a person with feelings? I thought they impressed upon the viewer they didn’t want anyone to mistake they were shooting a real person by obviously shooting a dummy representation of a non-real person. They said it was a parody… I don’t get it, do people really feel bad when Santa is obliterated? I watched this a second time, I don’t get what the real problem is that people are having. It’s like we have some protective need to keep our symbols sacred from the obliteration or challenge of others. What happens when we have some common territory?
Sure, he does play a bit of a hypocrite, Jesus is real, but Santa is not, but other than that, what wrong was said or done? While I have heard this group is fairly hateful, what they said they did is no worse than when Southpark does the same thing, and we think it’s funny. Atheists don’t advocate violence – but we can laugh when it’s represented by someone on our side as a joke, in a cartoon with cartoon guns. The fact they shot a piñata was for the same purpose – it’s not real. It would be scary if they thought they were shooting a life-sized model and said they took it seriously, that hearing “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” made them want to shoot real people… I know “irony” is not their main thing, but what’s wrong with a parody when someone else does it?
Christians say and do some awful things, but this particular video did not disturb me, and it’s not relevant to my comment on said video of what other activities “Repent Amarillo” partakes. I would comment on those alleged heinous acts separately. I always like to remember that religions are bad when they incur bad acts, and try not to mind them so much when they are pretty much minding their own business and/or encouraging good things. The worst part of this video is that they encourage viewers to preach the gospel to non-believers… far worse than shooting a piñata with guns; most people use a bat or a stick, but still not as bad as advocating people to beat the shlt out of any real person who is dressed like Santa. They disclaim pretty clearly people shouldn’t do that.
I think the whole pinata of characters is a weird thing… I one saw a Belle pinata (from Beauty and the Beast) and I wondered what kind of little girl actually wanted to beat Belle until she fell apart and spewed her innards. That seems really, really bizarre to me!
I think it’s also weird about the character piñatas, it seems like one of those things people buy for parties to go with a theme and only realize it’s going to get beat to shlt as soon as they start blindfolding little kids. How come the traditional piñata is a donkey? He reminds me of that fruit stripe gum. Is it because of “pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey,” beat the crap out of a donkey…. little kids’ birthday parties were for some reason traditionally donkey-themed. Personally, I don’t have a problem beating on Disney characters instead, but little kids might not get how that symbolizes rejection of a cultural imperative to be a princess, too deep. Grown-ups who shoot or beat a piñata for any message are not hurting anyone, and with any forethought, they can also get candy…. speaking of candy, it’s only a little after Halloween, and I say, Halloween is much better as an adult – adulthood is “double bubble”-free, unless you like gum, then buy some. Kids have no money, they are at the mercy of the crap people put in their bag, but when you’re grown up, you can buy as much Take-5s as you want, and no crappy Kit-Kats. Likewise, we can bash in the image of any icons we don’t like, and it doesn’t hurt anyone. On my facebook “news,” one of my friends is a gay man in a gay married couple (in California, before they voted to take that right away – so I believe it sticks?) with an adopted kid – posted a note about his (pre-school-aged) son was really excited about the baby Jesus piñata, he was being irreverent and not unaware that you bash the hell out of a piñata. Love that guy, he’s hilarious!
Heh… you really don’t get the glaring irony, do you? Well, not too surprising, but very typical of the ‘do as I say and not as I do’ hypocrisy of teh fundies. If your focus is that ‘the pinata is not a real person’, then you ain’t seeing the forest, Forrest.
Guns injure, maim and kill… that’s all they do. Using them in the video as a ‘gag’ demonstration on why ‘Santa’ should be put to death’, joke or not, just proves how tone-deaf these people are. Imagine the screeching and bleating if an atheist group had blasted a Jesus pinata in jest, in good fun hahaha. Now, I don’t believe the whole Bible myth/fable/allegory thing for a millisecond, so shotgunning a Jesus pinata would be high humor in my book. How would that rate on your Anger-Ometer?
A perfect example of why conservative evangelicals do not understand satire, humor or the appropriateness of discharging firearms at paper idols. Stupid is as stupid does. Of course, I am a pinko commie radical progressive liberal Obama supporter, so that’s how I roll.
The reason I’ve never blasted a Jesus doll with a twelve-gauge is because, unlike these Christards, I’m not a complete a total moron. They are past the bottom of the barrel and playing with earthworms, we don’t need to join them.
I’m not really concerned how they would react to a parody by atheists in a similar fashion. I know they are hypocrites, why should I point out the obvious? Why should I get myself all bent out of shape when they are destroying PAPER, the way they might get bent out of shape if I were destroying a Jesus-shaped form of PAPER?
You’re not seeing the forest, uh, dummy. I’m not a Christian, so I try not to act like one.
OK, whatever… just keep making the same assertions and vapid arguments that the fundies make and see how far that gets you. BTW, I don’t see anywhere that I called you a (gasp!) Christian, but you certainly make use their talking points. No worries… I’ll just make a video showing ants crawling on a crucifix and submit it to… no, wait. Can’t do that. Not enough deference, doncha know. Heh heh heh… religion is weird.
You don’t get it, do you?
I didn’t make use of any talking points. I just refuse to be tugged around by the emotional reactions of other people. I sometimes feel like an alien of the earth, because people do something and everyone wants to overreact to it. They shot a piñata of Santa, and explained exactly what they don’t like about Christmas. They said it was a parody – why should they not be allowed to make up a parody? Because they won’t let us make up a parody?
It would have been a lot different issue if we saw this group going to the mall and hassling a poor guy dressed up like Santa and protesting Santa at the mall, going to the mall office and trying to get Santa fired. Then you would see them (a) taking themselves too seriously, and (b) causing a nuisance to others, and (c) taking away some people’s meaning of Christmas in the effort to replace it with their own.
Maybe they did that too, but there wasn’t a video of that, but I think that would be far more retarded, even without guns and sweatshirts. Sometimes Christians get all nuts over our parodies, and that is … you know, whatever. More their thing than mine. Nothing is sacred to me that anyone can destroy in a parody. I’m more interested in the things they do to affect reality. Yeah, I don’t like that Catholic got that art removed from The Smithsonian, I don’t like it in general when people misunderstand art or freak out when, say, John Lennon says the Beatles are more popular than Jesus, out of context. When they turn it around and shoot holes in a piñata, I’m not likely to react upon this demonstration – art, sort of – the same way knee-jerk way they do, like you do.
I’m trying to be reasonable. I’m observing an over-reaction. We don’t like it when they call atheism a religion, but when we act like Santa is an idol, or watch this video with bile backing up the throat, and call these people morons, or down-thread someone calls on the morality of destroying inanimate destructible objects as “wrong. Pure and simple,” I have to shake my head at you! I can’t believe what moron you’re being. Call me back when you have a serious problem, you know, when they’re keeping women from entering a clinic or trying to get the bible as a textbook or something.
I think Santa came out best in this encounter. They shot him at least twelve times with rifles, and then tried to finish him off from close range with a shotgun. Never knocked him over, or blew him in half. May be they should have just driven over him in a truck.
Grenades. However, since it is only a piñata, it is difficult to imagine that a dead person mostly resembles an alive person except for the bullet-holes, so it doesn’t matter the Santa wasn’t knocked over or disintegrated. It’s also not really lost on me that you can fix that Santa as good as new and sell it on craigslist for its original purpose with a little elmer’s and tissue paper. I mean, I think they made their point well enough, but I do agree it would have been better if they completely destroyed it and/or it was filled with some substance that would make the viewing a lot more vivid.
Wow, its not often I hear that much crap out of someone who hasn’t spent the afternoon smoking some really good weed. Way too hyper though to be a pothead. I also guess he didn’t know the story of St. Nicholas, the original Santa Claus, who was a priest leaving gifts if his village.
I like guns and a bit of theater but whoever said they need to watch a few Mythbusters episodes was right. I’d also suggest a few episodes of “man vs cartoon”.
Christians need to get together on this though. Bill O’Reilly gets upset if the town doesn’t have a christmas tree on the courthouse lawn and the mall doesn’t have a Santa Claus and then you have these morons upset over Santa Claus.
I think I’ll just call it a night, I’ve already played Santa and my son will be up early.
He can shove his jesus up his ass.
Wonderful – believe in my invisible friend but don’t believe in Santa.
But I agree with the idea of giving to those that need it – and you don’t have to be a Christian to do that.
Anyway, to all – have a very merry Christmas, etc. And if you don’t celebrate it, have a very merry Saturday.
Now, where’s my champagne?
How bad of a shot are these asswipes? They put Santa about 4 feet away.
Destroying stuff for the sake of destroying stuff is wrong. Pure and simple.
These people are clueless. I don’t think Jesus would have approved of the destruction or the guns.
Is that from the bible? It is not pure and simple to me that shooting holes in a model of santa is wrong. It’s a piñata, it was meant to be destroyed. People could just hand out candy, but they put it in a donkey and beat it to get the candy back out.
I will say this much: as crazy as these people are, they do bring up a good point about Christmas being a commercialized consumer holiday.
Meh. Singing in a choir that’s been singing for many years. We all moan about ho commercial Christmas is, but how many of us don’t do at least something that somebody profiteers from at Christmas time. It’s like all those ridiculous anti-BP protestors I kept seeing on the news: Total lack of grasp that oil is drilled to satisfy THEIR greed for it.
Destroying stuff for the sake of destroying stuff is wrong. Pure and simple. These people are clueless. I don’t think Jesus would have approved of the destruction or the guns.
This is either sarcasm or the dumbest sock-puppetry I’ve ever seen.
It actually hit the spam filter, but since the link goes nowhere and there was nothing to suggest it wasn’t a real person with a real opinion, I let it through.