Letters to the Editor
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Except people eat chickens ...
It's neat to see creativity and freedom to create your own holiday. One issue:
I forsee a day when the kids look at their chicken soup and dumplings and say "is this Irving's relative?". OK, I raise chickens and we eat chickens so we have to deal with this sort of thing a lot: some chickens are pets, and some are food.
But a rooster who gives presents is completely removed from the reality of a "real" chicken, in the way that Bambi just isn't related to any real deer. Roosters, from the kid's point of view, are rather mean and noisy, protective of their territory and don't lay eggs.
The second issue is: the Christmas tree, lights, the date, and mistletoe are NOT basically "Christian", they are pagan, and all about the shortest day of the year. Which does, in fact, exist, no matter what your belief system is. Jewish, Christian, or Nerd, this is a dark cold time of the year. Unless you live below the Equator! I expect in Jerusalem, there isn't much die-back in winter. Here though, the evergreens are what LIVES in winter, and THAT is a magic of itself. Everything is dead: but not the "Christmas trees".
Anyway, I love our celebration, as do the kids. It's dark and cold out, and we have our lights and tree and presents. I try to get our kids as involved in the real landscape ... the earth, the sky, the sun, the moon, the animals, the berries we pick and eat. They get plenty of "CRT landscape" too, via the TV and the computer, but at the root of it, it's still the physical world that sustains our culture (even if you live in the city). There's plenty of magic in this world, and plenty of room to add more. For us though, I'd prefer it to be based on something they don't have to "grow out of" when they learn the truth about chickens.