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• Megan Phelps-Roper grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church, where Christmas was seen as a pagan farce and public celebrations were an opportunity to set themselves apart from others.
• She was taught to hate Christmas, but now, as an adult, she has come to appreciate the beauty of the holiday.
• She has found a way to bridge her past and present without burning it all down, by recognizing the beauty of Christmas traditions and the joy of coming together with family and friends.
• She has also come to understand that we can choose the meaning we assign to our experiences, and that they need not be tethered forever to the evils of an unchanging past.

Click HERE for original. Published December 25, 2022

• The traditional explanation of Santa Claus is an ancient fable about Christian virtue which spread across medieval Europe and then, upon landing in the United States, was promptly commercialized.
• The revisionist version is a tale of pre-Christian, indigenous pagan spirituality that was somehow smuggled into our modern Christian/consumerist holiday.
• The traditional explanation is the story of Saint Nicholas, a Greek bishop who was persecuted for his faith by the Romans and gave away his inheritance to the poor.
• The revisionist version starts with the Amanita muscaria, a psychoactive mushroom that gives humans the sensation of flying.
• The indigenous people of Lapland used to consume the drug safely by drinking the reindeers’ urine and shamans would dress in its likeness, in a red and white costume, and visit prominent Sámi households to pass along the insights that they achieved through their hallucinogenic trips.
• It’s possible that, like Easter, our Christmas traditions are a blend of Christian and pagan themes.
• Maybe the mushroom is even more connected to the birth of Jesus than to Santa Claus.

Click HERE for original. Published December 24, 2022