It's that time of the year again. People go to parties. In the US recently for Thanksgiving (except Native Americans of course) and in other parts of the world for different ways of celebrating the end of the year according to the Gregorian calendar: company drinks and of course the biggest [lie] of them all: the infamous Christmas party.
Christmas ('Christ's mass') was originally celebrated around His birth, the end of March. Which was also the time that many peoples celebrated Spring, the 'beginning' of life. With lots of parties were people would jump up and down around a tree.
Coincidentally (or is it?) the Dutch word 'spring' means 'to jump'.
Anyway: Roman Emperor
Constantine (click) thought it would be a swell idea to have Jesus be born when the Romans already celebrated the very popular feast of Saturnalia. In December, once the tenth month of the year. Hence the 'dec'. You know, the party from the famous paintings. With all those - often chubby - naked people feeding of wine, grapes and eachother.
Have you ever wondered why the pictures of God you were shown as a kid in Bible class looked eerily similar to depictions of the deity Saturn? Wonder no more:
Hmm, I wonder why the (Catholic) church doesn't want their sheep
to know they simply stole their picture of God from the Roman deity Saturn?
Constantine got his people reverted to Christianity because he figured it was the easiest way to oppress...excuse me...to rule them. Instead of working out a way of scaring people into obeying him, he could now simply tell them what to do and not to do 'because that's God's will'. It also saved him a bundle on whips, spies, police and torture devices.
A very pragmatic man. Although some would call him 'lazy'.
===================================
Want to read (more of) my short stories?
My author page:
Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon
================================
Those who don't get party invitations (in December or whenever, really) but really want to meet drunk people because they are much easier to socialize with than sober people and often don't even care about your looks or social status, revert to a method to still get some attention and feel loved through a method that these days is known as 'Tinder': a few 'swipes' and you have contact with someone who wants to [f*ck] meet you. Yeah, exciting!
Recently, in New York, a woman named Cassidy Davis set up
a now monthly event (click) and immediately got Tinder to sponsor her because they don't want her project to fail.
The idea is that you meet people online through the Tinder app and then pay (...) to meet them in 3D. Like, you know, for real. In a bar, club, bowling alley, restaurant, on the beach, in a park or wherever.
Because after years of online 'dating' people forgot how to interact without a smartphone in their hands, they get handed out a piece of paper with questions on it to ask people you've never met before. They call it 'chaotic bingo'.
And if you have five questions answered correctly, you get a Tinder Platinum account for a year. Yeah.
The idea is that if people meet eachother in real life (or as the Tinder people call it in their sway lingo: 'IRL'), they are much more inclined to interact and have fun, whether they eventually 'hook up' (that's American slang for 'have s3x') or not.
What a great [scam] idea! People pay to be send a date and time and the address of a venue. And do so willingly! Without thinking for even a second that you don't need to pay an organisation for what old fashioned people call: 'Let's go out, have fun, talk to people and see what happens'.
Is it social anxiety, not being taught by parents or older siblings how to socially interact? Why do people need someone to tell them how to have fun and talk to people they never met before?
In the Netherlands there are similar organisations that help (desperate?) singles to meet 'n mingle: you pay some organisation a fee and in exchange they send you a time, date and place for an event. 'But only for highly educated people like yourself!', one of those organisations advertises 'because we only want to [get money] connect people [with money] of at least a certain intelligence level.' So they do glow-in- the dark lasertag, glow-in-the-dark bowling, glow-in-the dark clubbing, glow-in the dark-volleyball...you know, events that only highly educated people are smart enough to [pay a lot of money for] enjoy.
Do you have trouble socializing with people you never met before? Would you rather chat with people online or in real life?
