Ruminations
Submitted by daniel.budd on Fri, 12/18/2009 - 4:30pm.
Garrison Keillor has told us to buzz off. Those were his exact words. They appeared in his column in the Baltimore Sun. Google it - Garrison Keillor Christmas Rant.
He told us to buzz off because he's discovered that someone at the First Unitarian Church in Cambridge MA rewrote the words to Silent Night. He's upset. If we don't want to worship Jesus as the Messiah, then we should leave songs like this alone. If you look in our hymnal, you will find two versions: one is the well-known one (by an anonymous translator) and their other has the original German with a new translation below. And if you think we don't have anything to do with Christmas, read my newsletter column in the December newsletter. The first thing you'd have to toss out is "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear," written by a Unitarian minister for a colleague's Sunday School Christmas celebration in 1849.
So if we don't believe in his Messiah, we should just buzz off. I hope that this reveals Keillor as the narrow minded fundamentalist that he is. I've tried to like him, and a lot of his stories are touching. I even used a version of the Nativity Story he did years ago in church a couple weeks ago. But he has been dissing Unitarians for years. You think those occasional jokes of his about us are cute? He means them. He's not giving us free publicity; he's trying to tell everyone how ridiculous, and wrong, he thinks we are.
So this did it for me - the proverbial last straw. No more Keillor for me. I hope Garrison goes back to Lake Wobegon and digs in with all of his imaginary friends for the winter. His Prairie Home Companion is no longer companionable for me.
He told us to buzz off because he's discovered that someone at the First Unitarian Church in Cambridge MA rewrote the words to Silent Night. He's upset. If we don't want to worship Jesus as the Messiah, then we should leave songs like this alone. If you look in our hymnal, you will find two versions: one is the well-known one (by an anonymous translator) and their other has the original German with a new translation below. And if you think we don't have anything to do with Christmas, read my newsletter column in the December newsletter. The first thing you'd have to toss out is "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear," written by a Unitarian minister for a colleague's Sunday School Christmas celebration in 1849.
So if we don't believe in his Messiah, we should just buzz off. I hope that this reveals Keillor as the narrow minded fundamentalist that he is. I've tried to like him, and a lot of his stories are touching. I even used a version of the Nativity Story he did years ago in church a couple weeks ago. But he has been dissing Unitarians for years. You think those occasional jokes of his about us are cute? He means them. He's not giving us free publicity; he's trying to tell everyone how ridiculous, and wrong, he thinks we are.
So this did it for me - the proverbial last straw. No more Keillor for me. I hope Garrison goes back to Lake Wobegon and digs in with all of his imaginary friends for the winter. His Prairie Home Companion is no longer companionable for me.