Campfyre Stories

No, it’s not a joke, but it should be, right?  Maybe it is and I’m just waiting on the punchline.  I’ve been waiting for a while, though.  I always found it funny when we would have Girl’s Nights Out several years ago and that would be our group of girls, walking into a bar.  Rarely did the conversations (in the bars) center around religion, but sometimes, the conversations outside of the bars would.

I find myself thinking back to Princess (Jewish) and Jizzie (Catholic) getting into HEATED debates in email threads cc’d to me and Moonstone (both Pagans).  It was usually up to the two of us Pagans to run interference and calm things down.  Most especially when The Passion of the Christ was (about to be) released.  Factor in the Jew as a Yankees fan and the Catholic as a Red Sox fan and you can see how the fun would ensue.

All kidding aside, it always struck me that we should have a punchline, the four of us…  or even any combination of three, but we never got a good one, at least not in our adventures together.  Honestly, the heated debates were few and far between, since, for the most part, there wasn’t much to argue about.  We all respected each others beliefs, even if we didn’t understand them.

Every year I wish Princess a Happy Hanukkah, and she wishes me a Happy Solstice.  Moonstone gets a Happy Yule and Jizzie gets a Merry Christmas.  The words, you see, simply do not matter, at least they never did to us.  Not that we’re the group we once were, with people going their separate ways and all, but it’s a lesson that I hope my son will take with him as he grows.

It doesn’t matter what you celebrate, it doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s all a time for love and family, for celebration of life and one more year past.  If there are religious connotations as well, there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a time for celebrating personal joys, regardless of how they are categorized.

So a Jew, a Catholic and two Pagans walk into a bar.  Is there a punchline?  Does there have to be?

~FG };^>