If you had to say something nice about the Republicans, I guess it would be that they at least have the decency to to recognize how vile and shameful their constant appeals to racism are. 

It's a long and sordid history, going back to Nixon's Southern Strategy, but we can also recall the multiple explicit appeals to racism by Ronald Reagan, including his choice of Philadelphia, Mississippi to kick off his presidential campaign, his references to food stamp fraud by “big bucks” who use them to buy liquor, or his support for the racist Bob Jones University.

More recently we have the racist campaign sponsored by the odious Lee Atwater, who capped off his life with a phony apology for his racist acts.

The Washington Dems seemed committed to doing as little as they could possibly get away with – and yes, that includes health care. Given that it was the central policy plank to Obama’s campaign, even President Who-me-close-Guantanamo? couldn’t walk away completely. So instead, he threw up his hands on real structural reform, instead passing a far-reaching regulatory regime (the bulk of which wouldn’t take effect for years) with a mandate that citizens purchase product from the insurance companies, in order to keep them onboard – in other words, he did the least he could possibly get away with and call “reform” (and it remains unclear whether the amended system is either sustainable or constitutional).

And when it wasn’t the President trying to make as few waves as possible, it was Congress, which joined the President in secondary policy fixes they could try and brag on, but punting on the marquee items that drove the 2008 elections, such as the Bush tax cuts.

Well, that didn’t work – and now, with nothing to lose, the lame duck Congress has kicked in, and the President is behind them. When running for re-election as the non-Republicans rather than the Democrats turned out to be a miserable failure, they apparently decided it wouldn’t hurt to take their last opportunity to contrast themselves against the impending chaos that will be sworn in next month.

And yes, although the tax bill was a clusterfuck in many ways, it was at least something. More praiseworthy, though, is the series of unqualified successes that have followed – successes which Congress and the President have varying degrees of credit to take (although the President, in the simplistic media narratives, will get full credit for all of them), but which they both deserve at least some credit for.

• Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal: To my mind, the House and the Senate own this victory. Sure, a Republican wouldn’t have signed it into law, and Obama deserves thanks for doing so. This doesn’t change the fact that the President has had many opportunities to make a difference on this wrongheaded policy but has either squandered those opportunities, or actively worked against them. This was a ball he punted entirely to the Legislature, and in the 11th hour, the Legislature decided that do-nothing made for a poor legacy, and opted to make history instead. For my money, this victory is 90% the Democratic caucuses’, with 10% reserved for the Prez (and that feels gracious to Mr. Obama, frankly).
• The START treaty: Flip that number around, and you’ve got close to the credit-award for this important nuclear arms reduction regime. This was an Obama administration crown jewel, and it was only through the firm engagement by the President and his staff that it’s ratification became a top priority for the dying spurt of energy of this Senate. Still, reminding obstinate Republicans of their patriotic responsibilities took work from Senate Democrats as well, so we’ll allot the credit for this crucial victory as 80-20 in favor of President Obama.
• 9/11 Responders Bill: It’s pretty freaking twisted that this long-stalled bill to provide health care and assistance to ground zero emergency responders with related ongoing issues was held captive by the GOP. The House did it’s job, and the Senate held firm until it passed – but the truth is, that probably wouldn’t have happened without the peculiar spectacle of (some, not all) Fox News talking heads chastising the Republican caucus for derailing it. As such, credit for this one goes to the congressional Dems and Fox anchor Shep Smith, 75% to 25%. And no, you’ll never see that happen again.

Didn’t that feel good? Now hold on tight. The insanity begins in a couple weeks…

Once upon a time there was a little, cranky hard-right infomercial radio program on WDEV, hosted by Laurie Morrow, and called True North Radio. Then, in 2006, Morrow “left” (?) the program and was replaced by proto-tea-partier Paul Beaudry when the program received a mini-makeover, becoming a bit more lively. It was shortly thereafter, in 2007, that fellow proto-tea-partier Rob Roper became the head of the Vermont Republican Party.

Roper became a frequent voice on Beaudry’s North, which was a veritable full monty of hard-right dog-whistles, from routine climate change denialism and relentless pro-Vermont Yankee segments, to an on-again, off-again crusade against the insidious Hinesburg Representative Bill Lippert and his agenda of un-American homosexual indoctrination (which he promoted by simply being gay, apparently).

The little’s show’s profile grew and grew. Then, in 2009-2010, the Tea Party phenom hit the nation! Statehouse protests! Baudry with a bullhorn calling out Bernie Sanders at public appearances! By 2010, it was all building to a head, as “moderate” (ha) Jim Douglas was retiring, and the heir apparent was social conservative Brian Dubie who hired a hard-right, slash-and-burn southern GOP operative to run his campaign. Beaudry himself jumped into the fray, coming from nowhere over the past few years to win the Republican primary for US Representative, practically chomping at the bit to take on librul Peter Welch!!! Meanwhile, Roper steps in to fill the vacated hosting spot.

And then came November…

Dubie lost to anti-Vermont Yankee poster boy Peter Shumlin. Beaudry was stomped by Welch. And oh yeah, Lippert is still there, too.

Come December – the very next month – True North Radio announces it’s funding hasn’t come through, and the program will be packing it in.

It’s hard not to look at the timeline (in particular the evaporation of funds the month after the Election) without wondering if the whole point of the program after the Morrow-exit wasn’t simply about building a head of steam to take it all in Election 2010. Mission un-accomplished indeed.

None of which is to say that there aren’t necessarily meaningful implications to True North’s demise and planned resurrection as an online-only site (no, seriously – I really think there are). I’ll get to those in tomorrow’s piece, though.

We face the same budget challenges as we did under Jim Douglas, the same tricky choices, the same bad options – but we’re entering into an era where we’ll be approaching the solutions in a different way. As Governor, Jim Douglas was notoriously hostile towards any fair or equitable approach towards school funding. Why? Because he saw the budget crunch as an opportunity to score points in his ongoing war with the Vermont NEA. Local communities, school and students were simply acceptable budgetary casualties.

With this in mind, here’s the latest from Governor-Elect Shumlin:

Governor-elect Peter Shumlin today said that local school boards and communities are best left to make their own budget decisions and he will not ask the Legislature to enforce the voluntary education spending cuts recommended under Challenges for Change.  At the same time, he said that local school districts will still receive $23.2 million less from the state this year. While much of that should be made up with the nearly $19 million in federal education stimulus money that the state received earlier this fall, the $19 million is a one-time allocation of funds and school districts should continue to develop fiscally sound budgets so as not to result in increased property taxes.

[…] “We always knew that this would be a difficult year for school budgets,” said Shumlin. “Our local boards and educational leaders have worked diligently to provide the quality education we expect from our schools and local voters expect. I trust our local school boards and voters to develop fiscally sound budgets that reflect the values we hold dear as Vermonters.”

Same challenges. Same tableau of bad options. But instead of lectures, attacks, ideological resistance to using federal financial support for its intended purpose of mitigating the impacts of the tanking economy, and duels-at-20-paces, we hear an appreciation of the impacts locally, an appreciation for local control, a sense of partnership, and (gulp)… was that the dreaded empathy?!? All of which is made even more meaningful by the fact that this budget-cutting order was a Challenges for Change edict – the same Challenges for Change that Shumlin himself bears much responsibility for as former Senate leader. This is also a sign in itself – that this administration may well understand the need for adaptation in a way the previous one never gave one whit about.

A person could be agnostic about a soda tax and this might still raise more than a few questions about conflicting motives. Save the Children has dropped its previously active support for a tax on soft drinks. The group had recently been a leader in the effort as a way to fight childhood obesity in campaigns in Mississippi, New Mexico, Washington State, Philadelphia and the District of Columbia.  

What changed? Save the Children’s chief operating officer claims there is no connection between the discussions they are having regarding grants from Coca Cola or a $5 million dollar grant already received from PepsiCo.

“We looked at it [support of the soft drink tax] and said, ‘Is this something we should be out there doing and does this fit with the way that Save the Children works?’ ” She said. “And the answer was no.”

Call it partnering:

Nice li’l non-profit you have there. Sure could use a fresh coat of paint though.  

Alternative: Nice soft drink you have there? It’d be a shame if it was taxed.

 

Similar questions about conflicting interests were raised in 2009 when the doctor’s organization American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) received a six figure grant from Coca Cola to develop consumer education content on beverages and sweeteners for FamilyDoctor.org, a consumer health Web site.  

Unconnected to the Save the Children effort this issue was front and center here in November when the Vermont Healthy Weight Initiative was spotlighted by Attorney General William Sorrel (out of what some see as his traditional role).

The initiative included a proposal for a tax on sugar sweetened beverages(SSBs)  

At the risk of being extremely dull at this liveliest of seasons, I think it might be time to revisit Vermont’s Open Meeting Law.  This is the very important rule that protects the public’s right to know, and ensures that no decisions are made in secret by City Councils or Selectboards.  

An example of a likely violation was mentioned in today’s Free Press:

South Burlington City Council Chairman Mark Boucher said Monday that he gave retired City Manager Chuck Hafter a laptop computer and printer after Boucher privately polled the rest of the council in April.  The council at the end of its regular meeting was asked to re-affirm the private deal of giving away a taxpayer-owned computer to Hafter.

What’s wrong with that, you might ask?  The value of the used computer was relatively little and the City has a full back-up.  The problem is that, by law, City Council members are not permitted to “privately poll” themselves about a matter concerning City property:

Whenever a quorum (a majority) of a public body meet to discuss the business of the board or to take action, the open meeting law will apply. This means that if a majority of a board find themselves together at a social function they must take care not to discuss the business of the board!

The exclamation point is actually there in the law for emphasis.

A couple of weeks ago, a similar issue was raised in the St. Albans Messenger (not available online) following a meeting of the Town/City Fire Advisory Committee.  The Advisory Committee includes individuals who also sit on the Town Selectboard.  The other members of the Selectboard apparently decided to attend the meeting as well, providing, by default, a quorum capable of decision-making for the Town Selectboard.  By law, this obligated the Selectboard to formally “warn” the meeting so that the public would be aware that a quorum would be present.  Several of the Selectboard members have been serving in that capacity for enough years that they can not claim ignorance of the law, and the City Manager shares responsibility for this over-sight.  As Michelle Monroe mentioned in her Messenger coverage of the meeting, if a member of the public were to complain, the Town would be liable for a fine of $500.

It would appear that such a small fine is insufficient penalty, as City Councils and Selectboards seem to be pretty casual about observing the law.  And this returns me to my other complaint about the laws governing conduct by Vermont’s public officials: the lack of adequate definitions and meaningful penalties for the exercise of conflicts of interest.   Both conflicts of interest and open meeting violations are byproducts of the traditional intimacy and informality of Vermont’s institutions of government.  While this intimacy has it’s upside in terms of unique opportunities for public involvement, we must not allow the nature of this relationship to obscure the fact that allowing violations of open meeting and conflicts of interest to go unchecked will ultimately corrupt the process.

New Survey Shows That While More Than 90 Percent of Americans Observe Christmas, Only 51 Percent Emphasize its Christian Religious Aspects — Not Surprising, Given That the Holiday the World Celebrates Each Year on the 25th of December Is Actually Thousands of Years Older Than Christianity Itself — and Is Celebrated by Billions of Non-Christians Around the World

CHRISTMAS IS NOT (AND HAS NEVER BEEN) ONLY ABOUT JESUS — When we think of Christmas, images of Santa Claus, Christmas trees and wrapped-up gifts often come to mind. For devout Christians, the Nativity scene depicting the birth of Jesus comes first. But the truth is that the celebration of the birth of Jesus is a relatively recent addition to the late-December festival of the Winter Solstice, the most ancient holiday in the world — tens of thousands of years older than Christianity itself — and is one of the two major Pagan festivals that has survived largely intact in the Western world. The other is Halloween. (Image courtesy CrazyFrankenstein.com)

(Posted 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, December 21, 2010)

DEAR READERS: When I first published my Christmas article a week after The ‘Skeeter Bites Report made its debut in 2005, I had no idea that it would become this column’s single most popular article of the year. I received many e-mail requests in 2006 to repeat it — to which I gladly obliged, deciding to follow the tradition started by the late advice columnist Ann Landers in 1956 to republish an updated version of her Christmas column annually. Every year since, from Thanksgiving ’til New Year’s Day, my site’s visitor tracker has shown a major spike in traffic to the site’s archives for the article. And so — updated for 2010 — here is my sixth annual retelling of “The Pagan Roots of Christmas.”

COMING NEXT WEEK: The fourth annual ‘Skeeter Bites Awards — “dishonors,” in the tradition of the Razzie Awards to the worst films of the year — to the people who in 2010 have done more to bring misery to the lives of millions than anyone else. Blessed Be and Happy Holidays.

# # #

By SKEETER SANDERS

Ah, December.

‘Tis the season when most of us are thinking about opening gifts under brightly lighted trees. Of kissing someone special under the mistletoe. Of eating, drinking and making merry. And, above all, of hoping for peace on Earth and goodwill to all.

But in 2010, on what ought to be the most festive time of the year — despite the lingering recession — “goodwill to all” again appears to be in short supply in America among certain people, who continue to rail against what they perceive as a so-called “War on Christmas” because of what appears to be a lessening in recent years of the Christian symbolism of the holiday.

And a new survey out this week is likely to add to the conservatives’ worries.

IT’S CATHOLICS VS. ATHEISTS AGAIN — THIS TIME WITH DUELING BILLBOARDS

A battle of dueling holiday billboards has erupted between the New York-based Catholic League and the New Jersey-based American Atheists, with the atheist group’s signs blaring “You Know It’s a Myth! This Season, Celebration Reason!” — referring to the birth of Jesus, and the Catholic League’s billboards blaring back, “You Know It’s Real! This Season, Celebrate Jesus!”

The League, angered by what it saw as an anti-Christmas billboard put up by the atheist group at the New Jersey entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel that connects New Jersty and New York City, countered by putting up one of its own on the New York side of the tunnel.

“We decided to counterpunch after a donor came forward seeking to challenge the anti-Christmas statement by American Atheists,” Catholic League president William Donohue said on the organization’s Web site.

But David Silverman, president of American Atheists, insisted, in a statement to CNN, that his group’s billboard isn’t aimed at believers, but at “the 50 million atheists in this nation” and to get passing commuters to “think hard about whether or not they actually believe in what is, in reality, an invisible magic man in the sky.”

This isn’t the first time that atheists and Catholics have clashed over Christmas. In 2008, the atheist group Freedom From Religion erected a sign in Olympia, Washington.

Freedom From Religion’s sign, aimed at staking its own claim on the holiday season, proclaims the atheist reliance on reason, rejects common religious beliefs and asserts the independence of the natural world:

At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail.

There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.

There is only our natural world.

Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

The sign drew a sharp rebuke from conservative Fox News talk-show host Bill O’Reilly, a devout Catholic, who branded it part of a “War on Christmas” by secularists that he’s been railing against on his TV program every December since 2003.

NEW SURVEYS FIND MANY AMERICANS IGNORE RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF CHRISTMAS

Two new surveys released Monday aren’t likely to quell conservatives’ anxiety about Christmas becoming less and less about the birth of Jesus.

The polls — conducted by Gallup and by LifeWay Research, a Nashville-based Christian research organization — found that more than 90 percent of Americans observe Christmas, regardless of whatever faith they follow — or not follow.

But the surveys, published Monday in USA Today, also found a wide discrepancy in how American view the religious aspects of the holiday. In the LifeWay poll, 74 percent regarded Christmas as primarily a religious holiday, but in the Gallup poll, only 51 percent felt that way.

The LifeWay survey found that more than a third of Americans who celebrate Christmas place little to no emphasis on the holiday be a celebration of the birth of Jesus — as USA Today put it, for this group, “O Come-all-ye-partiers trumps O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

“A lot of Americans celebrate Christmas like they participate in yoga: Unaware and unconcerned about its religious roots,” Ed Stetzer, LifeWay’s president and a Southern Baptist pastor, told the newspaper.

DECEMBER 25 HOLIDAY PRE-DATES BIRTH OF JESUS BY THOUSANDS OF YEARS

Yet Stretzer and other Christians who lament what they see is the “de-Christianization of Christmas” are ignoring the fact that the holiday’s roots go back farther — much farther — than the birth of Jesus.

They’re also ignoring the fact that there are literally millions of Americans who are not Christian and have December holidays of their own. Why should Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Yule not get the recognition they richly deserve? Why should those holidays be ignored or subsumed under Christmas?

And contrary to what O’Reilly and other conservatives say, Christmas is not a strictly Christian religious holiday in the first place. If it were, Christmas could not, under the U.S. Constitution, be designated a public holiday without violating the First Amendment’s ban on the government favoring one religion over another — Good Friday and Easter Sunday aren’t public holidays for that very reason.

Christmas is observed not only by millions of non-Christians in America, but also by billions of non-Christians around the world and is a public holiday even in countries where Christians are a minority, including Nigeria, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China (Hong Kong and Macau), India, Indonesia, Israel, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories, Singapore and Taiwan.

Christmas has never been — and will never be — a Christian-only celebration and the time has come for Christian conservatives to stop denying the holiday’s true origins, for it didn’t start with the birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem stable. The truth is, the holiday the world celebrates each year on the 25th of December is the most ancient holiday on the planet.

What we now call Christmas is actually the Christian adaptation of the many millennia-old Pagan celebrations of the Winter Solstice. With the notable exception of the Nativity creche, all of the symbols and decorations that we associate today with Christmas — the tree, the wreath, the holly and the ivy, the lights, the mistletoe, the eggnog, the Yule log, the caroling and even Santa Claus — are of Pagan origin and have nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.

Indeed, the very word “Christmas,” with its direct reference to Jesus as “The Christ” — which is derived from the Greek word kristos, or “savior” — is almost exclusive to English-speakers. In only nine other languages — Dutch (Kerstfeest), Farsi (Cristmas-e-shoma), French (Noel), Greek (Kristouyenna), Indonesian (Natal), Italian (Natale), Portugese (Natal), Spanish (Navidad) and Ukranian(Khrystouvym) — does the name of this holiday come even close to referring to the birth of the Christ child.

Many Americans often refer to Christmas as “the Yuletide.” And no wonder: Yule is the Winter Solstice. Most modern Pagans still celebrate Yule. Even most Christians use “Christmas” and “Yule” interchangeably to describe the season without even thinking about its Pagan origins.

Yule celebrates the beginning of the sun’s light and warmth returning to the northern hemisphere after reaching its southernmost point on the Earth at the Tropic of Capricorn on the Winter Solstice — which this year will occur this evening (Tuesday) at 6:38 pm EST, some 13 1/2 hours after the end a spectacular total lunar eclipse that took place during the pre-dawn hours of this morning. It is one of the two very ancient Pagan holidays that are still widely celebrated in the Western world — and beyond — relatively intact. The other is our modern celebration of Halloween.

[In the interest of full disclosure, this writer is obliged to state for the record that I, a former Roman Catholic, am a Pagan; more specifically, a Wiccan. Yule has special significance for me personally: It marks the anniversary of my conversion in 1984 to Wicca, the largest and best-known “denomination” of modern Western Paganism.]

THE ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE

If you really want to be historically accurate, then the Christmas tree should rightly be called the Yule tree, for it dates back nearly 5,000 years to the Celtic Druids. They revered evergreens as manifestations of deity because they did not “die” from year to year, but stayed green and alive when other plants appeared dead and bare. The trees represented everlasting life and hope for the return of spring.

Best known today for their celebrations of the Summer Solstice in June at Stonehenge, the Druids decorated their trees for the winter solstice in December with symbols of prosperity: a fruitful harvest, coins for wealth and various charms such as those for love or fertility.

Scandinavian Pagans, particularly the Norse, became the first to bring their decorated trees indoors, as this provided a warm and welcoming environment for the native fairy folk to join in the festivities.

The Saxons, a Pagan tribe from what is now Germany, were the first to place lights on the their trees in the form of candles (an extremely dangerous fire hazard by today’s standards). For centuries, the ancient Romans decorated their homes with evergreens at the winter solstice festival of Saturnalia — which also marked the Roman New Year — and exchanged evergreen branches with friends as a sign of good luck.

Christians’ use of the tree symbol for the December holidays did not begin until the 16th century, when devout Catholics in what is now Italy brought decorated trees into their homes. The German-born Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, is credited with starting the tradition in England in 1841 when he brought the first Christmas tree into Windsor Castle.

THE EIGHT PAGAN HOLIDAYS

Nature’s cycles of winter, spring, summer and fall (and everything else in between) are so much a part of human life and society on Earth that to acknowledge, celebrate and even sanctify those cycles is a primal need we simply cannot ignore. Just ask any ski-resort operator in winter or swimming-pool operator in summer — or any farmer, for that matter.

Yet those who follow the world’s three great monotheistic religions — Christianity, Judaism and Islam — have long been reluctant to do so and instead instituted their own rituals, holy days and festivals. The fact that many of the major Christian, Jewish and Muslim holidays — and even some civic and national holidays — often occur in tandem with the eight major Pagan holidays during the course of the year is no accident.

In addition to the Winter Solstice celebration of Yule on December 20-22 (depending on the actual date of the solstice itself from one year to the next), the other seven Pagan holidays are:

• Imbolg or Candlemas (Groundhog Day, February 2) — also known among Catholics as St. Brigid’s Day;

• Eostre or Ostara (Spring Equinox, March 20-22);

• Beltaine (May Day, May 1);

• Litha (Summer Solstice, June 20-22);

• Lammas or Lughnasadh (Midsummer’s Day, August 1);

• Mabon (Autumn Equinox, September 20-22);

• Samhain (pronounced SOW-en), the Wiccan New Year (Halloween, October 31).

This is one reason why Easter (whose name in English is a derivative of Eostre) always falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Equinox and why Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, almost always falls in close proximity to the Autumn Equinox.

Jews transformed the three ancient harvest festivals of the Canaanites into the three festivals of Creation (Tabernacles), Revelation (Pentecost), and Redemption (Passover). Likewise, Christians and Muslims transformed their ancient, Nature-based festivals into celebrations of the singular events in, respectively, the life of Jesus and the career of the Prophet Mohammed.

HOW AN ANCIENT ROMAN HOLIDAY BECAME CHRISTMAS

After Christianity was proclaimed the state religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine in 312 C.E. (Common Era), the early Christian church — now the Vatican — used the transformation of the ancient holidays and festivals as a tool to convert Pagans to Christianity throughout the empire and beyond.

Yet the church barred Christians from holding any kind of celebration to honor the birth of Jesus, primarily because the actual date of his birth was unknown — and remains unknown to this day, although there is some astronomical and archaeological evidence suggesting that Jesus was actually born in the spring.

The church’s ban was lifted in 350 C.E., when Pope Julius I proclaimed a feast day to celebrate Jesus’ birth — and deliberately chose December 25 as the date to hold “Christ’s Mass” to absorb and Christianize not only Yule, but also Saturnalia, which honored Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture.

Saturnalia was celebrated with feasting, gift-giving and role-reversal between men and women and between slaves and their masters. It was also marked by the unabashed enjoyment of sensual and erotic pleasures, which many conservative Christians today strongly condemn as wanton debauchery, but still survives in our time (primarily around New Year’s Eve).

And because Saturnalia also marked the Roman New Year under the Julian calendar, the changeover to the present-day Gregorian calendar in 1582 resulted in the one-week interval between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Upper-class Romans also celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the sun god, on December 25. It was believed that Mithra, an infant god, was born of a rock. For them, Mithra’s birthday was the most sacred day of the year — especially since the daylight from the sun began to lengthen on the 25th, following the winter solstice.

CHRISTIANITY VS. PAGANISM

The current debate in the United States over “Christmas” versus “Holiday” trees, decorations and greetings is part of a much deeper clash of cultures that has gone on for centuries: Christianity vs. Paganism.

Paganism is pantheistic and circular; Christianity is monotheistic and linear. Pagans celebrate the eternal natural cycle of being. Christians venerate the linear concept of progress, from creation to ultimate redemption.

Pagans live in the realm of the eternal recurrence. Pagan rites maintain harmonious relationships among the gods; thus, these rituals guarantee the continuity of Nature’s cycles, which Nature-based human societies depend on for their sustenance.

Christians (as well as Jews and Muslims) worship the God who created all natural things and stands above them. To them, when God intervenes in the world, it is not to create a disruption of natural events, but rather to generate some wonderful new direction in human affairs.

It is at the Winter Solstice — more so than at any other time of the year — that people of Judeo/Christian/Muslim faith feel most acutely the tension between the origins of their religion in Pagan Nature worship on the one hand and the evolution of their faith into belief in a single God and a linear remembrance of historical events and teachings on the other.

SURVEY REVEALS AMERICA’S GROWING RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY

And for many conservative Christians in particular, that tension could only have grown sharper in recent years as the number of Americans who do not identify themselves as Christian has been growing sharply since 1990, according to data compiled by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), a private poll conducted by researchers at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Posen Foundation.

The U.S. Census Bureau is constitutionally barred from directly compiling data on the religious affiliations of Americans, thus the ARIS survey — the third conducted by Trinity College since 1990 — is considered authoritative.

The latest ARIS survey of more than 54,000 people conducted between February and November of 2008 and released in March of this year showed that the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Christians — inclusive of all its denominations — has fallen to 76 percent of the population, down from 86 percent in 1990.

Those who do call themselves Christian are more frequently describing themselves as “nondenominational” “evangelical” or “born again.” Significantly, the ARIS survey found, this increase corresponds strongly with a dramatic decline in the number of Americans who identify themselves as so-called “mainline” Protestants — particularly Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians — which fell from 17 million in 1990 to only five million today.

A SHARP RISE IN ‘SPIRITUAL, BUT NOT RELIGIOUS’ AMERICANS — ESPECIALLY IN NEW ENGLAND

At the same time, the ARIS survey found the proportion of Americans who declined to state any religious affiliation has skyrocketed, from 8.2 percent in 1990 to 15 percent today, with the vast majority of this group identifying themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.”

This group is most heavily concentrated in northern New England and the Pacific Northwest. Vermont leads all other states in this category by a full nine percentage points, with a record-high 34 percent of its residents identifying themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.”

Out of a total U.S. adult population of 175.4 million people who professed a religious or spiritual belief system in the first ARIS poll in 1990, 151.4 million, or roughly 85 percent, identified themselves as Christian.

In the second ARIS survey in 2001, 159.5 million out of a total 207.9 million believers — 76 percent — identified themselves as Christian.

Now, out of a total U.S. adult population of 228 million believers, 173.4 million identified themselves as Christian, unchanged in percentage terms from the 76 percent the ARIS survey found in 2001.

A SHIFT IN ROMAN CATHOLIC POPULATION TO THE SOUTHWEST

The 2009 ARIS survey notes that America’s religious geography — particularly of the nation’s 57.2 million Roman Catholics — has been transformed since 1990. “Religious switching along with Hispanic immigration has significantly changed the religious profile of some states and regions,” the survey’s principal authors, Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, reported.

“Between 1990 and 2008, the Catholic population proportion of the New England states fell from 50 percent to 36 percent and in New York state, it fell from 44 percent to 37 percent, while it rose in California from 29 percent to 37 percent and in Texas from 23 percent to 32 percent.”

BAPTISTS, MORMONS, MUSLIMS AND PAGANS UP; BUDDHISTS, HINDUS DOWN; JEWS HOLD STEADY

Other key findings in the 2009 ARIS survey:

• Baptists, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, have increased their numbers by two million since 2001, to 36.1 million, but continue to decline as a proportion of the population, from 16.3 percent in 2001 to 15.8 percent today.

• Mormons — members of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — have increased in numbers enough (3.1 million) to hold their own proportionally, at 1.4 percent of the population.

• The number of Muslim Americans continues to grow, from 527,000 in 1990, to 1.3 million today. Immigration accounts for the most of the increase, including Iranian refugees from the 1979 revolution, Bosnians from the 1990s war in the Balkans and Somalians from the still-ongoing violence there.

• Adherents of co-called “new religious movements” — including Wiccans and self-described Pagans — have grown faster this decade than in the 1990s. While there was no census of American Pagans in 1990, the 2001 ARIS survey did report at least 307,000 Americans identifying themselves as such, with 134,000 professing to be Wiccans, 33,000 as Druids and 140,000 as eclectic “neo-Pagans” of a wide spectrum of traditions.

(For the 2009 survey, there was no faith-specific breakdown of adherents in the “new religious movements” category, instead listing 2.8 million such Americans today, compared to 1.7 million in 2001.)

• The number of American adherents of Eastern religions — Buddhism, Shinto and Hinduism — which more than doubled in the 1990s — has declined slightly, from 2.02 million in 1990 to 1.96 million today. However, the number of Buddhists alone edged up slightly from 1.08 million in 2001 to 1.18 million now.

(Buddhists have their own major holiday in December: Bodhi Day — December 8 — which celebrates the story of how the philosopher Siddartha Gautama of India became the Buddha by sitting under a bodhi tree and vowing to remain there until he achieved total enlightenment.)

• In strictly religious terms, Jewish Americans continue to decline numerically, from 3.1 million in 1990 to 2.7 million today — 1.2 percent of the population. However, when defined more broadly as an ethnic group, including those who do not practice the faith, the American Jewish community has remained remarkably stable since 1990.

ATHEISTS, AGNOSTICS REMAIN SMALL PROPORTION OF U.S. POPULATION; SECULARISTS DROPPED FROM SURVEY

The number of Americans who call themselves atheists or agnostics remains relatively small, the new ARIS survey found. But based on stated beliefs, 1.62 million, or 2.3 percent, are atheists (believe there is no God) and 1.98 million, or 4.3 percent, are agnostics (unsure if God exists or not).

The 2001 ARIS survey counted an even smaller number of Americans — 53,000 — as identifying themselves as “secular” and still fewer — 43,000 — calling themselves “humanists.” There was no accounting of either group in 1991 and they were dropped from the 2009 survey as statistically insignificant.

The truth is, America at the close of the first decade of the 21st century is more religiously and spiritually diverse now than it’s ever been before in its more-than-234-year history — and conservative Christian majoritarians are going to have to deal with it, whether they like it or not.

IS IT A PAGAN CHRISTMAS OR A CHRISTIAN YULE?

If they wanted to, today’s Pagans could reclaim the Christmas tree — indeed, all the decorative trappings of Christmas, save for the Nativity creche — as being rightfully theirs, since Pagans created them in the first place.

But modern Pagans are a practical lot, with most viewing Christmas simply as the Christian world celebrating Yule in their own way — albeit, three to five days after the actual winter solstice — and thus see no conflict in celebrating at least the secular aspects of Christmas themselves.

And December isn’t called the holiday season for nothing. There’s also Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day and scores of other holidays and festivals around the world this month — all of which culminate in the ringing in of the new year at midnight on December 31.

Thanks to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar as the universal calendar used worldwide and the global system of 24 time zones, New Year’s Day is our only truly global holiday — which we all got to watch unfold on our TV screens in all its joyful glory a decade ago as we greeted the turn of the millennium (albeit, a year too soon, since there mathematically never was a Year Zero).

So whichever way you celebrate the holidays, may yours be filled with joy, peace and love.

Blessed Be! And Happy Holidays.

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SUGGESTED BOOKS (Available at Amazon.com):

Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide by Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling (Paperback – November 4, 2006).

The Origins of Christmas by Joseph F. Kelly (Paperback – August 2004).

Yule: A Celebration of Light and Warmth by Dorothy Morrison (Paperback – September 1, 2000).

The Shortest Day: Celebrating the Winter Solstice by Wendy Pfieffer (Hardcover – September 22, 2003)

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Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Green Mountain Daily has learned from multiple sources that Michael Hartman will not be reappointed to serve as Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health.

At this time no information is available as to who will be chosen.

The Department of Mental Health has had a rocky path during Jim Douglas's term in office, moving from Waterbury to Burlington and back, moving from being an independent department to a division of the department of health and back, and constantly struggling to regain Medicare and Medicaid certification, lost after two patients committed suicide at the State Hospital in 2003.

Advocates have been critical of the Douglas administration's approach, pointing out that they have had no clear direction, no substantive plan to either fix the problems at the State Hospital or replace it, and have treated the patients at Waterbury in a way that no other chronically ill population would have been subjected to.

Despite a letter-writing campaign to keep him, Hartman's departure is no surprise. Earlier this year legislators were furious when the administration sat on the news that VSH had once again lost its certification, even though they knew it was going to cost the state millions of dollars in lost federal funding and the legislature was debating the final budget, which included the money from Medicare and Medicaid.

Back in March I made this observation about the State Hospital mess and the Douglas administration:

Second, when is this going to start costing Douglas? The Hospital has been decertified almost continuously since 2003, or almost the entire time that Douglas has been governor, and his administration has essentially done nothing about it. At least, nothing but waste time, come up with unrealistic and unfeasible plans, and we're no closer to a replacement for VSH than we were seven years ago. You walk around the State House and legislators of all parties are openly scornful of the idea that the administration has any kind of plan to do anything, anytime.

Could it be that Michael Hartman is the one Douglas administration official to pay any significant cost for the failures of the outgoing governor?

I have to say that the choice of Beth Pearce to be the new Treasurer surprised me. I have to say that because I’d never heard of her before the announcement. That’s a pretty pure surprise.

A few takeaways from the press conference. First, Pearce comes off as very likable, affable, and well-spoken. One gets the sense she isn’t completely at home in front of the press yet, but it won’t be long at all before she is. She also made it quite clear that, in her words, she is in this for “the long haul,” meaning a run for election in 2012, even if it was clearly not the place to answer the question directly.

Pearce was asked by reporters about being a part of closing the gender gap in government, a subject first broached by the media in the context of Shumlin administration appointments at this site last week. Pearce replied that the gap would be closed with “hard work and achievement,” which is only something right wingers with the biggest chips on their shoulders should not be able to appreciate (although the rest of us understand that it takes a bit more than bootstrapping to overcome institutionalized discrimination).

The other point of interest came when the three at the podium – Pearce, Administration Secretary-in-waiting Spaulding and Governor Elect Shumlin were asked about the ongoing matter of the state’s pension funds and the ongoing financial crisis. Pearce referenced the, as she said, “win-win” deal Spaulding had made with the NEA on teacher’s pensions (which averted a high profile showdown with the Legislature and Governor Douglas, the latter of whom was clearly salivating for such a showdown) and waxed optimistic about finding similar accommodation with the VSEA and the Troopers union.

It was at this point that the easy-going, comfortable and nimble way with reporters Shumlin clearly has come to possess contrasted with the less-polished stylings of outgoing Treasurer Spaulding. Spaulding was well-spoken, but always seemed mildly annoyed with the reporters asking questions. This generated the only, shall we say, non-light-hearted moment of the press conference, when a questioner followed up, wondering if the new Treasurer could expect particular resistance from VSEA on amending pension arrangements, given that they were likely to feel that they already went through all this just a couple years back.

Spaulding took the mic to respond, and virtually the first words out of his mouth were “that was then, this is now.”

Ouch. The emergence of bad cop rhetoric in the room was unexpected and stood in contrast with the other remarks. That may have been the extent of the tense vibe, but unfortunately, it was very much what sound bites are made of.

And in fact, Spaulding is going to have to tread very carefully here. Critics will undoubtedly raise eyebrows questioning the independence of the Treasurer’s office in light of Spaulding’s move a mere one floor upstairs in the Pavilion, his Deputy’s promotion to the top spot (a Deputy who repeatedly referred to the outgoing Treasurer as her “mentor”), and the concurrent announcement that Spaulding’s Deputy would be Michael Clasen, the current Director of Retirement Operations in the Treasurer’s office. One can expect to hear questions as to whether this independent Constitutional office won’t be being run from the Governor’s office a mere flight of stairs away.

But, of course, there’s no command-and-control relationship where everyone’s on the same page. Given that Treasurer Spaulding’s team will essentially remain whole, just spread out between two offices, suggests there will be consensus on matters that cross both office’s agendas. Nobody’s driving anybody else if all look at the issues the same way and come to the same conclusions. Without question, under this schema, the two offices will interact seamlessly and efficiently as never before.

Whether or not that’s a good thing may well depend on whether or not you have a state pension coming under the gun, and how those discussions flesh out.

  Dead-enders have held out hope that various,last minute scenarios lurking in the background could save Vermont Yankee so that it might be granted an operating license to remain open past its stale date of 2012. Any saved-by-the-bell drama may play out in just over four months, by this April when major fuel and equipment investment decisions take place.  

Fearful possibilities are raised by one national pro-nuclear blogger. Curiously ill informed about Vermont he describes governor-elect Shumlin as an “anti-nuclear arch druid” and raises the possibility that as governor opponents will “tag him with the responsibility for heart-stopping increases in the cost of electricity” and he dreams up

A first-term recall election isn’t outside of the realm of political feasibility if things get really bad with brownouts on top of higher electric bills. All this will happen on his watch if he succeeds in closing the plant in 2012. That’s just two years from now into a four-year term.

(Vermont governor’s four year term?)

Setting aside impossible recall and unlikely brownout fantasies, what kind of future are BWR plants similar to Vermont Yankee currently looking at here in the northeast?

Indian Point, Oyster River and Vermont Yankee some of the oldest nuclear power plants still operating are struggling with declining demand for electricity and falling wholesale prices.

Tritium leakage is currently a problem at these 30+ year old plants.  

In New Jersey, Exelon’s Oyster River nuclear power plant recently reached a deal with the new Gov. Christie. The deal that closes the plant earlier than its twenty year license will allow the plant to continue to operate for another ten without installing cooling towers .The agreement shortens it’s life but gives it another ten years to use and discharge warm water into Barnegat Bay. Understandably some foes see the remaining ten years operation without cooling towers as problematic but the fact can’t be missed that the old plant, called a near twin of Vermont Yankee, is not worth investing in. Required upgrades exceed the value of the plant according to Exelon.

Entergy’s New York State Indian Point plants are also in the process of being required to build cooling towers. Vermont Yankee which does have cooling towers (although part of them rather famously collapsed from disrepair) has agreed to re-start pumping and removing tritiated water that leaked from the facility.

Like high-mileage used cars Exelon and Entergy have driven these old power plants for all their worth and now not worth the price of a set of new tires, disrepair and the bottom line may kill them.