Gingerbread and indigestion

It has been a quiet week in Peterborough.

Brad and Brielle came over to our place last night and we made the most ridiculous gingerbread house in the history of the world. Complete with a flower garden, lake, flagstone pathway, unfortunately shaped trees and strangely tinted snow, this stained glassed house was truly a work of art. Once our states were sufficiently altered from too much candy, eggnog and coke we settled in to watch A Muppet's Christmas Carol. For those of you who do not know me well, I am a very great fan of Charles Dickens and an even greater fan of Christmas. Therefore, starting Christmas festivities on the third day of December guarantees that this will be a joyous holiday season indeed.

Peter, who I always want to call Sven, in my masters program broke his foot two weeks ago in an attempt to minimize the wear and tear on fire escapes. As a result I was asked to lead his seminar on Wednesday night. In the process I found out that I really do enjoy teaching about history and I also get a great deal of enjoyment out of listening to the students' sweeping generalizations about history. As an example, a student told the class that it was common practice for Europeans to pass out smallpox-infested blankets to indigenous groups in North America as a form of biological warfare.

I can only conceal my facial expressions up to a point here, people.

The interesting part of my job in these discussions is often listening to such statements, trying to draw a grain of truth out and discount the myth, all without making anyone look bad. But at times there is only so much truth that they give you to work with. Brad, another TA, had a student tell the class that all kings in world history are direct descendants from King David in the Bible.

All I can say is that, if that were to happen in my class, my usual barely distinguishable "Ahe-idiot-em" would become a whole lot more audible.

This does raise an interesting point about the world. I've often found that you do not have to travel very far from your safe little bed in the morning before you encounter someone else's poorly founded belief systems, which they are perfectly allowed to accept for themselves, being shoved down your throat.

I don't know about you, but at that hour in the ante-meridian, I am more interested in cheerios and coffee, with a touch of milk and sugar in both, than I am in being invited to an ambiguously themed "festive holiday party".

All of the Scrooges out there can "humbug" all they like, but I am definitely going to follow Nephew Fred's example and toss a "merry Christmas to you too, Uncle Scrooge!" in their direction.

That being said, outside of my classroom, I will smile politely as you tell me about the time that Santa Clause instructed King David to hand out Smallpox blankets to the indigenous people in

the North Pole in order to clear space for his toy building elf empire as it heralded in the capitalist, consumerism driven, market economy. I could rant for a little longer about the market economy but, for the sake of the season, I'll end it here.

God Bless Us, every one.