December 20, 02:03 PM
I’ve practiced a lot of religions over the years and of all of them, my favorite is still the Fraternal Order of Eternal Christmas. It was a fairly small group that I helped put together in ’83 just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. The basic tenet was that, for us, Christmas was every single day. We’d wake up every morning and open presents, then we’d all sit around and have a delicious group lunch. At night, we’d have Christmas Eve dinner with goose and stuffing and then we’d go to bed, waiting for the whole thing to happen all over again. I came up with this groovy creation story about Santa being a real man that arose from an elven tribe living among the polar ice caps. People really seemed to dig it. We got about thirty or forty followers before we got shut down by the State of Nebraska. Apparently, people were doing a lot of stealing to keep the religion going financially.