B-log

A popular anti-Christmas argument is taken from the biblical admonition found at Jeremiah 10:1-2: 

Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says the Lord: “Do not learn the way of the Gentiles;

Interestingly, it’s been argued that the immediately following verses (3-4) can be interpreted as a condemnation of the ritual of putting up a Christmas tree:

For the customs of the peoples are futile; for one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the ax. They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails and hammers so that it will not topple. (Jeremiah 10:3-4)

Provocative?

Well, remember that this was spoken through the prophet hundreds of years before Jesus’s time, so it’s probably not specifically about the Christmas tree. But it could speak to a practice of putting up wooden totems in homes. A totem was an idol representing a god that the family worshipped.

Like most people, we put up a tree. And we decorate it. Not so much with silver and gold, because Kelli’s jewelry would look out-of-place hanging from its branches. We cover our tree with ornaments that are personally meaningful to our family.

We top our tree with an angel. We had a crocheted angel that we lost in the fire (read below). We replaced it with a Victorian angel, and just this year, removed its wings (because human-appearing angels are wingless, biblically). Now, it looks like a Victorian woman atop our tree. So I’m open to shopping for a star to replace her in the future Christmases.

We switched from natural tree to artificial four years ago for a few reasons:

• We were tired of finding pine needles clear into March and April. 
• It was more economic, figuring in the one-time cost versus the annual expense.
• It was pre-lit, and thus time-saving.
• It is less of a fire hazard. And as a family that experienced a Christmas fire, that is particular important to us. Back in 2000 when that happened, the fire crew intervened in the nick of time before our tree ignited. Had that happened, they had said, the entire house would have been destroyed because of the giant fireball the tree would have become.

The-tree-is-evil arguers point to the Christmas tree’s roots (punny!) in pagan beliefs that represented eternal life, virility, renewal, and so on.

The tree has no meaning to me. Looking at it now across the room from me, it’s just a big green thing we put up, decorate, light up at night, place gifts under, and then take down. It’s pretty, as far as those things go. When I think about it, I don’t think about Adonis and his resurrection by the snake Aesculapius. Jesus and eternal life…unless I’m writing a blog entry about it, and then I do.  Mostly, I think its a little silly, because I’m reminded of Jim Gaffigan’s jokes about it:

Make no mistake, we are sober-minded in putting up our tree. But we don’t overly think it. We simply receive this tradition and celebrate the big green, lighted, adorned tree in our living room for a few weeks. 

Found this is my archives. I don’t think I wrote it…I don’t remember doing research on this. Unfortunately, I don’t have attribution to who did.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? Roman war chariots first made the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels and wagons. Since the chariots were made for, or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder which horse’s rear came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war-horses.