Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
Facebook.
Funny that the oceans on that globe are coloured red. Perhaps they’re the beginning of the ten plagues of Egypt all over again when the water is supposed to turn to blood. Happy Solstice!
I can tell that Greta is not keeping the Thor in Thursday.
Happy solstice! 🙂
Marking out the Winter Solstice is a very old practice, if astronomically-aligned monuments are any guide. Newgrange, Ireland and Maeshowe, Scotland from about 5000 years ago, and the Goseck Circle, Germany is from nearly 7000 years ago.
Why do we celebrate this time with lights? Because northerners are short of light at this time. Why do we celebrate with conifer trees and other evergreens? Because they don’t seem to die at this time of year. Consider the traditional song “O Tannenbaum” (German), “O Christmas Tree” (English), though it could be translated “O Conifer”. A celebration of how that tree does not seem to die.