1st of September

[matrixmann]

Someone already took a close look in the stores?
Satan has already moved in again.
Well, actually, Satan directly still keeps missing - the dude with the red dress and the red hood.
But his friends, called "Christmas stollen", "lebkuchen" and "speculoos", have already moved into the shelves to occupy them for the next few months.
Maybe chocolate, the usual candy and the devil himself are going take up their positions soon too?

Comments

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Man, all these Christians are not even questioning it. Like are they seriously so stupid or just pretending that all this junk sold for Christmas has anything to do with their religion?

[matrixmann]

I don't know what the Christians think about it.
Things like these are rather tied to the national industry that generates its income with those products.
It's even worse when Easter looms. Barely as the Father Christmas made of chocolate have vanished from the shelves, Easter bunnies already check out the situation if they can show up. The earlier the Easter holidays fall into the year, the earlier this happens then. It's almost like "change of shift".

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, non stop production. They got those damn bunnies to Russia too although there was never such a tradition but who cares? Great business, generates profit. You can assume that Christians like it otherwise it would not be profitable and they would not produce it.

[matrixmann]

I'd rather see it that, as long as possible profit looms on the horizon, Christians forget about anything of their rules.
Saying, I don't know if those factory owners or their local managers even have anything to do with the Christian belief, but, as most of those means of production have been gathered in the hands of enterprises well-established under West German rule after the war, there is indeed good probability that they even are Christians. You know, only in East Germany you could say it with certainty that they don't care about the Christian belief because it's so common on that ground.
But most of the valuables once owned and maintained in the East got sold off to the West, you can't really say they got much to say in that business still...

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

So, did I understand right, that Eastern Germans are not much into religion? Because Russians, as you know, got into it with all the might.

I just wonder if it's ever gets old and boring. We always had a tradition to decorate an evergreen tree for New Year but I got so tired and bored of it I don't even care, I wonder how people make themselves do something like that over and over.

[matrixmann]

Somebody once told me, the Lutheran church had already held the third program to evangelize in the East after the turnaround.
The third! Why having a third when one already would have been successful, right?
People move away from the organized forms of faith in general, because of the lots of shit and pedophile and violence scandals that come out about instutions that were maintained by the church, but also because it doesn't match their own life situations anymore. See the doctrines that circle around homosexuality... You can believe in a God, but Christian church can tell you for being like this "no, you're not wanted here".
I think the Lutherans aren't that dogmatic about that topic as the Catholic part of the church, but even for the Lutherans, I think, this is a matter of who you got as a pastor.

For the younger generation, I think, it becomes a little complicated, as these, first, believe in every shit they're told by others, second, identity is something that everyone searches for in anything these days (church may take this position too), and, third, through this whole Pegida crap, which tries to hammer on that button of "Christian Western culture", which they never come to define what it shall mean concretely, this may also become a topic for a few again, even though before they had nothing to do with church and kicked their own culture with their feet before enjoying their purely Americanized life with frozen pizza, pasta and processed foods.

Apart from that, it sometimes depends on the areas where people come from in the East, which professions they maybe once had (Finding a Christ among former sailors isn't that hard, is it?), and which experiences they made themselves with the church.
People who still have seen the post-war years or have "suffered" or "received" a few things about church through their parents, those usually also aren't big friends of them because church let you feel here if you were just a tolerated piece of nothing that only came to church to not end in a concentration camp.
People who are still alive who witnessed that time as adults or as kids or who are kids of people like this, be sure the topic of "church" had been finished for them forever. And parents who made that experience, don't think they ever let their kids be brainwashed again by that hypocritical church who was ready to send them to death in Reich times.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's interesting to know.

[matrixmann]

You can say, maybe it's real luxury that I'm used to, but I really don't need to have a lot to deal with church or belief in everyday life.

If that still is the same with the younger generation... Saying, the younger generation somewhat takes some conservative traits and customs back again. Meaning, making it theirs to act by and to wish things. I could guess church could also be among that. As those lack a bit of criticism to things they're told, for my taste. And, enough in my age and few years above, they also long for that "idyllic world" shit too often, with house, family, kids and all that, you know? And they also seem to be damned to that circle until their 40s quite too often to make reality fit into a frame which they generated alone in their stupid brain without asking for anybody else's consent or opinion.
Instead of - taking notice of reality and the possibilities in reality that you just have or get.
As I'd put it: "You can't always choose what life gifts you with.", that's what they ignore and try to make it fit into something that's impossible from their position.
You know... Running at the first sight of troubles, throwing things away if they don't fit immediately to their utopic wishes.
To me it's clear there is no such thing as a replica of that fantasy in your head, there's only the demand to and the requirement from you to work on things as best as you can.
Basic concepts need to fit, but you can't expect from somebody to be exactly as you wish him to be. Then go to some laboratory and try to clone yourself, if it's that what you want...
I feel like a lot of people try that, to find their clone in other people, and it's a thing of people who are a little older and grown up with a different kind of socialization still who know the other side of the coin - to not run away at the first thing that displeases. (Strangely enough, there's also quite a lot of other stuff I don't get warm with from their socialization.)
And, in searching for that clone, these people, up into their 30s, fall back to some traits of conservatism because it promises them some kind of safety and some kind of "you get your cradle back". The usual "kid wants to get back into symbiosis with Mum".