Hi, I'm producer Jacob, you know, we'd like to have fun here on busted pencils,
but one thing that's never fun is spreading misinformation. The following episode deals with
the very sensitive topic of religion, and it's important to us at busted pencils to make sure
that we get our facts straight. At one point in the show, you'll hear Dr. Tim Slecker say something
to me that I affirmed and repeated without doing the proper research. And for that, I am truly sorry.
During the show, Tim said that the 11th day of Christmas was the Lord's leaping part of the 12
days of Christmas. The sad truth is that's actually the 10th day of Christmas. The correct lyric is
11 Piper's piping, even though 11 Lord's leaping sounds much better and should be how the song goes.
It's the sincere hope of myself and the rest of the busted pencils team that you can still enjoy
the episode despite that mistake.
Oh, well, I certainly am doing that Jacob on 12 days of busted pencils Christmas. What day are
we on Jacob? Tim, this is so exciting. It's the 11th show of Christmas. There's only one more
Christmas show to go. 11 show. All right. 11 Lord's leaping. Yes. Tim, you got
out. We are the Lord's leaping. Well, we're two Lord's leaping today, you know, kind of
coming into this. The third Lord leapt out of the show for the episode. Well, you know, he's
I guess we shouldn't call him a leper, though. That's very true. That's very true. Yeah, the song
would be slightly different if there were 11 lepers leaping. 11 lepers leaping. Oh, wow. So,
I mean, it's another home room is where, you know, coming into the holiday. Well, you know,
let's call it what's coming. It's Christmas. Christmas is almost here. And, you know,
thinking about those conversations you might have had in home room and different things like that,
I thought Jacob a conversation maybe for, you know, the two of us, you know, a little Christmas.
I don't know if it's history as much as it's nostalgia as much as it's, I don't know, fiction,
but the Nativity Jacob. Okay. All right. I'm, you know, I'm feeling Nativity directed
on this home room because I actually, you know, look back on this and I'll say, you know,
yeah, I grew up then as a, um, a, a very practicing Byzantine Catholic.
Um, did, you know, people are like, what's that? It's the Catholic that a lot of Catholics
go that ain't Catholic. Okay. But yeah, because I'm, I'm interested to learn about this, Kim,
because I always kind of thought that the Byzantine side was the orthodox side of,
of Christianity. So you're an interesting fellow. It's the orthodox side, but it's the orthodox
people who said, but we still want to hang out with the Pope. Fair enough. Now, you know,
and now that the Pope's from Chicago, I'm right with you. I guess I'm Byzantine. Yeah. Yeah,
so good. Well, good. Um, but, you know, went all the time and growing up, um, his, you know,
historically, or it's a culturally, you know, we always did a, uh, Christmas pageant type of
the kids of the church, you know, we had to do the reenact then activity scene.
Um, on stage in front of all the adults and they all, oh my god, how cute are they? And, you know,
and then it was always like, well, who's going to play baby Jesus? And it was like, we don't,
nobody plays baby Jesus. There's a, you know, a, a doll that plays baby Jesus. But, you know,
we, we had the shepherds kind of costumes and, and there was Mary and there was Joseph and,
and then the wise men and, you know, politically incorrect. Um, and there was always, you know,
the need to represent the diversity of the wise men. Um, and, and, and that was done,
yeah, politically and correctly with, with all white kids. Um, so point that, but, you know,
you're thinking about that scene and how it was and, you know, and then looking as I got older,
than doing more and more kind of, quote, biblical, historical studying and gone,
yeah, you know, maybe that scene itself might have been historically not so accurate because,
well, you know, the timing and, uh, the time to literally travel to Egypt and all of those
different things. And if the wise men did really come from all of these distinct other locations,
the fact that there would have been a single gathering was probably a kind of composite
construction of potentially what, what might have happened. I was, you know, thinking about that.
And then in my little town, there was always a nativity scene that went up in, you know, the,
quote, town square that you got, you know, lit up and stuff. And,
but I just, I was reading the news today, the nativity scene has become political, Jacob.
I don't know if you've seen these stories. I have not. This is, this is brand new news to meet him.
I thought the one Christmas was mainly about Starbucks cups, not saying Christmas on them or
something. So this is some much more complicated issue. Yeah. Well, and in fact, you point out,
I mean, Sean Hannity had a lot to say about it coming up because some churches, churches,
not townships have nativity scenes. One in which, you know, there is the traditional nativity scene.
Jesus in the crib laying, you know, Joseph and Mary looking over, Wiseman, you know,
holy crap, bringing their, they're, you know, frankincense, gold and, and murder. And, you know,
never knew what frankincense was, but, um, and he was on Saturday night live, I believe.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that was. And also though in this nativity scene were, um, ice agents.
Oh, okay. You know, were they aware of Jesus? They, they were arresting, you know, kind of,
uh, they were checking the IDs of all the people at the nativity scene. Okay. You know, and, and so
that, that's, that's one. So this is a, this, if I'm getting this correct, Tim, and you can
correct me, uh, because you're my boss. But, and I understand this correctly that this is sort of
like, uh, an anti-ice protest to say, you know, oh, they would card baby Jesus.
Well, gee, I mean, Jacob, I mean, it's something for you to look at and ask questions about,
well, what, what, what, why would ice agents want to be at a gathering of the, the birth of the
savior? Mm-hmm. So a lot of people from different places that, you know, I mean, you gotta check
their IDs. And you need to make sure they paid tariffs on that frankincense they brought across
the border. That's foreign frankincense. And I think that's a 400% tariff. Yeah. And you're, you're
not going to just be given away frankincense. Okay. You might gift part of it, but you're going to
give us a little bit of cash so you can then gift it. Yeah. So that, that's one display that,
and that is, you know, making people a little bit upset in North Carolina or making a lot of
people go, yeah, makes sense to me. Another one that has baby Jesus wrapped up in a, like a foil blanket
and being prepared to be taken to a detainment center, you know, because yeah, he's probably an
illegal immigrant. Mm-hmm. So yeah, the protest and just thinking, so the, and yes, Sean Hannity now,
so this has revived the new one. Christmas, he's out screaming at these churches, churches, Jacob,
for putting out politically charged nativity scenes. And I was kind of going, hmm, is that the right
place to make a political statement or is that sacrilegious as some people are claiming to be
messing with the whole, you know, sanctity of the nativity scene? What are your thoughts, my friend?
Do we have to have a whole nother reformation and series of 30-year wars over this? I feel that
a long time ago, it became pretty clear that within the big umbrella of Christianity,
there are many different ways to express your belief in that religion. You can be many different
types of Christian within Christianity. To me, I would say this question should only be answered
by members of these parishes and of these congregations. If you go to a more liberal church that
interprets the Bible and the message of Jesus Christ as being something that is in conflict with
ICE or in conflict with the president of the United States as agenda, then that should be perfectly
fine at your church. And if you don't agree with it, you should either bring it up to your minister
or your priest or whomever express your views on that. And I think any good religious leader would
be willing to hear you out and talk and have conversations about theology in that way. And if
you're not comfortable and you're not listened to, perhaps you should find a different church.
I don't think that that's the business of civil society, what goes on at these churches and how
they choose to show their faith. This seems like a very clear instance of religious freedom,
where it should be confined to the church. It's their expression of their faith,
and that seems fine to me. I don't see the case for getting worked up about it. Well,
you're free to have your views on it. You can say you don't like it, but if we're going to make
it into a big attack on Jesus, I think you're really barking up the wrong tree over on Fox News
that seems wrong to me. And I don't know, is it not legitimate to say that a Christian person
could have a problem with the way that the poorest and the meekest among us is being treated by
Caesar. I don't think that's completely out, out of the realm of Christian possibility.
There's many different ways to see it. That sounds fine to me. If I was going there,
I don't know if I want to have this big, ostentatious display of what we're thinking about things,
but I do support other ways of showing your, your social concerns as a religious person.
I think it's a matter of taste. What do you think, Tim?
Well, I just want to also point out that one, another display actually is the traditional
nativity scene missing our baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and where they typically would be at
the center of the nativity scene. There is a poster that says ice was here. Yeah.
You know, so it's a, it's a thought provoking art piece.
Well, I mean, yeah, you put that down there. And so I, yeah, I, I don't know. I mean, there was
also this another kind of person that was just like, okay, here's how you thread both needles.
If we're talking about that because yeah, and he tried to do a, this was a pastor and, you know,
from a church saying, well, you know, we, we might not like the laws of, you know, um,
people, or as you pointed out, Caesar or whatever it is, the state. Yeah. Okay.
And following those laws isn't necessarily wrong because those are the laws. Now, and so
paying attention and following them isn't necessarily not living according to, as you point out,
here in Christmas, uh, Jesus Christ in this message of freedom, forgiveness, welcome to stranger,
forgive all sins, you know, um, because you can still speak about the fact that you disagree
with Caesars or the states or the country's laws. And that's perfectly keeping with then the, uh,
the new world view that the kingdom of God was something here to be experienced and the only
way to experience that is through these acts of, of forgiveness, welcoming the stranger, um,
all of the things that these scenes are trying to say, hey, look, if we're going to celebrate Christmas,
let's try to remember that what the birth of Jesus meant was is that we were supposed to live
differently. And so according to this pastor, well, we can follow laws and live differently
at the same time. And so our living differently is pointing out that these things are wrong,
but because we're living under Caesar's laws, we still have to follow them.
I'm kind of like, hey, I get it. I know, but that, that's a feels to me.
I don't, you know, I don't know. I just don't, I, it feels like that's kind of those going like,
well, look, you can have it totally both ways, you know, and, um, but I, yeah, I don't know about
the, the, the, the scenes, how you set them up. But it's just something that has come up. And so,
you know, is this, um, the, the reality here? I mean, somebody also said, you know, hey, people
are actually offended by some other nativity scenes that portray all of the people there,
not as white Europeans. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to me. Well, it's not interesting. And it's
not surprising because it's to be expected. But this is coming from the same people who say,
you know, we should have absolute religious liberty. I should be able to express my religious
views in any way that I want. But only me though. So if you're a Christian who sees things differently,
then I mean, no, that's not cool. You should have to take down your nativity scene, which is by the
way, not a billically mandated religious thing. It's a tradition of doing an nativity scene. But
this is just a way some people choose to, to remember and honor this event. It's not, they're not
blaspheming by doing this. I mean, certain Christian branches would say any depiction of Jesus
is blasphemous. Uh, you know, iconoclysm. Uh, it is a theological debate. And I think people are
open to express themselves, however they would like. Thankfully, we live in a country where people
do have the ability to express their views and their beliefs in the ways that they would like.
And I think we can all get along very well if we just all give each other a little bit of space
on these things. Well, you know, and I said, it is, it is maybe a little bit longer home
room than normal. But it is an education show. And I want to come back to the way you just said,
though, Jacob, yeah, where we started. Um, you know, sorry, but your four canonical
gospels, um, the nativity scene is really only kind of described in one of those gospels.
Um, and in fact, what historians now, I know historians are corrupt humans that don't
understand the true literal word of the King James Bible. Um, because you know that those,
they all spoke King James English back then. Yes. That is true. I actually saw a scientist
bearing dinosaur bones to trick me the other day. But, um, you know, Mark, which is
considered the earliest and closest to the time from a historical perspective, there is no
nativity, um, in there. And so just say educationally, if we were looking to even that
holy document as evidence for going, well, what should we be doing? You'd have a lot of
confusion if you try to use the four canonical gospels to drive what it is that an nativity
scene would look like, because I right now have Mark's nativity scene in my front yard.
There is none. And, and I'm starting to come down to going, that's probably the safest
nativity scene to go with the Mark nativity scene, one that's not there.
It's historically potentially the most accurate too. Although, I think, I think of though,
if I put up a kind of like, I was imagining my, my front yard with a, with a sign that just says
Mark's nativity scene here. And then there'd be nothing there. And wonder how many people would
drive by and go, you know, he must not have put out the scene yet. Or Sean Hannity would say
you're blaspheming by depicting exactly from the Bible. Yes. I, you know, so anyway, as we're
coming into Christmas, however you see that, I mean, there is something going back to my memories
of being a little kid and, and being part of the church Christmas pageant. It's a fun memory.
And, and so I'll hold that as a fond memory and say that, you know, and, and then learning that
potentially some of what we as children had the direction of adults did was also potentially
questionable. I don't think that's bad either. You know, it's one of those things. So it's busted
pencils being educated. I got no problem with that. So Jacob, Mary Christmas to you on this
home room. And I can't wait though. I think on Amazon next year, I'm going to sell nativity scenes
from the gospel of Mark. And with that, now is time for your moment of sin.
Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires
direct actions by concerned citizens. Hey there, pencil busters. Thanks for listening to this Monday
home room edition of busted pencils. Don't forget to check out class and session on Wednesday,
producer's choice on Friday. And of course, you can always find us every Saturday across the civic
media network for one hour of your favorite blue collar scholars, Tim Johnny and Jacob, and keep
Bustin pencils.