HOOSIERS TRIBUNE　on 12/15
フージャーズの皆様へ

*****今週の出欠確認*******************

今週例会の出欠確認です。
12/13 PM 9：00までに返信してください。
-------------------------------------------------
氏名：（　　　　　　　）は参加します。
氏名：（　　　　　　　）は不参加です。

氏名（フルネーム）と上記の参加・不参加の一文のみコピーandペーストして
送って下さい。またこのメールの件名は変えずに返信してください。
*********************************************


こんばんは、デモらです。

早いもので、今年も残り3週間となりました。今回が今年最後の例会となります。

先日からお知らせしている通り、今週例会の終了後21時からイヤーエンドパーティを
開催します。

会場は普通の居酒屋ですが、今回は各自4品ずつお好きな料理を選ぶことが
できます。ドリンクは飲み放題なので、いつも我慢している方も好きなだけ
飲んでください。

ゲームやプレゼント交換も予定していますので、忘年会とクリスマスパーティの
雰囲気を同時に味わっていただけるかと思います。


以下、出席者の方へのお知らせです。

1　開催日時　12月15日（土）21時〜23時（例会の後、会場に移動）

2　会場　近くの居酒屋　

2　参加費　4000円（ゲーム賞品代等含む）

3　持ち物　1000円程度のプレゼント

　　男女どちらがもらっても喜ばれるものがよいです。
　　極端に重いもの、大きいもの、腐りやすいもの等は避けましょう。

4　注意事項
　　
今年最後の締めくくりです。みんなで盛り上がりましょう☆


さて、今回のトピックはクリスマスについてです。クリスマスの楽しい想い出・悲しい？
想い出等々、熱く語りましょう。


※※皆さんにお願い※※

最近、同姓のメンバーが増えています。出欠欄の記入は必ずフルネームで
お願いします。特に渡辺さん、鈴木さん、山下さん、高橋さんはフルネームで！


直接参加したい方は、集合場所がお分かりにならない場合は、私の
携帯090−8829−6516までお電話もらえますか？

できれば、以下のトピックを印刷してお持ちください。

☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆

Christmas in Japan

It's the end of the first week of December, which means
the odd annual festival of Christmas in Japan is once
again in full swing. In fact, it's inescapable: bells ringing,
carols tinkling, lights twinkling, shoppers jostling, cakes
a-baking everywhere you look.

Ubiquity is not what makes it odd, though. The same
commerce-driven Christmas tsunami is swamping many
other countries, too, as happens every year. The
difference is that here, where it is largely bereft of religious
significance, the Christmas season is like a holly-wreathed
Potemkin village: all facade and nothing behind it, except
for a peek preview of Valentine's Day. The oddity,
especially to those used to a more religious observance, is
that it remains so heartwarming. As Charles Dickens taught
us long ago, it's hard to stay sour in the face of good cheer
-- even, apparently, tasteless, manipulative or borrowed
good cheer.

Logically speaking, it may seem rather silly for a populace to
embrace, or at least tolerate, a festival rooted in a religion
to which less than 1 percent of it subscribes. That is why
foreign visitors' conventional response to Christmas in
Japan mostly appears to veer between bemusement and
disapproval. Many think it is weird for the season to peak on
Christmas Eve, leaving Christmas Day itself -- supposedly
the festival of the birth of Christ -- looking like a brightly
wrapped but starkly empty gift box.

But here's another way to think of it: Christmas in Japan
works because it actually reverts to festivals that predate
Christianity. It's possible, in other words, to observe
Christmas as a secular occasion, as non-Christians in many
Christian countries do. The central religious event that
defines the season and gave us the word Christmas is of
course unique to Christianity. Yet many of the trappings of
the celebration evolved from pre-existing Aztec or Druid or
Norse or Roman traditions marking the midwinter solstice, or
shortest day of the year, in the Northern Hemisphere.
Some of them were religious, some not.

Numerous symbols associated nowadays with Christmas --
decorated trees, holly, ivy, Yule logs, Santa Claus, gift-giving,
feasting, candles and much more -- didn't originate with the
Christian festival but with those far older or analogous
observances that focused on light, warmth and plenty in the
midst of darkness, cold and seasonal barrenness. Christianity
arrived, saw these midwinter feasts as literal expressions of
its own figurative idea of Christ as a light dispelling the
darkness, and promptly appropriated them.

The pre-existing idea, however, belongs to everybody.
Consider the poem written by Christina Rossetti around 1872
in response to a magazine's request for a Christmas
contribution. Its famous first stanza, setting the scene for
Christ's nativity, actually sets the scene for any midwinter
celebration, whether religious or secular, Christian or not.
Although Rossetti wrote these beautiful lines in England, there
is not a word here that doesn't also precisely describe
midwinter in, say, Japan's snow country:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

In such weather, it is only natural to want to light a fire, burn
candles, string colored lights, heat up some mulled wine, throw
a party, eat cake and give a few gifts. We may think of these
as Christmassy activities, but they don't have to be. On the
other hand, it does no harm to have a label for the season.
For anyone offended by the excesses of the global marketing
wizards in their largely successful campaign to "Christmasize"
almost the entire month of December, the solutions are
obvious: Stay out of the department stores and wear
headphones. Otherwise, we say go with the flow.

Long ago, the new Christian festival marking Christ's birth
was superimposed upon a hodgepodge of older ones, borrowing
many of their symbols and customs. That's the messy human
way. Nowadays, non-Christians need have no hesitation about
borrowing some of them back for their own version of
Christmas. As some angels are reputed to have said, it's all
about good will:

Now Christmas is come,
Let us beat up the drum
And call all our neighbors together;
And when they appear,
Let us make them such cheer
As will keep out the wind and the weather!


Q1. What is Christmas for you?

あなたにとってクリスマスとは何ですか？

Q2. What is Christmas for the Japanese?

日本人にとってクリスマスとは何ですか？

Q3. Why has Christmas become so popular in Japan although
it's rooted in a religion to which less than 1 percent of the nations
subscribe?

国民の1％以下しか支持していない宗教に起源するのに
どうしてクリスマスは日本にこれほど広がったのでしょう。

Q4. Talk about your sweet or good memories related to Christmas.

クリスマスに関する甘い・良い思い出を話してください。

Q5. What is the biggest news about you and society this year?

あなたそして社会の、今年一番大きなニュースは何ですか？

Q6. Who is the most influential person for you this year? Talk about
him or her.

今年、あなたに最も影響を与えた人物は誰ですか？その人について
語ってください。