I wore my Christmas tie to church today.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an innocuous little black number with miniature Santas all over it, but it was more than enough to embarrass my ten-year-old daughter, who prematurely entered a teenage state of mind a decade or so early.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not even December yet!\u201d she huffed. \u201cWhy do you have to be such a geek?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019Tis the season to be jolly!\u201d I geeked back. \u201cDon we now our gay apparel!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gay, all right,\u201d she said. (I walked right into that one.)<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to have my rugged masculinity called back into question, but it\u2019s slightly sad that the word \u201cgay\u201d has now lost its original, nonsexual meaning entirely. Nobody has the guts to change the words to \u201cDeck the Halls,\u201d but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has purged all usage of the word from its hymns and children\u2019s songs. Hymn 276, \u201cWhen the Rosy Light of Morning,\u201d used to contain this line:<\/p>\n
The New, Orwellian hymnbooks now read:<\/p>\n
It could be worse, though. And it was. Growing up, we were all taught to sing a ditty called \u201cWhen Grandpa Comes\u201d that went something like this:<\/p>\n
Now my kids sing \u201cWhen Grandpa Comes\u201d every Father\u2019s Day in Sacrament Meeting with this minor but significant revision:<\/p>\n
Hooray, indeed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just intimations of latent homosexuality and pedophilia that have prompted the Church correlation department to revamp the hymnal over the years. For decades, the stoic anthem \u201cHow Firm A Foundation\u201d included this couplet:<\/p>\n
Nothing wrong with that, right? Except that the song required you to sing the first phrase of the second line three times in a row, and the meter made it sound like everyone in the congregation was saying \u201cYooHoo unto Jesus.\u201d Now I think Jesus probably appreciated being YooHoo\u2019d \u2013 why wouldn\u2019t he? – but the unintentional giggles proved too much for the folks at Church Headquarters, who altered the words thusly:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s new, but can you really say it\u2019s improved? I swear that every time this hymn is sung, there are some stubborn YooHooers unto Jesus who refuse to go quietly into that good night.<\/p>\n
The hymns that are really fun are the fire-and-brimstone tunes that have been softened for politically correct reasons. The cheery paean to drudgery called \u201cHave I Done Any Good In The World Today?\u201d once told us that:<\/p>\n
Probably to prevent an onslaught of drone euthanasia, the words were transformed into something less Draconian:<\/p>\n
Not quite as threatening, but it lets you know that God is still watching, so all us drones aren\u2019t really off the hook.<\/p>\n
If I had my way, some of the weird old hymns from yesteryear would be pulled out of mothballs to freak out the youth of today. If you want an example, look no further than \u201cThough In The Outward Church Below:\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n <\/span> I suppose it\u2019s inevitable that a lot of this quirkiness falls by the wayside as the Church continues to roll forth. We offend less people as the hymns get blander, but we lose something indefinable in the process. I plan to stay faithful regardless, but you know that \u201cIf You Could Hie To Kolob\u201d isn\u2019t going to make it to the next edition, don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iwore my Christmas tie to church today. It\u2019s an innocuous little black number with miniature Santas all over it, but it was more than enough to embarrass my ten-year-old daughter, who prematurely entered a teenage state of mind a decade or so early. \u201cIt\u2019s not even December yet!\u201d she huffed. \u201cWhy do you have to ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Bet you didn\u2019t know the word of life and faith could become an instrument of death, didja? I, for one, can\u2019t wait for the weeding!<\/p>\n