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Celebrating Holidays
Church of Reality Holidays
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Most of the holidays of the Church of Reality fall on the same days as other religions. Most religions rip off the holidays of other religions, and our religion is no exception. These are days when everyone already has off from work and that people are used to celebrating anyway. It is the tradition of religions to maintain consistency in these celebrations, and we in the Church of Reality are going to go along with these traditions. Like other religions, we will of course adapt the meaning of these holidays to suit our belief system.
Holiday celebrations, of course, are up to the individual, and you are free to celebrate anything you want. In our church, holidays are for fun and education and exist mostly for social reasons: to let people get together, visit family, eat big meals together, and form community. They create an opportunity for people to came together to discuss the Sacred Questions and to Wonder the Sacred Wonderment. We are thankful for the knowledge that was handed down to us, and we think about what we can contribute to the Tree of Knowledge for the next generation. |
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We aren't strict on the actual dates when holidays are celebrated. Different people are in different situations and sometimes the holiday occurs at the wrong time. Sometimes, the day the holiday falls on isn't the best day to celebrate it. Sometimes you just have to wait for good weather or a day off. So, feel free to move the dates around to suit your schedule. Celebrating a holiday on the following weekend is often the best choice. |
On December 25th we celebrate Newton's Birthday because Newton actually was born on December 25th. We call the holiday Crispness because it's about keeping your mind crisp. And it's not a coincidence that it's the same day as Christmas and the Yule holiday from where Christmas came. It is the day that we celebrate the Tree of Knowledge, which represents the sum total of all human understanding. We use the traditional pine tree, which is already a very fractal looking tree to represent the Tree of Knowledge. The tree is decorated with lights and ornaments symbolizing The Sacred Network or the Internet. Lights on the tree represent servers on the Internet where information is stored and made available to all of humanity. The wires represent the fiber optic cables used to move information between the servers and around the tree. In the Church of Reality, we tend to choose lighted wires and strings of light that make the wires look alive, as if they were carrying information. The more complex the lighting is, the more glorious the tree.
We also put presents under the tree, which symbolizes that everything we know today is a gift from the past, that all our knowledge comes from other people and that the Tree ties us all together. The Tree gives to us, and we give back to the Tree. We celebrate, in community, that we are one planet, that we are all here together, and that we are all one with the Tree. Exchanging gifts symbolizes the exchange of ideas that makes humanity what it is. We share our ideas with others and others share their ideas with us. And it is the sharing that allows all of us to rise together.
In celebrating shared knowledge, everyone is encouraged to come up with a new idea that no one has ever thought of before and post it on the internet. The idea can be simple or complex. It can be grand and glorious or just some little time-saving trick. The idea can also be about future innovations or requests for people to invent something. People can also improve something that already exists by creating documentation for something confusing. The tradition is to be an act of intellectual tithing when everyone gives something to the tree, and, as a reward, they get to open the gifts under the tree.
In celebration of Newton's birthday, we also encourage the discussion of gravity and momentum, how Newton understood these concepts and how they changed with Einstein's Theory of Relativity. We talk about the Evolution of Understanding where we think about what gravity meant to ancient humans, what it meant to Newton and Einstein, and we imagine what people in the future will think about gravity and physics. Crispness is a celebration of the understanding of the physical world. We honor science,and we wonder about how we got here and where we are going. |
November 7th is the Day of Self Realization. It is the birthday of the Church of Reality. The Church of Reality appeared in a vision to the First One in the evening of November 7th 1998 while he was smoking a joint and thinking about religion. It came to him that the only true religion would be a religion based on reality, and that there was nothing more real than reality itself. It was as if at that moment that reality became self aware. Reality realized it's own existence, and a religion was formed whereby realists dedicate themselves to the pursuit of reality and dedicate themselves to the Tree.
Where Newton's birthday focuses on science and ideas, The Day of Self Realization focuses on the process of coming up with ideas. We think about the mind and how it works. What is an idea? What is reality itself? Why is there something rather than nothing? How do we know that what we think is real is really real? How do we know that we aren't being tricked or that we are just plain wrong?
The Day of Self Realization is a day where we honor the Principle of Humility, Self Scrutiny, and Wisdom. We wonder about wondering. We ponder pondering. We think about thinking. We try to understand the understanding of understanding. We ask ourselves what out role in reality is and how we fit in society. We ask ourselves if we are doing enough to bring the Sacred Gift to others.
The Day of Self Realization is the Day of the Mind. It's about the tools we have to work with, with which to use to explore reality. Ego treats are prohibited on this day. We think about how much knowledge is out there and how little of it we know. It is a day to look inside ourselves, to examine our disciplines. We wonder about our world and how we see reality and how it is different than how people we know see reality. We wonder if people who see things differently than we do are right and perhaps it is us who are misguided. We put ourselves in the shoes of others and try to understand reality from their perspective and question ourselves to determine if they might be right.
We reflect back on the things we used to believe in and why we believe something differently today. If we were wrong, how did we make the mistake? How much of what we believe in now will turn out to be wrong in the future? We experience reality individually through our minds. This is that day that we work on our mental tools. Long walks alone or other methods of expanding the mind are appropriate. It is a day of quiet reflection. |
The Church of Reality celebrates both solstices and both equinoxes. These are days that we think about and teach our children about astronomy. This is the longest day of the year, or the shortest day of the year, or we are half way in between the longest and the shortest days. We think about people in the opposite hemisphere and on the equator and on the poles. We wonder what it would be like to have six months of daylight and six months of night.
Children are taught about the seasons and about the universe. Our planet - our solar system, our galaxy. We teach them about different time zones and day light savings time. How many hours difference between San Francisco and Melbourne? What is the International Date Line? And if they are a day ahead of us, then why can't they tell us about the future?
We also think about the passing of time. The cycles of life. We move from one season into the next, another summer, another fall, another winter, another spring. This is our time. It is a celebration of The Sacred Moment, and being Real in the Scared Moment. We are thankful for being alive, for being aware. We think about the generations that have come before us and the generations that will follow.
These four days are community days. People come together to do things as a community. It is a day for parties, to play music, to dance, to plan events, big events with lots of people. These are good days for weddings too, to begin a new life at the begriming of a new season. It is a day we all have fun together. We make sure everyone is included and bring out people who are socially isolated. We celebrate the Sacred Principle of Inclusiveness on these four days.
We also think about ecology on these four days. Our relationship with nature. Our planet - our biological heritage. We think about the natural world and how we fit into it. We celebrate evolution and how our evolution affects other species' evolution with whom we share the planet. The theme of these four days is that we are one planet, we are all here together, and we are going to make it work. It is a celebration of life, peace, and joy. |
This is a holiday designed for Jewish converts. Just as we have ripped off Christmas and Yule, we are also ripping off Chanukah. But this holiday is not limited to former Jews. Everyone can celebrate Two Cubed.
Two Cubed is celebrated on the same days that Chanukah is celebrated and it's a celebration of mathematics. Two Cubed is 2 to the third power - or 2*2*2 which is 8, the number of days in Chanukah. Two Cubed is celebrated for 8 days but the days are numbered 0 through 7 representing how computers count to 8. It is an educational holiday where children get to experience computers and mathematical principles and binary arithmetic.
For what it's worth - if Jews want to pick up on the ideas here, they can enhance and modernize their holiday by making it an educational opportunity. I have described this to several Jewish friends and they all like the idea. So - this is my gift to the Jews.
There is also a fake miracle behind this holiday. Many religions have fake miracles as the basis for holidays, so we shall have one too. The following paragraph is a parody for the amusement of the reader.
The story goes that First One was on an airplane flying from San Francisco to Washington DC and his laptop computer's battery only had been charged up enough to last one hour. But the First One started writing the Sacred Principles of the Church of Reality in flight and the battery miraculously lasted for 8 hours allowing the Sacred Principles to be saved before the battery died. (Some people dispute this account claiming that it was really a 5 hour flight crossing 3 time zones, and that the First One forgot that he put a second battery in the floppy drive bay.) Two Cubed celebrates this mythological miracle.
Like the Jews, we also have a Menorah. But our Menorah is different than the Jewish Menorah in that it has 3 candles instead of 8. That's because we count to 8 using binary numbers which takes only 3 candles.
000 - 0
001 - 1
010 - 2
011 - 3
100 - 4
101 - 5
110 - 6
111 - 7
Children are taught how to count from 0 to 7 using the candles. Jews are encouraged to use the 3 candled Menorah because it uses less candles and it is an educational opportunity. How many candles does it save? You figure it out.
Children below the age of 13 recite the first 8 powers of 2. Children 13 and older have to recite the first 16 powers of 2. If a child wants to be a smart ass, they can recite the first 32 powers of 2 - but if they get any of them wrong then they have to stand in the corner and count from 0 to 1023 on their fingers. On the first day we tell the Sacred Joke and everyone should understand why it is funny.
Kids are encouraged to solve brain teasers and are given presents of puzzles to solve. Kids are given ego treats for correct answers and other accomplishments. Contests are encouraged. Perhaps even 8 day contests for the more advanced kids. It's a celebration of logic, a time to debate, kids are encouraged to ask how stuff works and trips to planetariums are in order. It's a good time to take things apart and try to put them back together and to celebrate being smart. We teach that being smart is a good thing and we believe that if people try, they can become a little smarter than they are today. |
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Newsflash |
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The IRS has approved the 501(C)3 tax exempt status of the Church of Reality. |
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Please link to us, discuss us in online forums, and blog about us. Every time anyone thinks about reality the world becomes a little smarter.
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The Church of Reality is a non-prophet organization.
"RealityŽ" and "Church of RealityŽ" are registered trademarks of the Church of Reality.
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