Ask Vanilla and Rummie

WHAT’S THE THIS THING This Friday, I’m going to be doing a 24 hour charity stream in aid of Dublin Simon Community, a charity for the homeless near where I live. You can read about them on their website here! I’ll be setting up the stream and sound-checking from 11:40pm GMT on Thursday December 19th (my birthday!) and I’ll start the games from Midnight (7pm EST, 4pm PST).

Why them in particular? In October, Dublin Simon’s van was stolen. The van contained collection buckets, hi-vis jackets, signs and other branded stuff, and neither the van nor the stuff has been recovered. Seriously, who steals from a charity?

What’s going to be in this stream? I’m going to start off by playing through Sonic Adventure 2 (hence the City Escape splash image), then Sonic Generations (if I can get it working). After that, if there’s still time, I’m going to be taking votes for the game I play! Options include Bastion, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Jet Set Radio, League of Legends, N, Portal 1 & 2 (this should be fun near the end), Red Faction Armageddon (if you really want me to suffer - I also have all the other RF games), The Stanley Parable, Super Meat Boy, Surgeon Simulator 2013 (another sleep-deprived amusement generator), and WH40k Space Marine. Obviously I won’t get through all of them, but we’ll see which ones I can tackle in the time we have! Also an option is a short drawstream! Quality not guaranteed during sleep-deprived stages.

I’m also going to be on microphone through the whole thing and in a Skype call with some people for a substantial part of it! I’d list who there’s probably going to be there, but it’s going to be so unpredictable who’s going to be there when that I’ve just included some of them in the picture above and left it at that.

Where can I donate! I have a GoFundMe page for this through which I’ll be accepting donations! The page is currently live if you want to give donations ahead of time. My target is very experimental because I have no point of reference, but please give as much as you can spare! Van theft is really annoying.

The fact that most people are focusing on SANTA every Christmas rather than JESUS has been bothering me for quite some time now. REMEMBER, it’s CHRIST’s birth, the birth of our SAVIOR, which is celebrated on Christmas day, NOT SANTA, nor the gifts that they say are made by His little elves

From Wikipedia:

The word “Christ" and its compounds, including "Christmas", have been abbreviated in English for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern "Xmas" was commonly used. "Christ" was often written as "Xρ" or "Xt"; there are references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as 1021. This X and P arose as the uppercase forms of the Greek letters χ (Ch) and ρ (R) used in ancient abbreviations for Χριστος (Greek for “Christ”),[2] and are still widely seen in many Eastern Orthodox icons depicting Jesus Christ. The labarum, an amalgamation of the two Greek letters rendered as ☧, is a symbol often used to represent Christ in Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian Churches.[19]

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the OED Supplement have cited usages of “X-” or “Xp-” for “Christ-” as early as 1485. The terms “Xtian” and less commonly “Xpian” have also been used for “Christian”. The OED further cites usage of “Xtianity” for “Christianity” from 1634.[2] According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, most of the evidence for these words comes from “educated Englishmen who knew their Greek”.[11]

In ancient Christian art, χ and χρ are abbreviations for Christ’s name.[20] In many manuscripts of the New Testament and icons, Χ is an abbreviation for Χριστος,[21] as is XC (the first and last letters in Greek, using the lunate sigma);[22] compare IC for Jesus in Greek.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas

From Snopes:

(Just click the link, snopes will not let me copy/paste)

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/xmasabbr.asp

From About.com:

It is said that when the Emperor Constantine had his great vision that caused him to convert to Christianity, he saw the Greek letters Chi and Rho intertwined. Chi is written as an ‘X’ and Rho is written as a ‘P’, but they are the first two letters of the Greek word Christ'savior'. 'XP' is sometimes used to stand for Christ. Sometimes X is used alone. This is the case in the Chi (X) abbreviation for Christ in Xmas. Thus, Xmas is not directly a way of secularizing the holiday, but since ‘X’ is not Chi in English, we read the word as X-mas and see no connection with Christ.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/christianholidays/f/Xmas.htm

As far as Santa, y’all are just going to have to accept the fact that non-Christians share your holiday for other reasons. You MUST accept that our ways and icons exist because it states in your own belief system not to judge others. 

So just let us be, we don’t all believe in the invisible sky magician. You are plainly going to have to deal with it.