Last week marked some interesting holidays, including the anniversaries of the publication of The Origin of Species and Dr. Who. Plus Hanukkah is coming up in a couple weeks.

Many of us celebrated Thanksgiving. I find this holiday a bit problematic, but don’t let my Thanksgiving-grinchery rain on other peoples’ holiday fun. So here are this week’s posts about it, ranging from classic videos (including a temple-film actor) to tips on surviving your family to photos of an old-style community feast. As well as what people are thankful for.

Now beings probably the most entertaining holiday in the entire American liturgical calendar: “War on Christmas” season!!

In other slices of life, I wish I could photograph daily life as well as this, and perhaps postmormon girl does too. Facebook friends are up to their usual antics. Here are five life lessons learned from traveling and others learned just from living. And check out these polygamist before-and-after photos and family-photo playing cards!

I would especially like to highlight one heart-rending story of the consequences of teaching kids to be ashamed to be gay:

And that in an environment like that, itâ€™s not hard to see how a little boy with his first erection would allow his personality to bifurcate: Jay and R.J. That he would develop a psyche in which, as far as anyone would know, he was straight, because he wasâ€”on the outside at least. Itâ€™s not hard to imagine that he would look for some way, any way, to get himself out of the â€œtrapâ€ of homosexuality. To â€œchooseâ€ to be straight, even if it meant inventing a persona who really didnâ€™t exist, repressing the real self deep into shadow of the soul, and naming the persona the â€œrealâ€ self. It wouldnâ€™t occur to such a little boy that he was lying to himselfâ€”only that he was â€œchoosingâ€ the right. And it certainly wouldnâ€™t occur to the 23 year old boy I married that he was lying to me.

Unfortunately, Mormons Building Bridges continues to promote this sort of thing.

On a related note, the CoJCoL-dS has been caught giving some highly questionable advice. Kind of the opposite of good ethics. It’s quite a game to discover what the church policies are and whether anyone is steering this ship…

In Theology, Oxymormon Girl provides some interesting discussion of the history around the The New Testament, Diane Tingen sings about questioning, and Runtu contemplates purification rituals.

Happy Holidays one and all!