But El Reg complained first!
See title
Budget Brit pastry purveyor Greggs has been forced to apologise after substituting a sausage roll for Baby Jesus in its limited-edition advent calendar. Each door behind the £24 promo features a traditional festive scene, such as kissing a Festive Bake under the mistletoe, a Christmas tree adorned with mini gingerbread tree …
The Sky Fairy should care more about the blatant usage of a nativity scene not described in the Gospels (regardless of the sausage roll replacing baby Jesus).
The 3 wise men/magi/kings were in the Matthew version of the nativity story. In that they follow a star to what is definitely a house, not a stable. There is no 'manger' (actually the Greek word for manger and crib was the same so that is probably a mis-translation anyway) and Jesus was not described as a baby but a child.
The Luke version of the story has shepherds, angels, an inn, a BABY Jesus and possibly a manger (see above) but no wise men.
Mark and John don't describe the events.
Greggs at least need to move their pastry into one version of the story not some hybrid/reboot.
We need more companies to take the piss out of religion
I'd like to agree, but apart from (to an extent) Buddhists and Christians, most world religions have huge numbers of primitive, sky-fairy devotionalists who would consider that such piss taking deserved a violent response, and often random and exceptionally violent responses at that.
Attacking Christianity in Britain is like kicking a child in a wheelchair.
Rubbish. A child in a wheelchair is a human being and has the same value as you and I. Christianity is a religion, a man-made concept which is open to question and criticism however much a number of people might value their belief in some particular one.
Oh, I'm sorry, you didn't want me to take your claim literally? Then try to think of a better simile, one which doesn't confuse the apparent powerlessness of a power structure with sympathy for the plight of a disabled person.
Rich 11 replying to flatpackhamster's comment that "Attacking Christianity in Britain is like kicking a child in a wheelchair."
"Rubbish. A child in a wheelchair is a human being and has the same value as you and I. Christianity is a religion, a man-made concept which is open to question and criticism however much a number of people might value their belief in some particular one."
I may be wrong, but I think you're actually making the same point flatpackhamster was, rather than countering it. I don't think he was likening the two different things, but making a point about the attitudes of the sort of people who complain about a sausage roll in a nativity scene.
And deciding not to take the piss because of that is giving in to them, which is exactly why they do it. The only way to stop them is by not being intimidated.
Exactly. I follow the South Park philosophy: either everything is OK to make fun of, or nothing is. As soon as you bow to one group who take offense, you will have to back down to more and more (if you are not being hypocritical) until you cannot take the piss out of anyone or anything.
I think it was the network that censored it rather than the south park creators themselves. I'm assuming you're referring to the prophet Mohammed here too as he was the most prolific paedophile by our modern civilised standards. His youngest wife, Aisha was just six when they were married but to be fair he did wait until she was nine before he sealed the deal.
Not that other religions are any better, but are there any worse?
I'd like to agree, but apart from (to an extent) Buddhists and Christians
News from across the continent:
Did you hear the one about the women in Spain who reported the nun who stole her when she was a baby to the police? She got fined €43,000 for "insulting the nun" and when she couldn't pay got five months prison. She appealed to the government to pardon her and they decided not to. link (Spanish)
Never give religion a free pass. Not even Christianity.
""Jack the Ripper (British) was apalling. Never give the British a free pass, never.""
Well, your spelling is appalling, but whatever. The point was that she gets five years in prison for being a victim, and this is because the Church is a corrupt institution. See also, massive paedophilia cover-ups.
Not quite sure how Jack the Ripper was a case of institutional corruption on the part of the British.
Never give religion a free pass. Not even Christianity.
I wouldn't.
I was just making a point that (certainly in Britain) quite a few religions DO have a free pass. Personally I'd stamp on all religions that have a built in inferiority and extremism, and that's most of them.
Bit of a bugger that - so are you going to create a new religion / law / credo that says exactly what? I don't disagree with the principal I just can't see the implementation working. You could try complete separation between church and state like USA but I see an awful lot of Congressmen and Senators still quoting the bible as if it were the literal word of God - who we all know spoke and wrote in a Southern USA drawl and style.
Nah - when society signs up to fascism in the name of God then Lieutenant Heinlein's response to Nehemiah Scudder is the only rational action; albeit fictional.
"You should only own yourself".
Ah, if you mean the muslims then why not just have the balls to say it?
Because it isn't just Muslims.
If I carry a dagger around, or rode a motorbike without a helmet, I'd be prosecuted, but that's A-OK for Sikhs. If I killed an animal by slitting its throat, the RSPCA would have me in court ASAP - unless it was ritual slaughter for both Jewish and Muslim communities.
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The Coca-Cola Company
Still, their stupid red truck visits across UK etc should be boycotted.
A really nasty company that targets poor, 3rd world and tries to make their drink addictive. Even the sugar free version may promote diabetes.
Their marketing is unethical. Ever wondered why so many fast food places, even independent, only have Coca-Cola branded soft drinks, fridge and signage? That bears an investigation by Competition Authority in UK, Ireland and other places.
A major purveyor of diabetes, tooth decay and obesity. Possibly even part of American Cultural Imperialism? The Coca-Cola Company, McDonald's, Disney, Budweiser, Google, Apple, Facebook, KFC, Starbucks, Nike, Levi are not signs of Democracy. We outside USA have enough stupidity of our own without importing it.
"Any particular reason why you omitted Microsoft from your list of American Cultural Imperialists?
(Linux FTW (which of course is essentially international as an ecosystem))"
Jeezzz Louise
even for a Penguinista, dragging Microsoft into it and bigging up Linux in a forum post about Sausage rolls.....
OH PLEASE GET A LIFE.
I was following up to someone else's previous comment which referred to (among others) Apple as an example of American Cultural Imperialism, but, oddly (in my opinion), did not include Microsoft in their list, which I thought was rather unusual, as I know which one I'd regard as the worse, that's all.
I think the best way to think about the offence taken by religious people is this:
How would you feel if this was your mother?
I mean, even if there is no god (I'm an atheist myself), religious people genuinely feel filial love for their figures of veneration. Thus, think about whether you would insult someone's mother that way.
Now before anyone says "it's a delusional feeling", well yeah... I personally agree with you, but it makes no difference: they feel it, and making them offended doesn't free them of the belief -- it just offends them. So what is the purpose?
So let's get back to the sausage roll.
If someone replaced my mother with a sausage roll, how offended would I be? Not very. Unless it was presented explicitly as an insult. So I do think it's a bit of a silly overreaction, but guess what...? A handful of Twitter users is nothing. You're talking about the overreaction by a tiny number of people... so aren't we also guilty of overreacting.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The sausage roll is the food of the Gods! Divinely inspired piggy goodness. The steak bake is nasty cheap meat. Obviously so is the sausage roll, but the advantage of sausages is that's how they're supposed to be.
Their bread pudding and Belgian buns are also superb. However they need to have a serious word with themselves about the doughnuts. The "jam" ones are too doughy, not crispy on the outside, have insufficient jam and are dusted with soft icing sugar instead of crunchy granulated stuff. All wrong! And the less said about selling horrible jam-less ring doughnuts the better...
The only true doughnut is the cinnamon-dusted ring (shaddup). All those iced or jam-filled... things are mere cakes and no doughnut at all!
Guards! Seize him!
Burn the heretic!
The one true doughnut is an irregular globular shape and filled with jam and covered in sugar. All others are impostors. After all, it's called a doughnut, not a doughring. I'm sure it's fine if you want to ice them, or add cream, or other such fripperies. I'm even willing to be liberal, and accept that maybe the custard doughnut is not actually a crime against humanity.
There's nothing wrong if you wish to consume a ring doughnut. Iced or covered in cinamon as you wish. Just so long as you accept that yours is an inferior form, and bow to the obvious superiority of The One True Doughnut.
MJI,
Although I broadly agree with you, you're on pretty dodgy ground assailing the likes of Krispy Kreme for their "sickly diabetes on a plate". At least you are if you're doing it while defending a deep fried sweet bread product that contains jam (about 50% sugar*) and is then covered in more sugar.
*That's for home made jam. Commercial stuff tends to have less fruit, and more sugar - which is going to be especially true for the non-specific "red flavour" jam that tends to lurk inside your average jam doughnut.
" The one true doughnut is an irregular globular shape and filled with jam and covered in sugar. All others are impostors. After all, it's called a doughnut, not a doughring. "
Go grab a metal bolt, and that metal thing that goes on it... what do you call it? A sort of ring thing, with a hole in the middle? Oh yes, a nut.
(I'm well aware that this is false etymology, but then again I'm pretty certain that the original doughnuts were unstuffed fried doughballs not much bigger in size than a modern "doughnut hole".
Maximus Decimus Meridius
I wouldn't bother trying to think what it might mean in Latin since it's not even a proper Latin name. If people address him as Maximus then that's his cognomen, while Decimus is a common praenomen (there were only a dozen of these known to be in use by Imperial times), leaving Meridius as his nomen (the family's name). So he should have given his name as Decimus Meridius Maximus.
/pedant
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We've got evidence for the existence of a bloke called Jesus, and the trouble he and his followers caused.
Obviously divinity is a tad more a stretch to prove. But there are multiple contemporaneous ancient sources mentioning him, which is comparitive riches against a lot of figures in ancient history.
Christians getting upset at Greggs...
...while sticking a dead tree in their house and cover it with tinsel and lights, spend millions on "presents" for friends and relatives who already have more stuff than they need, all while eating and drinking themselves into several stupors. Because that's the true meaning of Christmas.
To those Christians who quietly go about observing their belief, I wish you good tidings. The rest of you hypocrites get the mockery you deserve.
Remember, God hates Christmas trees, according to Jeremiah 10:3-4:
"For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not."
https://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.fr/2006/12/god-hates-christmas-trees.html
substituting Baby Jesus for a sausage roll
Does nobody know how to write English anymore? What you wrote above means that you replaced a sausage roll with Baby Jesus.
What you should have said is either:
substituting Baby Jesus with a sausage roll
(which is poor construction in itself)
or: substituting a sausage roll for Baby Jesus.
Hmmmph!
I once got given a chocolate nativity set for St Nicholas' Day, while working in Belgium. HR got in early and all our desks had speculoos cookies (yum) and choccy shepherds, Marys, Josephs and Jesuses (yum-yum).
As I bit the baby Jesus' head off, I did wonder if this was some weird kind of blasphemy...
I'm perfectly fine with people taking the piss out of religions, with their confused, contradictory and fantastical beliefs.
Apart from His Noodliness The Flying Spaghetti Monster, of course. As it sayeth in one of our Holy Books (to be finished tomorrow, or whenever I get around to it) "Piss-takers shalt be smitten with smiting, preferably around the bonce as they shall not be protected by our Holy Headwear. Then the bits shalt be burned. With fire. It shalt be forbidden to piss upon them, even though they be on fire. Pass me my beer."
@ElReg - We're still waiting for that FSM icon...
Tell the few nutcases to jog on. I'll bet their bottom line isn't effected in the least.
*next church-ey meeting*
"fellow 60, 70 and 80 year olds - Stop going to greggs"
"my grandson? What's he done wrong?"
"'ere, have you heard what he's saying about Ethels Gregg? he's a lovely boy!"
"No not Ethel's grandson, the shop, the cheap steak bake people"
"gregg has a shop? that's wonderful dearie"
"no, they sell sandwiches to undesirables. We don't like them anymore"
"oh you *can't* call them 'undesirables' my dear, they can get married and everything now"
"Never mind Ethel, Never mind"
According to the 'story', didn't the three 'wise' men actually spend a bit of time trying to find the right barn? (in fact even as far as going to Herod and saying "Oh!, you don't happen to know where that son of god is do you?") In which case isn't it totally possible that one of the other barns did in fact have a large sausage roll in a manger. Actually, if you go by Matthew's version, they were just an unnumbered party of unnamed "wise men". In which case they would definitely of had at least one large sausage roll about their persons.
According to the 'story', didn't the three 'wise' men actually spend a bit of time trying to find the right barn? (in fact even as far as going to Herod and saying "Oh!, you don't happen to know where that son of god is do you?")
I think that there kind of proves that the story isn't true....no man, especially not a wise one, would ever stop and ask for directions.
As a Christian I am offended by the complainers. They don't represent me and so don't deserve to label themselves (apart from uptight wankers). I don't take my religion too seriously, God I do, but the church and the people who work for it don't get any special respect.
What would Jesus have done? Probaly that's why there is a bite taken out of the lovely item.
>> I think a significant proportion of those people would be in the bit of the Venn diagram that covers >>"christian" AND "has a sense of humour".
Not a born again or evangelical then.
But most likely a CofE, probably clergy.
If I had to get stuck with any of that group, I'd prefer the clergy, come across the others too many times.
Would you believe that some people think the Old Testament is accurate and not a bunch of myths?
Would you believe that some people think the Old Testament is accurate and not a bunch of myths?
If you've ever studied ancient history, you'd know that the Old Testament is a very important source. It suffers from bias of course, but then so does every document you read. It also has the usual problem with sources that straddle the time period of the use of writing - which is that they combine old stories that have probably been told round the fireside for centuries with written records made at the same time as events. so you'll find just as many myths in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, the writings of the Venerable Bede or ancient Greek history.
There's a line in Heredotus' Histories where he says that in Persia there are ants the size of foxes - and I have spoken to people who have actually seen them. This is the reason that he's called "the father of history", for consciously trying to write a history that left out what were thought to be myths, but also known as "the father of lies", because he often failed to do so.
Lets see.
Religion that celebrates a baby born to an unmarried mother who got impregnated by a one night stand, a bloke she'd never met before, whilst making some other bloke bring up this absent fathers child. They then receive high value hand outs from strangers, that you never hear of again. The same religion that denounces aforementioned behaviour and condemns anyone else doing this to an afterlife of eternal damnation.
Or someone selling sausage rolls, similar to yule logs.
I think I know which one has more morals.
Well, the retail sector is getting a battering at the moment by the Christians. First they boycott Tesco because they showed some muslims celebrating Christmas (but said nothing about the lack of religious imagery), and now they're boycotting Greggs because Jesus has turned in to a sausage roll. I mean, of course, that's only if they're not already boycotting Greggs because they use halal meat which is "cruel" to animals that have spent their lives cooped up in cages.
I bet none of the wankers even bother going to mass on a Sunday, just on the main events like Easter and Christmas. Y'know, the days when the commercialisation of religious holidays is front and centre in everything we see and do so they see it as an excuse to chow down on chocolate and sprouts.
But that's all none of my business.
I don't know, but it's always fun to mention it to certain Daily Fail readers and watch them blow up about how the animals are euthanized without being stunned (which is half true, some halal meat is stunned). But they never consider the welfare of the animal before it meets it's end. Only the fact that to be outraged by halal is to be outraged at Islam without looking like a giant raging racist.
"This meat-like product is My flesh, this greasy dough is My, um, also My flesh. Have a stout, and you can transubstantiate it and drink My blood."
Personally, I don't see how Catholic and (historical) Aztec ritual cannibalism are all that different in spirit.
Please, mates, note that this is a JOKE, before hunting me down and burning me at the steak... er, stake.
Represented by a pork product?
Methinks the wrong religion has taken offence here.
I have no problem with it personally. I'd happily eat a Jesus sausage roll, Prophet Mohammed eclair and wash it all down with a Buddha banana and peanut butter milkshake. Breakfast of the gods.
more understanding if it was a scene featuring Allah, what with a pork sausage roll.
But here we go, some offended fuckwit fires up the keyboard of righteousness and fires off the moral holy hand grenade of Antioch..
I'm absolutely fucking sick to the back teeth of the snowflake contingent taking offence at ANYTHING that offends their own moral sensibilities. Christians are one of the most easy going religious types on the planet. Hell we let Muslims threaten to kill our soldiers and pour scorn on our poppy tradition and we tut and we complain but that's ALL we do. We let them express their discontent.
Religious freedoms they don't have back in shitholeistan.
"I'm absolutely fucking sick to the back teeth of the snowflake contingent taking offence at ANYTHING that offends their own moral sensibilities. "
They've always been around. In the past, they would mutter, grumble and tut amongst their own small circle. With the advent of the internet, Especially Twitter and Facebook, they can reach a much larger audience and feed off each other outrage, fanning the flames of a small garden waste incineration into a huge forest fire while still remaining largely irrelevant in the great scheme of things.
"Please boycott @GreggsOfficial to protest against its sick anti-Christian Advent Calendar. What cowards these people are: we all know that they would never dare insult other religions! "
"... and it's about time people started remembering that many of us Christians are also intolerent humourless delusional morons just like people of other religions"
Well.. this is another fine mess.... Seems that just about every religion has been hit by the Commentardary today. But if the truly pious can't take a joke... just fu*k 'em... with something sharp and rusty. They need to get a grip... around a sausage roll and chill out with a beer.