Back in my day....

I was in a literary society in college- this literary society was the oldest organization at this university (certainly it's the oldest that is still in existence), which is one of the oldest in the country. So this group is OLD. We are talking almost 150 years old here. Members tended to join in their junior or senior year, maybe sophomore year, and rarely, your freshman year (you had to FIND out about the literary society first, and we sometimes frowned upon immature freshman who were applying, since it was no biggie to reapply later).

Due to the old nature of the society and the continually changing membership and changing nature of some of the practices that goes along with that (we did have an official archivist, but you do lose some institutional memory with that kind of turnover), alumni tended to often say the phrase "Back in my day...." even if they had only graduated the year before. It was a running joke.

The sermon in church today was a "back in my day" sermon that did not have a clear message at all. I am back in the Other church now, the one near my university. The priest at this church has been in the US for at least 30 years (I am guessing), which is at least twice as long as the priest at my "home" church. So his English is pretty good, and usually his sermons aren't in bullet point format.

Today, though, he could have taken a leaf from the other Der Hayr's book and used a bullet point. I kept thinking, "What does this have to do with God? Really!"

He started out talking a bit about the Feast of St. Sarkis, which I actually will talk about in another post, and then transitioned to the Super Bowl. Church didn't seem any less full today than normal, even though it was Super Bowl Sunday and there was no Hokehankist (a large reason why many people go to church- to hear Hokehankist for their loved ones). Church isn't normally that full anyway, though.

The whole sermon was one long "Back in my day." Even the talk about St. Sarkis day was introduced by discussing the special candy that they would make back in Beirut (his hometown) for St. Sarkis day.

The talk about the Super Bowl was the strangest, though. He pointed out what a commercial enterprise that the Super Bowl is, and how back at the original Olympics, people just competed for a wreath of laurel that would eventually die, plus the glory of winning. Maybe it's the market economist in me, but I just couldn't really see what was wrong with the Super Bowl being a commercial enterprise. Sure, complain about Christmas or Easter becoming commercialized, but what else is the Super Bowl for? (Also, never mind that the Olympics are ostensibly for amateur athletes, while the Super Bowl is for professionals). I don't think that the Super Bowl was raining down on the church's parade, so I don't know what the problem was exactly.