The following report is by Indy 100:
Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and we generally revere the day as a time to gorge on home-cooked meals and harvest-inspired inspired sweets, all while basking in the company of loved ones to share how thankful we are of each other.
But last year due to the pandemic, larger gatherings, such as parties, weren’t recommended because of the risk of infection.
While there are still variants of Covid-19 around, things are looking up thanks to the vaccine.
According to data from USAFacts.org, 195.6 million Americans have received at least one dose.
In an effort to help spread the message, some restaurants and other places of business in cities such as New York City require proof of vaccination to help prevent further cases of the virus.
Despite this, some people have reservations about vaccinations. So, what should we do about the loved ones who are seemingly against the vaccination this holiday season?
At Indy100, we spoke with two etiquette experts to get to the bottom of it.
If Vaccination Status Is A Deal-Breaker For Who Comes To The Holiday Dinner, How Do You Explain This To Your Loved Ones?
According to etiquette expert Lisa Mirza Grotts, also known as The Golden Rules Gal, said that “you don’t” have to explain your reasoning.
You don’t. Your opinion on the vaccination has no bearing on family members unless you will not allow them in your home without showing proof of vaccination or a test for anti-vaxxers within 72 hours, as the CDC suggests.
Maryanne Parker, the founder of Manor of Manners, says that we need to be direct and gentle with our approach.
We can show our understanding and position in an elegant way. Before, a hostess was never allowed to ask personal questions (and a vaccination status today is considered a personal question). Today, the etiquette rules are rather different. We will have to let our family members know that we would like to gather in a safe environment, and we prefer people to be vaccinated, or otherwise, we can suggest that we will be checking the temperature at the door.
Parker also noted that we should explain that there may be “very young” or “fragile” family members attending and “would love to keep everyone safe.”
If there is a negative response, perhaps the negativity won’t stop there, but it will continue throughout the entire holiday dinner.
If Anti-Vaccine Family Members Are At The Holiday Dinner, What Is The Best Way To Talk To Them About Sensitive Topics?
For Parker, she believes that we have to “read the room” and know the personalities of those we invite.
Not all of our family members will be vaccinated, and perhaps they won’t even get vaccinated any time soon. For almost 24 months, families have been separated due to the Covid restrictions and now is probably the time for us all to get back together.
She also suggests that a conversation about the vaccine should be conducted before the family function to curb “unpredictable results during the event.”
For a hostess, the most important role is to make sure all of her guests are satisfied, excited, happy and safe during the event.
Parker also noted that it’s also important to “evaluate both sides” of the vaccine discourse for various reasons.
Many people refuse to get vaccinated because they are experiencing health issues, and they were advised by medical professionals that right now might not be the best time for them to get vaccinated. Others have phobias from needles which is an obsessive fear from any kind of shots which might be a result of previous surgeries and traumatic medical experiences.
That is why we shouldn’t judge anyone based on what we just see or hear because people do have different reasons for their choices.
On the other hand, Grotts said that “a host will never be able to control how somebody feels” about “taboo topics of discussion.”
Taboo topics of discussion in social settings have always been politics and religion, and now we can add the vaccine to this list. If it’s your party, then it’s your rules, but one thing’s for sure: a host will never be able to control how somebody feels about the vaccine, pro or con. If they make it clear that they’re not going to get vaccinated, that is their prerogative.
Overall, we must keep ourselves as safe and healthy as possible while enjoying the holiday festivities.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, and ye be disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question for conscience sake.
1 Corinthians 10:27
The context of that verse is discussing the issue of liberty of eating meats in the presence of unbelievers, and what to do if the meat offends someone or was in sacrifice to idols. But, as verse 27 says, if you are inclined to go to a feast with unbelievers, there is no problem there; so, do not listen to these sanctimonious losers who say you cannot celebrate holidays, and wish to prate and dote over words (1 Timothy 6:3-5; 3 John 10).
Be that is it may, this report is just insane propaganda for the “new normal” in this abnormal world. If it were me, and you actually have family that are this insane, or vice-versa, I’d just safe myself the headaches. Plus, I’d rather not have these people shed and spread their vaccines on me.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
The WinePress needs your support! If God has laid it on your heart to want to contribute, please prayerfully consider donating to this ministry. If you cannot gift a monetary donation, then please donate your fervent prayers to keep this ministry going! Thank you and may God bless you.
And just like that, my soul is exceedingly vexed! Gonna go puke now!
Can I join ya, Anthony?
Lol, absolutely.
My liberal relatives, aunt and uncle, who live in Austin, they’ve started becoming more and more unwelcoming and colder as I got older. Why because I’m not a kid anymore so therefore no more happiness or being friendly? Well isn’t that special!
They’re obviously Christ-rejectors and they’ve taken the death shots. I’d feel more welcome in a drug den full of knife-wielding meth heads than at my relatives. I know one thing is for certain: if I showed them Wine Press news or Bryan Denlinger, they’d reject it in a heartbeat.
They got a bunch of HELL-I-wood movies in their home including that disgusting satanic “comedy” the Big Lebowski which has over a hundred F-words in it including putting the F-word between Jesus Christ! Vexing vexing movie. They’ve taken the jabs and they wouldn’t heed to the warnings about these death shots to begin with.
(With sadness) goodbye uncle Dennis, goodbye aunt sherry. I’ll remember the happy times we had when I was a child. All the jokes, the fun places we’d visit, when I played outside with cousin Jessica and played Sega Genesis (I don’t play video games anymore) goodbye.
A dose of The Big Lebowski AND some spike proteins thrown in for good measure is not my idea of a fabulous Thanksgiving get-together. I don’t remember the profanity or the plot, but I do know I saw that movie at one time, and I do not remember it as a heartwarming holiday piece of schlock. I’m not expecting any last-minute invitation, although my sister surprises me sometimes, but my plan is to stay home and get some take-out chicken the day before that hasn’t been dosed with twice the antibiotics all those still frozen turkeys have. I’ll feast with my ornery cats, who will get stuck with the white meat.
No Liz, the Big Lebowski is definitely NOT a heartwarming feel-good movie. That hippie guy the Dude and his Vietnam vet bowling league buddy, a rich man’s daughter is kidnapped in a ransom and the ransom money is replaced with dirty clothes, and it’s a bunch of random happenings as the mystery behind the kidnapping unfolds and it’s F-word galore, it can make a sailor blush INCLUDING one instance where the f-word is put between Jesus Christ, in my opinion that’s a thousand times worse than putting the D-word after God! Not gory but there’s a severed toe and a scene where John Goodman bites a thug’s ear off during a big fight, and their buddy, Donny dies of a heart attack and his ashes are spread from a Folger’s can.
From what I’ve read, there’s Buddhist philosophy in that satanic movie. The Big Lebowski makes me cringe! I will joyfully pass.
I have cats too, Liz! Four of them and they can be ornery and fussy too.
Ditto for me!
Pretty pathetic that people actually read & take this stuff seriously as they do. They’d get so much more out of life, this one & that to come, if they’d just read the King James Bible, & learn to research & learn & to prove all things for themselves : – (.
–
Only one thing is necessary, but there is so much yet to learn. We haven’t been invited out for years except for Christmas when certain family members who wish to show their ‘superior’ brand of tolerant & prosperity Christianity off before all the others have their shindig. It’s an odd mix of anticipation to see loved ones & hope, though it’s generally torture & a set-up, that breaks my heart & leaves me feeling so inadequate to counter the fake to get a word in for the Lord & true gospel. Mess-age people are the organizers.
–
They are so sure of themselves & I fear for most all the souls of those who attend with the exception of a couple who have the grace to see the hypocrisy, set-up & competition, & to be troubled by it. ….Now they can add their vaccination & mask superiority. Joy. I watch for the tell-tale symptoms…but don’t see it in the worst offenders, & have to keep giving it to the Lord for it’s tempting to wish evil. Especially when I see their influence on others less affluent & able to cope, & thinking what they have is in any way, shape or form ‘Christian’. Just morphing Masonic Unitarianism joined at the hip with liberal antichrist Romanism that’ll pragmatically join with anything, standing for nothing, unless it’s money & non-accountability for sin.
–
This article & comments reminded me of this Chick tract. https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=1025 The Missing Day. And I think I might have a few around here I can still get out in the neighborhood. Thanks. Here’s the online link, maybe it will hearten some who are isolated, without fellowship & who’ll be alone. My husband & I at least still have each other. https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=1025
–
And reading that tract reminded me of something else I’ve been wanting to do. Years of ‘Christian curriculum’ and ‘true Christian history of America’….and I only found out what made the Pilgrim’s at Plimoth colony different from the Puritans to the north in the last half of the second decade of salvation.
–
It turns out that the humble cooper, John Alden, didn’t carry a Geneva like most on the Mayflower, including the staunch Calvinist Bradford & the wealthier Puritans to the north. All the ‘Christian curriculum’ tell you flat out that their Bible was the Geneva, & they were all Calvinists. But that’s not the full story, & the biblical baptist position is not so much something you’re born into (though if the heritage is retained & the King James & pure doctrine it’s a real blessing), as it is a position you come to after hearing the Gospel, believing to the new birth of God’s power, thru the strait gate, but then continuing in the word on the upward way, through the challenges, and as the crowd thins & the way narrows along the way! That burns Scholastic & Augustinian nicolaitan hide & pride to no end & is no way to build a cultivated world -respected seminary, school or megachurch….or to take the seven mountains of dominion which all the infiltrating cunning Jesuits & all the builders set up as the new mission & supposed end of ‘Christendom’. It took me a long time to figure that out, and probably longer than it should have.
–
So, John Alden, of the Mayflower & Plimoth Plantation, carried the 1611 Authorized English Version free of Catholic tradition, dogma, & Augustinian footnotes….AND free of the State Church Daughters’ nicolaitan & authoritarian Geneva’s Augustinian & politicized footnotes.
–
The fair Priscilla Mullins was wooed by Bradford himself after his unhappy & depressed wife died. It was said she fell overboard, but many thought she was overwhelmed by the extremities of the journey, the crossing, and the vast wilderness before them. If memory serves me correctly, there was a baby lost, or perhaps some post partum in there, too. This world can be so very hard. Priscilla chose & married the non-aristocratic, & much less austere, John Alden.
–
Their dealings with the native peoples were much more congenial & respectful than that of the Puritans to the north or the aristocratic State settlement of the royalists to the south in Jamestown ….though, to be fair, the Jesuits manipulated & sent the superstitious natives against the ‘heretics’ and more prosperous settlements from Montreal, stirring up trouble for those further north.
–
Just like the St. Augustinian Catholics sent the native peoples against the ‘heretics’, the Huguenot settlement in what’s now northern Florida. Rome is always ‘indulgent’ and accommodating of old beloved superstitions, pagan practices, & elites willing to ‘submit’, & to ‘deal’ when she comes in with her persuasions & force. Only a couple survivors were picked up by trading British ships along the Atlantic coast.
–
That sort of detailed history was in NONE of the ‘conservative’ hard copy, published Christian curriculum we had, & all presented the Catholics as ‘bringing Christianity & the Gospel to the new world’. It didn’t add up, & I was thankful to find more honest & complete sources online when the internet was still new & free, before the clamp down.
–
That helped me find James Beller & some of the other historians who were tracking down this history & documenting what wasn’t adding up about the ecumenical ‘conservative’ accounts before it was all ‘disappeared’. One of the reasons I appreciate David Cloud’s ministry is his online history & resources which don’t hide these things so much. Though you get up to American Christian history & most of the masonic influencing & destruction, or slandering & obscuring, Bible baptist history was in place by the time the ASV hit in, what, 1901? So, until Beller got suspicious of the Protestant/Reformed history & lack of baptist history sufficiently that he went on sabbatical & visited all those old smalltown churches & libraries: most of the baptists were so influenced by the Masons and unwise union with the Fundamentalists over Darwinism that they never knew there was more to the story & the Bible believers’ heritage.
–
We probably don’t know the half of it. Been making some notes for family & discovering once again that much I could easily doublecheck or find with simple searches just 7 to 9 years ago is gone ….or rewritten with Rome the ‘Christian’ hero. Funny how those who partner with or underestimate her, like the Protestant/Reformed who revised baptist history into oblivion, now find their own subsumed by Rome! God makes his consequential judgments to fit the crime, and that’s not to boast, because it’s sobering to see it in that patriarchs, in Israel, in Judah and up through history til today…and to realize just how easy apathy, complacency & apostasy can creep in.
–
They revised the history of the Constitution, too, and made Washington out to be a Mason, and slur Patrick Henry as an ‘anti-Constitutionalist’, totally recasting his ‘I smell a rat in Philadelphia’ letter to Madison. Now the Catholics are taking that twist of the Daughters’ and further revising it.
–
I’d noticed that these Catholics and Joshua’s Army, new generation, dominionist ‘conservatives’ kept harping on how we were ‘founded a Republic’, quoting only Ben Franklyn (like the Protestant-Reformed crowd) & making the elitist, secret society Federalists & men like Alexander Hamilton into heroes.
–
But we were founded a Democratic Republic due to the addition of the Bill of Rights which evened things up with protections for the commoners as well as the elites, and so that the weaknesses of mob rule democracy and elite run republicanism were pitted & balanced against one another: hopefully to keep either extreme from taking over. And with the three branches & powers distributed & balanced federally, and then through States’ rights distributing the power even further & making it harder for the Federalists to centralize & seize all power taking us back to the old occulted power of Romish Babylonian Europe, & even the ‘Protestant’ nations.
–
No one knew if it would work or not, and it had never been tried before. It was a distinctively biblically influenced thing. Radical. Let alone the emancipation of slaves as Wilberforce & the British would soon accomplish, though Washington was meeting regularly with his attorney trying to find ways to free Mount Vernon’s slaves despite the war debt on the estate. The Masons & Catholics claim him, though he was converted under the preaching of the baptist preacher, chaplain & soldier, John Gano, at Valley Forge. He was biblically literate before that, his mother saved during the Great Awakening under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards & Whitefield, but saved at Valley Forge. He walked a fine line trying to avoid the open religious strife & warfare that had been ripping Europe apart for centuries, with all the intrigue. Historical revisionism is a real problem, & reading the Old Testament and how they kept forgetting the word & losing their heritage….it’s not new. They just have new tools for their old craft of tempting & playing sins for power & control, exalting and enriching themselves & cronies. Proverbs speaks to this, too, of winking and talking with their fingers. Go figure….Masonic and gang-signs being flashed in David & Solomon’s day!
–
The level of equality & form of American governance was something never before seen in the world….and such a contrast to the lawless Jesuit-manipulated revenge & power grab that the French Revolution would be, here with power established bloodlessly after the War for Independence & British surrender, & coming into existence lawfully, & in an orderly fashion, despite the elite-commoner, democratic-republican controversies & differences that were at play.
–
It amazed the world when Washington peacefully relinquished power & retired to Mount Vernon, & Adams was sworn in as President….and surely vexed Rome & the hidden power bankers who continued striking back through stirring up the native peoples, pushing whiskey on the tribes & frontiers, as well as bringing on the War of 1812. In areas where French & Catholic fur-trading had gone on they make a big deal about the lack of conflict & bloodshed, but there were scores of halfbreed children caught between cultures & whose white European fathers largely abandoned them, immorality, suffering and whiskey.
–
I was intrigued by what the Methodist Peter Cartwright had to say about the plain Bible baptist doctrine & immersion being incompatible with ‘cultivated’ Christian society in the portion that Brother Denlinger shared. I’d known of the Arminian lean, and problem of humanist methodology creeping in, of the abolitionism….but not the anti-baptist sentiment. Peace with Rome & whatever by compromise just wasn’t the old baptist way, & their communities & missions reflected that….and there was friction when doctrinal differences or compromise came in. It just wasn’t ‘smooth’! lol! ———-What saved it from descent into total chaos was them all having the same Bible calling them back, fencing them in, holding them accountable.
–
NO WONDER Rome & the Masonic Unitarians went after it.
–
Anyways, reading that Chick Thanksgiving tract again reminded me of Squanto & what I’ve being seeing of Catholic revisionism in that regard with the first peoples’ wokeness and accommodating by some Evangelicals & Emergents. Like Hagee ‘saves’ the Jews by another gospel, they baptize native spirituality & draw them in….and Rome is coming in now as the big authoritarian ‘official’ Christian word on things. Jeff Prather is a prime example of this.
–
Anyways, I’d read a lot about Squanto, & thought that he learned English & was returned to North America through the efforts of a British Christian sea captain. I knew that he came home to a dead village because smallpox had swept through, & the native peoples had no immunity. He was the sole survivor of that whole village due to not being there when the sickness swept through. It wasn’t an intentional biowarfare attack as some of those things were, both in the Americas and the Pacific Islands & southeastern Asian French, Spanish, Dutch and British colonies as world trade expanded.
–
But recently, I’ve noticed Squanto being spoken of on a variety of websites & claims of his being ‘Christianized’ by Spanish Catholic traders taking him to Europe, & his being instrumental in the ‘establishment of American liberty’ leading up to the American Republic!! More than one source has so described him, which was news to me.
–
What a jaw-dropper. Classic Catholic revisionism, though. I want to get to the bottom of that one & will see what I can find. Would appreciate any historical sources still in print, or even old & vintage that folks out there might be aware of.
–
I know that Spain tried enslaving & trading the native peoples, but found they died of disease & heartbreak when their freedom was taken from them. And that there was war & piracy between Spain & the English…so maybe Squanto had been taken & enslaved by some Spanish mariners? At some point sold into England where he learned English? But that’s awfully far north for a Spanish ship to stray in those days, & it would have been a dangerous venture.
–
The poor African people had been traded by the Muslims and tribes like the Yoruba who were known for buying & selling men: black men like them (in the Hadiths, Mohammed & the Arabs referred to black men as ‘raisin heads’….how PC is that?). Yoruba witchcraft like that Ifa whatever that people like BLM’s Patrisse Cullors promote & practice has old roots & slavery in its cultural past.
–
In that regard, John Newton’s biography is interesting. He was the author of the Gospel hymn, Amazing Grace. In his younger days he was such a reprobate & such a troublesome, lousy crewmate that he was not only keel-hauled, but his own crewmates sold him into slavery to a white trader with a black chieftain’s daughter as his wife along the southwestern African coast. South of the Yoruba territory, but still demonstrating it was an African & Muslim practice long before the European empires got back into that picture.
–
The white trader who bought him, gave Newton to his wife, & he almost died in slavery before his long-suffering father made enquiries & a captain friend of his picked him back up & returned him to England. (A bit like the story of Patrick of Ireland, come to think of it. He was proud & lukewarm when the Irish captured him & took him into slavery under the pagan Celts. Both came to the faith due to seeds long ago planted by true Christians & family, & in such extremity & duress.)
–
So African and Muslim slavery was a thriving, brisk trade long before the Japhethite Portuguese, Spaniards, then Dutch & British, to a lesser extent the French took slavery back up, and systematized it even more. Serfdom was common, but out-and-out chattel slavery like the pagans & the poor Slavic peoples in the continental & cultural crossroads had suffered had been outlawed for 100 years before it was reinstituted by a special papal bull so that the exploration of the Portuguese would have a better return on their investment & risk, a share of which went to Rome, of course. It was a papal decree that supposedly divided ownership of the world between the Catholic nations, too.
–
I’m endebted to the conservative, scholarly & honest, though not Christian, black scholar & author, Thomas Sowell, for some of this history. And to Brother John Asquith of purecambridgetext. It fascinates me, and stirs my soul, & prods & convicts me, learning of such history which is revised & crassly, pragmatically used by liars & craft to mislead people & to slander the Bible, Christ and the faith. I love Ruckman for some of that, too. Clearing the air of the stench of philosophical, pragmatic & crafty liars ….or cutting through the jungle thicket of confusion with the sword of truth and that double-edged one of the scripture. He had a way about him, didn’t he? I know we shall see him again.
–
In Central & South America, & the southern West coast, the enslaving Catholics ‘compromised’ since the native peoples died like flies in captivity by setting up the Jesuit reducciones in Bolivia, and the mines etc that enslaved the people in their own lands. They imported black people to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, though they weren’t alone as France & Britain began to compete.
–
The native tribes to the north were less receptive or conditioned to enslavement, with the more sophisticated Toltec, Mayan, Aztec & Incan elite & craft dominated peoples more conditioned to such degradation. To some of them…as the tribes under Aztec dominion: the brutal conquistadores looked good. At least the conquistadores weren’t demanding hundreds of captives to have their hearts torn from their living chests, and the native craft & powers were pretty brutal & dark across the board. The lust for gold seems to have been common to the elites on both sides of the Atlantic.
–
It’s so weird & perverse how the Silicon Valley people hold that dark native shamanism & spiritual stuff up as wonderful in their wokeness, spiritual drunkenness & meditative technique. How about THEIR greed for gold? and their love of empire? Their human sacrifice & cannibalism, blood-letting & obsession with blood, serpents, dragons etc?
–
I suppose it’s the same gnostic-mystical mystery spirituality of Rome out from Babel, & probably naval trade by the Tarshish and Phoenecians around the time of Solomon. And the general tendency to sin, hypocrisy, selective sight. Lots of evidence of that trans-oceanic trade & exchange, though it was suppressed because such things might give another nation ‘first dibs’ claim to a territory according to the papal decrees on colonization that was accepted as the ‘natural law’, global law of that day. There are those who believe Merriwether Lewis’ supposed suicide was actually a murder related to suppressing such evidences from the famous expedition he was part of. History is so fascinating when it’s not censored & leveled to antichrist ‘common core’ pablum & puke.
–
I sort of equate the Aztecs to the Assyrians, & the Incans as less brutal but just as pagan & crafty, hierarchical…like maybe the Babylonians. Enough rambling. Just hope that a history with more distinctions blesses others with a greater appreciation of the complexity of what our Christian forefathers faced, & the challenges, & am saddened what’s been robbed of the last few generations in the purposeful dumbing down & demoralization. Even from those who were seeking.
–
This fallen world being what it is & so much to consider in light of the word of God, the Creator & Savior. What wonders & amazing things do you suppose will be ours to experience & learn in the Millennium to come and the eternity of the new heavens & earth? Keeps a soul going to ponder that sometimes.
“you actually have family that are this insane”
This gave me a good laugh Jacob, thanks LOL