7 July 2025
I had a fun time this weekend with friends coming over to my house to celebrate Christmas. No, this email hasn't been delayed six months, or arrived from the future - it's July, not December. Like me, most of the friends that came over on the weekend are from the Northern hemisphere, and there's something that just feels right about having a second Christmas celebration every year when the weather's cold and miserable, just like it was in the “good old days”. We eat brussels sprouts and roast potatoes, drink mulled wine, and open presents - all while the TV plays YouTube videos with cheesy Christmas songs as the audio track and logs burning on an open fire as the video track. For one of our few Southern hemisphere guests, Aaron, not only is this mid-year “Midwinter Christmas” an alien idea, but he also never celebrated the usual December 25th Christmas when he was growing up. This is because he was brought up as a Jehovah's Witness, and they famously avoid celebrating events like Christmas, Easter and birthdays. I met Aaron through the NZ Humanists a while after he'd “faded” from the organisation, and it's been great to be there to see him find his feet and move on with his life since then.
3 March 2025
The Christmas before last, I received a work email informing me of the holiday dates during which our office would be closed, and that for these dates I would need to book annual leave. I guess in an attempt to soften the blow of people needing to use over half of their annual leave on days outside of their choosing, management decided to let us know of the benefits of taking leave:
25 December 2023
Although we've reduced our newsletter output to biweekly, that doesn't stop us from releasing an issue on Christmas day! Wherever you are, and whatever, if anything, you're celebrating, I hope you have an awesome day.
9 January 2023
I hope you all had a good Christmas, and that if you had a break that it was an enjoyable one. I was lucky enough to be greeted by the following passive aggressive email on Christmas Eve by a Catholic man who emails me occasionally to challenge my lack of belief in the Christian god:
19 December 2022
This week I've got a few topics to cover - there's been quite a lot happening recently! And, I've also got a guest article from Al Blenney about the origins of the anti-abortion movement.
27 December 2021
Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.
29 November 2021
Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.
1 November 2021
I was scrolling through my Instagram feed when a post by a favourite local café stopped me mid-swipe. The words “Christmas” and “shoebox” in the same sentence caused a brief moment of dread to call upon me because, while I loved their date scones, I was not going to support a business that championed Operation Christmas Child (OCC).
28 December 2020
In the very first verse of The Grinch, we learn that the Grinch hated Christmas, and then Dr. Seuss writes “Now please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason”. My young self always wondered about that. Why couldn't I ask? Was I supposed to not ask questions so I wouldn't feel guilty about parcelling him up in my mind as the bad guy? That advice always seemed very sinister to me. I'm instinctively deeply skeptical when someone tells me not to question something.
7 December 2020
It's been a very busy few weeks for me of Birthdays, training, events, and Christmas tree decoration. My irrational rage at people who erect festive trinket dust collectors before December 1st has abated, only to be replaced by incredulity over people who are 'decorating' their routers with faraday cages to protect themselves from 5G.
1 February 2019
From psychics to naturopaths, NZ Skeptics has been retweeting news from NZ and overseas that highlights the real harm that pseudoscience can do.
28 January 2018
Scientology has been trying to get the public to buy into its anti-psychiatry ideas in NZ recently. The religion's branch called the Citizens' Commission for Human Rights has been visiting shopping malls around Auckland and setting up displays that seek to teach people that psychiatry is evil.
1 February 2014
Matthew Willey finds it difficult to get into the spirit of the holiday season.
1 February 2009
Annette Taylor learns it's not enough to have your cake, you have to test it too.