Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Season of Holidays


So it's Tuesday. Almost the end of October. Pretty soon we will have another Halloween behind us and will have successfully paid no serious heed to a previously important and grand celebration of some of our forebears. (Another odd word - forebear. Like a child's story with a twist)

So we enter the season of many holidays. Most coming up have some sort of historical connecting rod to some religious madness from years ago. Recently ( I say recently in the sense that this has happened since I have been alive), Uh recently we have added Kwanzaa to this all star line up coming at us. Let's break it down.

Halloween - first celebrated by white folks barely past grunting stage. As I understand it, we can blame the Irish. Or the Brits. And even the Scots, my forebears, got their pasty white sheets and blackened faces into it. For some reason the end of summer was a bigger deal then than it is now. I guess headin to Florida was not an option for them. Bermuda shorts and winged sunglasses had yet to be invented.

Thanksgiving - I know the official line on this one. I studied it in school. But I think it is all propaganda from The Man. Thanksgiving is nothing but a chance for members of the same family to get together and bicker with themselves in private instead of doing it in public. That and watching football. I always thought it was odd to only have one day we were supposed to be thankful. Like the rest of the year it was okay to take it all for granted?

Chanukah - Not being Jewish, this one always confused me. I never understood why they did not celebrate Christmas. Of course it all became obvious once I realized everyone was not a Christian. It was my first and only Jewish girlfriend who straightened me out on this one. I was maybe 13 and she was a more sophisticated 14. Instead of celebrating a birth of someone important, I guess this one is based on winning some war or battle back around the beginning of time. Once I caught onto the fact they had eight days of this, I thought I was getting cheated what with our paltry one day.

Kwanzaa - Not sure what to say about this one. Being a blatantly pasty white guy, I must be cautious here. Apparently it has grown legs since it was invented in 1966. More power to the folks who celebrate it. More money in the till for the businesses that cater to it. Win/win all around.

And the grande dame of them all, Christmas. What is there to say about Christmas that has not already been said? My mother and many other wise old folks always said, "If you cannot say something nice, don't say anything at all." Riiiiight. Sure Mom. I hear ya.

I am sure I have snubbed someones Fall getaway. For this I do apologize. These are the holidays that seem to have captured the lion's share of attention and scrutiny at this time of the year. The attention paid to them has transcended their original intents and become vehicles for the business world to finish the year with as much of our money in their pockets as possible. Yeah I know, I am one of those business folks. That does not mean I have to play stupid.

I learned to hate this time of year. My family did not handle it well. My father's intake of alcohol would increase exponentially as we got closer to the end of the year. The volume of the heated arguments between my mom and my dad would pick up. I remember staying in my room more or staying away from the house as long as possible. My reading picked up this time of year. Libraries wherever we lived would see my face more often. And rather than allow this built in depression get it's grips on me one more time, I figured I would spill my guts now and get it over with. We'll see how it works.

Keep it 'Tween the Ditches..........................

(690 / 15,925)

8 comments:

Laura said...

Personally, I love Thanksgiving and Halloween! They are my two all time favourite holidays.

I love to decorate for Christams.. love all the baking etc. The gifts.. just a pain in the ass.
I hate being told when to buy stuff for people. People that don't even NEED the stuff I'm buying.

We sponsor a child through World Vision and a couple of years ago I tried to get going within our family.. buying things for needy people through their operation. (you know.. a goat for a family for a hundred bucks or something). I said.."let's face it. We don't need anything. Let's buy things for people that do!".
The family wouldn't have it! (and I'm not talking about kids here... Adults!)

So I guess this year.. as every year.. I'm off to buy crap for people that don't really like me or my stuff.
Bah Humbug!

((Hugs))
Laura

Commander Zaius said...

I considered everything except Thanksgiving all part of some corporate scheme to make money. As a kid I remember each "holiday" had a point in time where some sort of decorations for that particular time would go up.

Now Halloween stuff comes out in August with huge stores being dedicated to selling candy, customs, and all sort of Chinese-made crap like plastic tombstones, serial killer-inspired knives, and countless evil masks.

Just as soon as November 1st hits the Christmas stuff gets pulled out with the media seemingly reminds everyone on an hourly basis how many shopping days we have left.

Ba humbug, and I can't wait to expatriate to a shack on some island far away from civilization and listen on the radio as Western civilization drowns in plastic pumpkins and fake Christmas trees.

El Cerdo Ignatius said...

Well, I still like Christmas. It got out of hand a number of years ago, with gifts for the kiddies arriving via the mails on a daily basis from Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New York, Florida and California - pretty much everywhere we had family. Thankfully everyone has eased off. My children get gifts from a few relatives only. My wife and I get nothing for each other, or our parents. Our parents get nothing for us. And we enjoy the build-up to Christmas and the day itself a lot more.

Randal Graves said...

I don't know about you, but I love the end of summer and if that means candy and horror movies, then pagan gods bless those Irish and Scots.

Christmas is good for getting a day off. Oh, and there's usually some football game on, too, which helps one avoid family.

Ubermilf said...

The Irish get blamed for everything.

BBC said...

I like the turkey dinners through this part of the year, most of the rest of it I don't care about anymore.

And I go camping over christmas, I think it's bullshit in any form.

On Halloween I close the gate and Helen and I both turn the lights off. Made some good hauls on candy when I was a kid though, ha ha ha.

PipeTobacco said...

MrMaCrum:

I'm with you on this one, for certain. Also, there isn't any damn light anymore, and we're at the start of a helluva lot of cold that seems to go on longer than I want to withstand.

So, what's the answer? I sure wish I knew.

PipeTobacco

Kulkuri said...

I have to agree that all the holidays have been overblown in recent years (by recent, last several decades).

All these holidays (other than Thanksgiving) were ones the pagans (Irish or otherwise)started and were taken other by others who came later.

This year I think I saw Xmas stuff in stores before I saw the Halloween stuff.