Tag: holidays

The Days of HallowThanksMas

We are now in the holiday season, a time of year when multiple holidays have become so prevalent they begin to merge together into one big two month long holiday.  Some people respond to this by insisting everyone say “Merry Christmas” to them and taking great offense when this doesn’t happen.  These people call this time of year “The War on Christmas”.  If it were a little more like an actual war, with guns and bombs and tanks and such, it might be kinda cool, but as it is, the name does not live up to the hype.

I take a slightly different approach. Over the past few years I and others have been referring to this time of year as “HallowThanksMas”, as a way of indicating the merging of three of the larger holidays of the season. But, even this is insufficient, as there are far more than just three holidays. Let’s take a holiday moment and look at them all…

July 5th

Not a holiday, per se, but it is rapidly becoming the new beginning of the HallowThanksMas season. This is the day Walmart first puts out their Christmas decorations.

Halloween

October 31st, the official beginning of HallowThanksMas. This is the night our children get dressed up in costumes and go door to door begging for candy. It celebrates the twin values of childhood obesity and panhandling.

All Saints Day

The day after Halloween. No one celebrates this day. Except maybe Catholics.  Maybe. Once upon a time.

Dia de los Muertos

Also the day after Halloween. This is still mostly celebrated by those of Latin American descent, but the anglos are starting to take notice. I predict Dia de los Muertos will quickly become the new Cinco de Mayo, what with anglos becoming increasingly disillusioned with Cindo de Mayo once they learn it is not, in fact, Mexican Indpendence Day, but instead celebrates a small but significant defeat of the French. After all, if we celebrated every time the French lost, we’d be celebrating all year long.

Blackout Wednesday / Drinksgiving

The day before Thanksgiving. This day has replaced New Year’s Eve as the night non-alcoholics get blackout drunk and do stupid things. Fun fact: This holiday was once sponsored by Four Loco.

Thanksgiving

The last Thursday of November. After the previous night of over-drinking, we celebrate a day devoted to over-eating. The traditions include preparing gigantic poultry-based meals while hungover, watching Detroit lose a football game, arguing about cranberry sauce, throwing shade at relatives, both present and absent, slipping into a life threatening food coma, and preparing one’s Black Friday battle strategy for the following day. Some traditionalists even include a giving of thanks, but this has become increasingly optional and downright passe.

Black Friday

The Friday after Thanksgiving is the first of four annual shopping holidays. If there was ever a holiday that resembled a “war on” anything it is Black Friday. This is the day, immediately following the day we gave thanks for the wonderful bounty that is our life of plenty, when we go out and beat perfect strangers to death for a flat screen TV. This is both the largest shopping day of the year, and the day with the most small appliance related rectal injuries of the year.

Local Saturday

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the second of the shopping holidays. Local Saturday is an attempt to encourage shoppers to shop local. It does not work, as most people who actually would shop local are instead spending their day visiting friends and relatives in the hospital due to their Black Friday related rectal injuries. This holiday will soon pass the way of All Saints Day, nothing more than an interesting relic of a kinder time.

Cyber Monday

The Monday after Thanksgiving, the third of the shopping holidays, this one devoted to online shopping. This holiday was born of necessity, back in the dark ages when people only had Internet access at work. While this is no longer true, the holiday continues as a fun productivity-killing tradition. Why go shopping from the comfort of your home when you can do it on the clock instead. By the way, tradition says you are not allowed to participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so choose wisely.

Christmas Eve

December 24th, the night before Christmas, and the final of the annual shopping holidays. While the previous three were devoted to online shopping, local shopping, and full combat shopping, Christmas Eve is the day for panic shopping. Christmas Eve is the reason, and the only reason, that drug stores sell perfume and clock radios. It is also a time for gathering, drinking a little too much, and letting the kids open just one present, so they will finally shut the hell up about it and stop harshing your eggnog and wine induced buzz.

Christmas

December 25th, the big one. This is the day everyone has been telling you that you must mention by name when wishing others well on any of the previous holidays.  It is the only holiday allowed to use the word “Merry”, all others must make do with less jovial “Happy”.  It is the day we celebrate keeping our consumer driven economy afloat for just one more year by giving toys to kids, and worthless do-dads to everyone else. There is also a religious element to the day, as about five or six deities all claim this as their birthday, so… Happy Birthday Santa!

Boxing Day

December 26th. That weird day Canadians celebrate that no one else understands.

Hanukkah / Chanuka

Sometime in December, nobody really knows for sure. Also, nobody really knows how it is spelled, which is kinda nice, because any guess at it is pretty much valid. From what I understand, Hanukkah is the Jewish version of Christmas, only without a baby Jew in a barn. Also the presents are spread out over eight days because of this eight candle candelabra thing. The presents are a little different as well, consisting mostly of chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil. I will admit, for some reason the chocolate does taste better when shaped like a coin.

Ramadan

Sometime in November or December or January, again nobody really knows for sure, but at least we can agree on the spelling. Ramadan is like the Muslim version of Christmas, only without anything even remotely like Christmas, and instead you can’t eat or drink during the daylight hours.  They were smart putting this holiday in the winter months.

New Years Eve

December 31st, the last day of the year. This used to be the night everyone got drunk, but that is no longer fashionable, especially since the advent of Blackout Wednesday. So instead we face the end of another year, facing an uncertain future and our own impending mortality with all of the fear and regret as before, but now without the alcohol. I recommend skipping this one.

New Years Day

January 1st, the first day of the year. This used to be the day we watched the college football championship, but for reasons no one understands that no longer happens until a few days later. Activities include: eating black-eyed peas, for some reason, and pledging to join a gym, because dammit this is the year. Personally I recommend drinking the booze you skipped the previous night, and listening to the Black-Eyed Peas.

Epiphany

January 6th. Another one just for the Catholics. I think it’s like a Catholic Boxing Day. In some areas it is celebrated by having young boys dive into really cold water to retrieve something. For the rest of us, it means it is the last acceptable day to drag that Christmas Tree out to the curb.

Kwanzaa

I don’t know, I wanna say January sometime, or maybe March?  No one takes Kwanzaa seriously because it’s so new, but I say that’s not fair. All holidays were new at some time right?  Plus we’ve adopted other new holidays, like Blackout Wednesday. Yeah, honestly I don’t know anything about Kwanzaa, but I am all for adding a new holiday, even if people will insist on saying “Merry Christmas” to it.

Solstice

You may have noticed over the past six months that the sun is dying.

Every day it climbs a little less high into the sky than it climbed the day before. It hangs low in the sky, visiting us with its warmth a little less each day. Every morning it wakes later, and every evening it retires earlier. If it were to continue its malaise, it would eventually be unable to climb even above the horizon, leaving us in a perpetual night. Alone. To die.

Fear not, today the sun is reborn. It is renewed. Beginning today it will climb higher in the sky every day, it will visit us with it’s life sustaining warmth for longer and longer each day. In a short time snows will melt, rains will come, plants will spring forth again, and a new generation of baby animals will be born into a new land.

The circle of life on our tiny little rock will continue on, for at least another year. The sun and the earth care not whether we live or die, yet today, because of their movements, our tiny little lives are saved, to continue on, for at least another year.

It is a time to celebrate, and reflect, and take joy in the knowledge that we live, we are alive and well and living on planet Earth, for at least another year.

Feel free to celebrate this miracle with the religious ritual of your choice.

It’s ONE day… (Thanksgiving)

It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow. Stay home. Be with the ones you love. Let the retailers do the same…

(A few words from a retailer and dear friend of mine…)

It’s ONE day. I’m a retailer. I’m a capitalist. I NEED people to shop. But I’ve already given up my Sundays with my family for working for a public that is also working so much that often they only have Sundays to shop together, but I’m also willing to say in a public forum that I’m not happy about the Sunday work, not one little bit. But Thanksgiving has been set aside for thankfulness, contemplation, and reflection. It is SUPPOSED to be a pause-and-think moment. In even small-town American, I now work New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, etc. You’ll literally have to shoot me before I work on Christmas Day and Easter, but this nation has lost the meaning of this holiday. Shame on everyone shopping. No, I am not condemning the stores opening. In many cases, if they closed and lost those sales to competitors in this economy, it could mean business death. SHAME ON THE SHOPPERS. Knock it off! STOP! It is ONE DAY! I’ll be working every day, literally EVERY day, from Friday morning until Christmas Day. You’ll have ample opportunity to shop, and our economy and us business owners depend upon it. But just this ONE day, stop and be thankful, and let many of us have just one day off work, something for which some of us are more thankful than some shoppers must realize.

— Jeff Haddan

Happy Holidays 2014

It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, and already people have started that beloved annual Christmas tradition — belittling people and especially businesses who say “Happy Holidays”.

So I thought maybe I should get my “Happy Holidays” rant out of the way early this year, so here goes…

It’s not about fear of offending someone, it’s about being inclusive. It’s about a business valuing all of their customers, not just the Christian ones. It’s saying to everyone, “I don’t know what holiday you celebrate, but whatever it is I wish you happiness as you celebrate it.”

Only in America would people get upset about trying to wish happiness to everyone. Shame on you Christians, trying to keep all the holiday happiness for yourselves. Learn to share. Maybe be welcoming and friendly to others who aren’t like you. I think maybe Jesus would like that.

(Just guessing on that last part, based on what I’ve read about him — I’m not like hearing voices in my head or anything.)

Anywho…. Happy Holidays Everyone!

Happy Easter

A little over 2,000 years ago the Romans executed a religious leader for political crimes. His followers believed he rose from the dead three days later. This event became the defining moment of the new religion, and over the years many others would come to believe. Within a few hundred years it would become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Within a thousand years it would become the most widely practiced religion on the planet, and it continues to be to this day.

Today we commemorate this single momentous event by having our small children search for brightly colored eggs hidden in the grass by a magical bunny. Everyone accepts this as normal, despite the fact that no one can establish a plausible connection between the executed religious leader and either brightly colored eggs or magical bunnies.

Still, the resulting holiday gives us an opportunity to dress up, gather with family, reconnect with our beliefs, and eat lots of candy and chocolate in the shape of eggs and magical bunnies (but strangely none in the shape of an executed religious leader), so on the whole it makes for a nice day.

Happy Easter Everybody!

“Happy Holidays”

First, let me preface by saying, I don’t get offended when people say “Happy Holidays”, and I don’t get offended when people say “Merry Christmas”. I do get annoyed by people who insist that only one greeting is correct, and who take offense if they do not receive their correct greeting. Otherwise I think this whole greeting thing is blown way out of proportion and people should just lighten up and be glad people are actually talking nicely to each other for a change.

I said all that just so I could say this. I saw a “Happy Holidays” sign today…. wait for it…. at a Christmas Tree lot.

I would think that out of all the places in the world where you might be inclined to say “Merry Christmas” in a retail environment, the one place where you would actually WANT to would be where the ONLY thing you sell is Christmas Trees. But that’s just me….

Happy Holidays Everyone… That’s Right, I Said HAPPY HOLIDAYS

(I’ll keep this one short and light, I promise.  And there’s a joke at the end.)

I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy but… When someone says to me “Happy Holidays”, I don’t assume they are trying to insult my faith.  I don’t think they are pushing some kind of liberal atheist agenda.  I don’t believe they are trying to tear down the fabric of western society.  I just think it’s a friendly greeting, and they are just trying to be nice.

By the same token…

I may be crazy but… When someone says to me “Merry Christmas”, I don’t believe they are trying to push their right-wing Christian agenda on me.  I don’t think they are intolerant of other faiths, or are xenophobic, or that they hate the Jews.   I just think it’s a friendly greeting, and they are just trying to be nice.

On the other hand…

When someone says to me “Seasons Greetings”, I think of this little cartoon I saw where these little bottles of garlic, parsley, and oregano were all saying “hi” to each other.  And that makes me smile.

Merry Xmas Everyone… Yes, that’s right, I said XMAS

For all my dear Christian friends who have made an annaul tradition of getting bent this time of year about the use of the term “X-mas”, please kindly consider the following:

1.  X- (the greek letter Chi) has been used in English as an accepted abbreviation for Christ for over 500 years.  Chi (“X” to us) is the first letter of “Christ” as spelled in the original Greek.  Just for fun, go to Google translate or Babelfish, and try translating “Christ” into Greek.  As a Christian, you should recognize the Chi-rho (Xp) symbol, one of the earliest and oldest symbols of Christianity.  Yes, I know crosses and Jesus-fish are all the rage now, but back in the day the Chi-rho was THE symbol for followers of Christ.  That the “X-” has lost acceptance as an abbreviation for Christ is a reflection of a modern educational system with no focus on classical language, much moreso than any real or imagined atheist conspiracy to replace Jesus with algebra.

2.  December 25th is the birthday of a great many deities, however Jesus Christ was not originally one of them.  That we celebrate his birth on december 25th is a somewhat arbitrary choice made by the early Roman church, as they established the calendar of new Christian holy days.  They could have just as easily chosen May Day or Groundhog’s Day.  (Yes, really, Groundhog’s Day.)  While we don’t actually know the date of His birth, we do know with some certainty that it is very unlikely it was in December.  (Or May, or February, for that matter.)  So the real question should be, not who’s trying to take Christ out of Christmas, but rather who put Christ into Christmas in the first place.  (Believe me, that’s a much more interesting question.)

3.  Almost all of the traditions of Chrismas are older than Christ.  There were decorated trees, and gift-giving, and decorations, and parties, and holly, and mistletoe, and yule logs, and wreaths, and carolling, and probably eggnog, all long before Jesus Christ was born.  Putting Christ into Christmas really didn’t change it all that much.  Just the name really, and it gave us some new songs to sing.  I suspect taking him out of it wouldn’t really change it that much either.  These old traditions, with or without their Christian overlay, are important – they are our connection with our past.  If we don’t know where they came from, if we don’t understand our own traditions, they are no longer meaningful to us.  They become nothing more than pointless, mindless ritual.

4.  A significant number of Christans to this day do not celebrate Christmas.  Certainly no Christians prior to the Roman Emperor Constantine celebrated Christ’s birthday, on December 25th or any other day.  The pilgrims who came here, nearly died, and in the process invented Thanksgiving, did not celebrate Christmas.  Today our modern view of the Christmas tradition is more shaped by Dickens and Coca-Cola than by anything from the Bible.  The New Testament tells a great deal about the activities of the early apostles, and the early (pre-Roman) churches they served, in the years and decades following the death of Christ.  Missing from the scripture is any mention of any remembrance or celebration of the birth of Christ.  From a dogmatic point of view, the birth, aside from being to a virgin, is nearly inconsequential. It is the death and ressurection of Christ that is the central tenant upon which Christainity is founded.  (This is why a magic bunny hides eggs for the kiddies on Easter.)

5.  Two out of three people on the planet are not Christian.  Nearly half of these non-Christians are Muslim, the other half are mostly Hindu or Buddhist.  None of them care what you do with the “X” in Christmas.  This great atheist conspiracy you are concerned about, well the number of atheists in the world is amazingly tiny, and most of them don’t care about your “X” either.  The ones that do care, they ONLY care in the context of where a government agency is involved in the establishment of religion.  You need to understand this – Using government resources to establish religious belief is forbidden by the most holy of their sacred texts, which they call the First Admendment.  Aside from that, what you do as a private citizen, or as a business, or as an organization, with respect to Christmas, honestly they don’t give a fuck.  In any case, you will NEVER hear a true atheist saying “Merry Xmas”.  Their traditional greeting is “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings”.  NOW LISTEN CAREFULLY:  Just because someone says “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings” does NOT automatically mean they are an atheist.  More than likely it means they are trying to be friendly and inclusive to the two thirds of people on the planet who are not Christians. Despite appearances to the contrary, being Christian does not prohibit one from being friendly and inclusive.

 

Now…  For all my dear non-Christian friends out there, who have to put up with this nonsense every year:  Sorry, and Happy Holidays!

One Nation Indivisible

Monday is Memorial Day, the day we honor the men and women who gave their lives in service to their country. This holiday began as a remembrance of the soldiers lost in the Civil War, and has since expanded to honor those who paid the ultimate price in the subsequent wars, and simultaneously devolved into a nationwide barbecue celebrating the coming of summer.

It is interesting the aspects of today’s culture that have their roots in the Civil War. One of these is the Pledge of Allegiance. A great deal is made from time to time about the phrase “under God” in the pledge, but what many people don’t know is that the phrase “under God” was a much later addition to the pledge that significantly subverts it’s original and intended meaning.

The key phrase in the pledge, as originally written, was “one nation indivisible”. The pledge was created as a response to the Civil War. It was meant to be a promise that we are, and will forever be, a unified nation. That we would never again fracture or splinter, that we would never again take up arms against our own. The pledge was meant to be a solemn vow of unity that fully transends the hollow “under God” alteration brought on by Eisenhower-era anti-communist hysteria.

It is sad that this original message has been lost. As a country we have become more divisive than ever. We could use the occasional subtle reminder that we are meant to be “one nation indivisible”, that we have all pledged ourselves to the same thing. Those who are so caught up in the polarization between liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, red state versus blue state, they would do well to take a moment to remember the original purpose and meaning behind Memorial Day, and our Pledge of Allegiance.


I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.