One day her daughter asked her, "Mom, why do you cut the turkey in half?"
Her mom said, "Hmm, I don't really know, that's just what my mother always did."
So her daughter called her grandmother: "Grandma, why do we cut the turkey in half?
"Lands, dear, I don't know. You'd have to ask my mother."
So her granddaughter wrote to her great grandmother: "Great Gran, why do we cut the turkey in half?"
And her great grandmother replied: "Oh, sweetie, our oven wasn't big enough for the whole bird."
That's my treat for readers today. And you didn't even have to put on a witch's costume and come out in the dark to knock on my door.
November 4: Follow-up on the silliness of Halloween
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Thanks to William B. Ross, MD, for the anecdote, which he told me in about 1973 in order to illustrate that just because something is a tradition doesn't mean there's a sound basis for continuing to observe it. It has continued to instruct and guide, reminding me to look for reasons for doing things rather than to follow unsound habits.
Moristotle - I usually agree with just about all of your keen insights, but do you really think Halloween is the silliest holiday?
ReplyDeleteWithout even getting into the seemingly endless traditional days of observance for various bizarre religions around the world, because those are targets that are just too easy, is Halloween really sillier than drinking oneself sick on green beer on St. Patrick's Day?
Or how about that horrid contrived day of candy, cards and coerced commerce in February? I just asked my wife what in her opinion was the silliest tradition and that was her vote: Valentine's Day. "What," she asked, "is sillier than setting aside a day to tell someone you love them?"
Or what about National Boss Day? Really, it is on a list of holidays, believe it or not.
And Columbus Day has to be right up there. We still have a holiday to recognize a guy for being the first to discover a place he didn't even get to, especially when we now know that if he had gotten there he would have been 500 years behind the Vikings?
So you can better appreciate this holiday which is at least rooted in the natural change of the seasons instead of some human manufactured fraudulent history or marketing gimmick, would you like us to come by and share our All Hallow's Eve ritual with you? This is the night we tape over the license plates on our motorcycles, dress in skeleton riding suits, uncap the headers, and cruise quiet neighborhoods with throttles open -- carving doughnuts in carefully coiffed lawns and paying tumultuous tribute to the souls of the recently departed. What time would you like us to drop by?
Motomynd, you do make a strong case that Halloween is not the silliest holiday, a possibility that I coyly provided for by inserting "perhaps" into my opening, if not into my title.
ReplyDeleteI am thankful that I haven't heard any open throttles in the neighborhood, but the night is still young for folks who don't retire as early as I do. May I sleep peacefully through the night....
I just changed the title from "Halloween is the silliest holiday" to "Halloween: the silliest holiday?"
ReplyDeleteI just tried to post an unbelievably well thought out and witty retort...and your blog ate it! Coincidence or conspiracy? The much shortened version is...all the best to you and your keen eye for literary minutia. And while on the topic let us remember the classic "neighbors upset over dog eating Filipinos." Yes, for the lack of a hyphen the kingdom nearly was lost.
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry about the lost effort, not only for your sake, but also (and perhaps even more) for my own, although your severely abbreviated version does give me a sense of its content, if not, possibly, of its style, at which, I take it, you intended to hint by your unusual use of the singular of "minutiae"?
ReplyDelete