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| Traditional Irish Turnip Halloween Lantern |
While I was fiddling around with that, I realized that I hadn't paid enough (or any) critical attention to the reasons my friend gave who gently suggested it was because I had become a grumpy old man that I had dumped on Halloween. He had written to me:
This Halloween, I was reflecting on the fact that it's nice that our most celebrated Holidays (Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day) all revolve around giving gifts and appreciating the company of others. Rather than abstain, I think it better to put your own twist on the holiday, because God knows, they've been twisted plenty over the millennia for a million different reasons.I think I gave this a bye because it's so hopeful and positive-seeming, and my friend has two young daughters, on whose behalf he and his wife have to make difficult parental choices.
But do these holidays really revolve around sweetness and light? I've already examined Halloween a bit, as well, actually, as Christmas and Thanksgiving. They don't come off well. Christmas and Thanksgiving, in particular, promote an orgy of animal slaughter.
On Thanksgiving, people go about giving thanks—some of it, admittedly, to the animals they're about to eat, but more of it to their Heavenly Father for "providing" it. Thank you, God, for putting me atop the Great Food Chain of Being. Second only to him.
During Christmas, people pray for peace on Earth (but not in the abattoirs) and love one another, while participating in the culture of violence toward other animals. Clement Clark Moore's poem needs updating:
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the slaughterhouse....And do you need reminding that the man whose birthday is associated with Christmas was put on Earth by a "loving" God, according to the pagan myth that came to ennoble it1, in order to be cruelly tortured and executed? But we get to celebrate that on another holiday.
I think that these second thoughts on grumpiness were sparked by a recent interchange with Motomynd. We were talking about the grand-opening video shown on the Crystal Bridges website for its collection of American art. Among the images the video features are two eighteen-wheelers (like the rigs my Bentonville brother-in-law used to drive for WalMart); one sports a photograph of cooked cow on its side, and the other heralds the logo of one of the world's biggest factory animal farms.
Motomynd commented:
Did you notice how the camera lens lingered noticeably on each of the logos on the trucks? It struck me as odd to be watching a video I assumed was in some way going to celebrate the grand opening of a wonderful new art museum, but in reality turned out to be mainly a commercial for WalMart and some of its favored vendors. Given the nature of the video, one has to wonder what is in store for visitors to the museum.The values embodied in the video clip seem to me to contradict art's essential role in challenging tradition, however useful the WalMart money may have been for the acquisition of Alice Walton's collection and the construction of a museum to show it to a public all too reluctant to be challenged.
I have one of those decorative calendars that comes with a frame in which, month-to-month, you switch to a new placard. The placard for this month features the image of a turkey. I display November with the same spiritual sorrow I feel when I eat "meat" because I'm served it by a host whom I choose not to offend or conflict with.
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- Another related myth is cited in a letter Thomas Paine wrote to President Thomas Jefferson on Christmas Day 1802: "I congratulate you on the birthday of the New Sun, now called Christmas-Day, and I make you a present of a thought on Louisiana.2"
–Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography, by Christopher Hitchens, 2006, p. 138 - Paine had in the preceding paragraph suggested that Jefferson, to help France out of her financial straits, purchase the Louisiana Territory, which Spain had just ceded to France. Jefferson did so the following year, for four or ten cents an acre, depending on the source.
My friend with the two young daughters commented:
ReplyDeleteI didn't mean to imply that you should accentuate the positive, rather that you should change the holidays in whatever way would make them fun and meaningful for you. In my comment, I said that the focus of the holidays is enjoying the company of others, punctuated by exchanges of gifts and food. The other essential ingredient of our holidays is celebrating and/or observing change, e.g. the seasons. So, take those ingredients and do what you like with them.
It's hard for me to see the distinction he's making, though, since anyone's tailoring a holiday to make it "more fun and meaningful" would involve "accentuating the positive" in some way—unless the person got off on negative or hurtful stuff. Also, the aspects of holidays that he selected as "essential ingredients" (enjoying the company of others, exchanging gifts and food, and celebrating and/or observing change) all seem to be positive, or potentially so. At any rate, it was these considerations that led me to use the phrase, "accentuate the positive."
My point was that other essential ingredients of certain holidays are NOT positive but, like the orgy of meat-eating by most people in America on big family holidays, are decidedly destructive (in this case of animal rights).
I do believe that animals have rights, just as "the rights of man" existed before they were championed by Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and codified in our Declaration of Independence. The recognition of human rights took time, and so will the recognition of animal rights.
We do have to consider, however, whether "the rights of man" really did always exist, and self-evidently so, or the essential act was for a people to pretend that they did and proclaim them in writing.
Can a similar pretense and proclamation be made on behalf and for the sake of animals who cannot speak for themselves?