Goines On: Holy days, holidays...all folly days?

Click image for more vignettes

Looking for something old to fill the day’s posting slot, Goines discovered that exactly 14 years earlier he had railed against holidays, including both the secular ones like the Fourth of July and the holy ones (“holy” was in quotes). He had declared that about the only good thing to be said for holidays was that they excused us from going to the office.

    Had Goines been going through hard times at the office 14 years ago? He doubted they were hard times. They were midway through the tenure of UNC President Erskine Bowles, and Erskine was delightful, more outgoing than Molly Corbett Broad had been.

Goines On: Memorial Day

Click image for more vignettes

Goines’ eyes blinked in consternation – he thought he might have emailed a friend that, no, he had not “celebrated” Memorial Day. (His friend had inquired whether he was having beer and burgers that day.)
    Not “celebrated” Memorial Day? Had he really said that? People didn’t celebrate Memorial Day, did they? Didn’t they rather sadly remember military veterans and other lost people, places, and things? 
    Goines hadn’t even been aware that Monday was Memorial Day until he tried to call the library and was told they were closed for the holiday.

11 Thanksgivings Ago Today: Thanksgiving what-if

I didn’t take this photo;
we didn’t have any
green beans or tomatoes

By Moristotle

[Originally published on Nov. 27, 2009.]

All day yesterday, even as I was enjoying our company for Thanksgiving, enjoying the bright afternoon (after a foggy morning), enjoying the turkey, the candied sweet potatoes, the Brussels sprouts and carrots, the fruit salad, the stuffing, the cranberry sauce, the Vouvray, and the whipped-cream-topped pumpkin pie, I was bothered by something just not quite right about Thanksgiving.

Tuesday Voice: Bah! Humbug!

By Paul Clark 
(aka motomynd)

Thanks to the holiday season, that joyful time of year we run out of excuses and finally have to spend time with people we manage to avoid the rest of the year, our vegan / animal rights / backwoods living family received a mega-dose of modern Americana in December. We will eventually recover (thank you for your concern) but we wanted to spread the pain to expedite the process. Think of it as telling someone a horrible joke you just heard, so you can more quickly forget it.

What was that about Halloween?

On October 31, I proposed that participating in trick-or-treating has no sound basis, and that's why "it's silly." Well, what is the basis of Halloween, and how is it unsound?
    The holiday's tap root is pagan (i.e., from pre-Abrahamic religions), in primitive man's harvest festivals and festivals remembering the dead.
    The Abrahamic (monotheistic) religion Christianity adopted elements of the practice for its evening before All Saints' Day. Halloween is short for "All Hallows' Evening." The verb to hallow means to make or set apart as holy, or to respect or honor greatly, to revere. And a hallower is one who hallows.
    Little hallowing happens on Halloween. Anyway, hallowing would better be done continually throughout the year. To relegate reverence to one day out of 365 leads to neglecting the other 365, same as remembering the planet on Earth Day forgets it the rest of the year.

Typical Halloween activities include carving pumpkins and trick-or-treating. I used to participate in them myself, but then I realized that doing so was...silly. And having realized that much, I also realized that to continue to participate would be to disrespect myself. The time had come for some public reflection.

Trick-or-treating, according to Wikipedia, "already existed in Great Britain and Ireland in the form of souling, where children and poor people would sing and say prayers for the dead in return for cakes."
    How much less sound can you get? What could a "prayer for the dead" possibly do, seeing as how there is not a single, corroborable instance of a prayer's ever having been answered?
    Anyway, if that's the original reason for kids going around in costumes to collect candy (cakes), why aren't they dropping down on their knees to merit the treats?
    No, they're not learning anything about reverence; they're just out for some free loot and a bit of fun. To do what everybody does.
    For the loot, let them ask their parents to pick up some candy for them at the supermarket, which their parents might do many times a year, rather than wait for the one night when they're permitted, by unthinking custom, to go out and bother their neighbors (some of whom, admittedly, get into the spirit of the thing and don't mind terribly—everyone gives candy to trick-or-treaters, you know?).
    As for reverence...good luck. America may be "religious," but its daily practice doesn't seem to have much to do with reverence. And Halloween is its once-a-year big betrayal.
_______________

November 6 misgivings; yes, I've been back to the post above quite a few times...

Halloween: the silliest holiday?

Halloween is perhaps the silliest of our holidays, a good example of following tradition just because it's tradition, like the woman who always cut her turkey in half for Thanksgiving baking.
    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
_______________
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.

Holy Days, holidays...all folly days

I really dislike holidays, including both the secular ones (like the big one tomorrow) and the "holy" ones: the Sunday-Go-to-Meetin' Days, the Sabbaths—of, if you speak with a Cockney accent, the Allah Days. About the only good thing to be said for them is that they excuse us from going to the office. Everything else about them is a downer. Like tomorrow, you're supposed to set off fire crackers or sparklers or "fireworks," and if you don't set them off yourself, try to get away from those who do. Or try to avoid the ghastly "fireworks stands" that spring up wherever fools with money to burn can be expected to see them.

Philosophically, my main objection to "holy days" is that if any day is holy, then they all are, and to single particular days out to make a big to-do about being extra good or whatever is, in reverse, to single all the other days out to slough off and be mediocre, or worse. Essentially the same objection applies to Mother's Day and Father's Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day...and the Fourth of July. If parents (or children) deserve to be honored, they deserve to be honored everyday, not just on one "special" day of the year. If our Nation or our Founding Fathers or the Declaration of Our Independence is worth celebrating, then isn't it worth celebrating (genuinely, in our minds and hearts) everyday?

To teach our children to celebrate Independence Day on one day of the year, and to do so with dangerous toys that make loud noises and go flash, sends a corrupting message: it's not really that important, it's just an excuse to over-eat watermelons and hot dogs and act more rowdily and foolishly than usual.

Case dismissed!

An old friend has brought to my attention that:

In Florida, an atheist created a case against the upcoming Easter and Passover holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination case against Christians, Jews, and observances of their holy days. The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days.
    The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel declaring,"Case dismissed!"
    The lawyer immediately stood and objected to the ruling, saying, "Your honor, how can you possibly dismiss this case? The Christians have Christmas, Easter, and other holidays, and the Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur, and Hanukkah. Yet my client and all other atheists have no such holidays."
    The judge leaned forward in his chair saying, "But you do. Your client, counsel, is woefully ignorant."
    The lawyer said, "Your Honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for atheists."
    The judge said, "The calendar says April 1st is April Fools Day. Psalm 14:1 states, 'The fool says in his heart, there is no God.' Thus, it is the opinion of this court, that if your client says there is no God, then he is a fool. Therefore, April 1st is his day. Court is adjourned."

Moristotle comments

The judge in the case was just continuing to believe the superstitions he learned from his parents. But the lawyer's client was indeed a fool, and the client's lawyer greedy for a fee and ignorant of the fact that atheists already "have" many more days than "Christians" and "Jews" have. Count the number of non-holy days and compare it to the number of holidays.

January 17

By the way, I forgot to point out yesterday that the way the word "Jews" was used in the anecdote seemed to imply that all Jews are religious. In fact, not even all people called "Christians" are religious. Apparently even a number of ordained priests are atheists. Like Father Bernard in David Lodge's novel Paradise News.

L'Étranger Skipping Christmas

"Aujourd'hui maman est morte," says Meursault in the opening line of Albert Camus's 1942 novel, L'Étranger. Other people find Mersault's inability or unwillingness to cry at his mother's funeral odd. He doesn't fit in.

Mersault came to mind this season as I tried to opt out of Christmas. Opting out doesn't fit in. It's awkward. It interrupts the customary rituals of exchange. The ethos of Christmas in our culture is strong and pervasive, absorbing almost everything: religious celebration of the birth of Christ, putting up lights, trimming trees, exchanging gifts, sending greeting cards, wishing others to be merry, joyous, and peaceful. And shopping, shopping, shopping—even, for the fourth year, for items to counter the supposed liberal war on Christmas. (See "'War on Christmas' has a new jingle: money," in the Los Angeles Times.)

To find out how powerful the Christmas ethos is, try opposing it. It will seem to pull all the more sharply and often, manifest in scores of formulaic greetings in the office, in the neighborhood, in shopping malls, at parties and other gatherings. It is inescapable. You are called upon, expected, to respond appropriately. They say, "Merry Christmas," you say, "Merry Christmas." Or not, but if you don't, note the momentary confusion.

I too, finally and inexorably, got absorbed into Christmas, even while remaining detached and reflective. We attended three holiday parties, the third of which, last Tuesday evening, was thrown by a colleague at work. I enjoyed it, enjoyed the friends, enjoyed my wife enjoying it, enjoyed the food, enjoyed my detachment. We probably even seemed to others to fit in—until the moment, perhaps, of our early departure. And my wife, as she loves to do, hung wreaths on gates and walls and doors and put lights on the mantle and on several camellia bushes. Colleagues at work brought gifts around to my office, one neighbor left a nice loaf of bread in our mailbox yesterday, another brought a tin of chocolate chip cookies by last night, my wife served stollen for our "Christmas breakfast," we exchanged a few gifts this morning, even gave gifts to our poodle. We plan to go to a movie this afternoon. I'm even writing this.

Mersault was sentenced to death by an Algerian court and executed. I fall on the mercy of our local court and, somewhat belatedly perhaps, I wish you a merry Christmas.