The holiday season is upon us.
The preposition is apt. We are not in the season, not even in the spirit of the season, but we feel it upon us, like a nightmare chimera. Many feel oppressed and depressed by it. We struggle for more light.
Perhaps it’s better to call it the shopping season. It starts with softening up the kids on Halloween — sending them out to beg, threaten or run “tricks” for sugar. A day that used to acknowledge the dead and the chthonic forces that help shape our lives, ends with kids computing who had the most money to buy the best costume.
Meantime, their parents gear up for Thanksgiving gorging. They may remember their own school daze — that it has something to do with the pilgrims and getting through the first hard winters — but nobody really cares. Few remember the “Indians” who got us through those winters, whom we summarily rewarded with slaughter and expropriation. Yet it is precisely to remember, to commemorate, that holidays are declared.
continue reading
