Hollidaze
POSTED BY: Wishimay
UPDATED: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 14:30
VIEWED: 3601
PAGE 2 of 2
Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Just so you know, I collect demented "Holiday" music as ECM and counter assault, which I have done since I was about twelve, the crass commercialism of it all... ALWAYS bugged me, right along with the phony smiles pasted over brutal hate at "family" gatherings, you know ?
One of the things that came with the whole hubby package deal was Dr. Demento :) Many a December day has been saved by Rudolph got ran over by my Grandma, The Channukah Song, or my personal fav- Rusty Chevrolet.
Thing is- me and Christmas got along OK until I got married, then in-laws get incensed I don't follow their example and go crazy about it. They put up several trees and spend months arguing about lights (incessantly) and it looks like a Christmas villiage threw up in her house...A few years ago I stopped going to their house for the "festivities" because I just couldn't take the phoney smiles coated with extra loud carols whenever I walked in the room(just and only for me). Now they are just passive aggressive from Halloween 'till New Years. At least my family is nice enough not to visit. If I didn't love my husband so damn much, I'd gladly divorce him just over his family...I'll probably be on here Dec 25, if anybody just wants to talk about the weather...Gosh, that sounds nice and...civil-like...Interraction without hostility...
I just want peace. ...Don't know how to do that without being a hermit, dammit.
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Actually, it's only the traditional Christmas songs that (mostly) suck. There's quite a few coontemporary Christmas songs that I actually really like. I won't post them, though, because it's frackin' October still!
Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Anyways, I was just wondering if you all like the holidays, if they make sense to you, which is your most/least favorite and why?
I'm (distantly) Celtic, so I tend to keep to the cross-quarter festivals: picture the year as a ring, with four spokes, falling at New Year (winter Solstice/Christmas), the beginning of Spring (Easter), Midsummer's Eve (summer solstice), and the harvest (Thanksgiving/Samhain/Hallowe'en). That's where our modern holidays all started; when humans discovered agriculture, this was how we learned to keep a calendar. March/April is the beginning of the planting season (marking Easter as a time for new life --thus the rabbits and eggs), October is when the Harvest comes in (and you make your blood/corn/candy sacrifices and hope you don't die when winter comes), Solstices are midway between the two (and in winter, the farmers aren't working, so they're free to party [plus, winter's halfway over and we're not dead yet]).
Pretty much every culture on Earth has their own variation of these basic festivals.
Despite what Christians are raised to think, "Christmas" has nothing to do with Jesus' birth (reading between the lines of the Gospels puts his birth in Summer --the sheep are lambing). It only happened that way because all the pagans had a big winter festival, and the Christians knew they had no chance of cancelling it, so they just co-opted it.
(Which makes it kinda hilarious when Christians complain about Christmas being "stolen" by commercialism. We stole it fair and square.)
I tend to treat Christmas as a celebration of family and togetherness --the whole family comes together around the hearth, where a fire is kindled. It is this light that keeps us alive when the rest of the universe grows cold and dead. Without our families, we are nothing.
As years passed and we became less agricultural, most of these holidays slipped around some. Thanksgiving was sold as a more Christian-friendly version of the pagan Hallowe'en, Midsummer's Eve was all but forgotten, and nobody even remembers the Corn God of Eostre.
Hell, Santa Claus is Odin Highfather. white-bearded, purveyor of Elven craftsmanship, all-seeing, all-knowing, headquartered in the extreme North, driver of a sleigh with eight reindeer (Odin rode Sleipnir, an eight-legged horse). The only thing missing is the eye-patch.
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We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.
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All things I know, which also makes it hard to sort out... Also, my historians will want to fight your historians, mine say it was somewheres in late spring...
Celebration of the hearth, hmmm?
Not half bad, maybe me and him and my critter can all get together and bake something for each other?
I like that idea...
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