Happy Holidaze.....?

[hester_prynne]

I never thought it would happen but I feel totally bah humbug this year. All the hype about "shopping" today. People getting up at 4am, 5am 6am to get the good deals because today is "black friday" when all the retailers strive to get out of the red and into the black.....and Christmas is the vehicle for getting there. I'm really uncomfortable with this shit. It's so meaningless! It's depressing.

Does it get worse every year or is it me getting wise about yet another myth?
I have a hard time feeling like celebrating anything because mostly I just feel insulted at the blatent manipulation. Where is Christmas? What is it anymore? It's lost! Or is it just me and my bad attitude?

Yesterday, every time I felt worried for Stella's and my future, hell, everyone's future, I wrote down something I was thankful for instead, to redirect the negative.
It was extremely hard to do.

Anymore all I vant is "to be alone".
What are you feeling about the holidaze this year?
Anything uplifting you can share......?
H

[mtmynd]

Well, Hes', I haven't gotten overly excited about Christmas in many years... altho, admittedly, I do enjoy the vibes of Christmas Eve and Christmas mornings... that peace thing permeates the environment, which is probably the social-collective vibration in play.

[tinkerjack]

I heard this on NPR today, cheered me up

http://www.revbilly.com/

I think of it as a Potlach ceremony. Potlatch

Throughout native North America, gift giving is a central feature of social life. In the Pacific Northwest of the United States and British Columbia in Canada, this tradition is known as the potlatch. Within the tribal groups of these areas, individuals hosting a potlatch give away most, if not all, of their wealth and material goods to show goodwill to the rest of the tribal members and to maintain their social status. Tribes that traditionally practice the potlatch include the Haidas, Kwakiutls, Makahs, Nootkas, Tlingits, and Tsimshians. Gifts often included blankets, pelts, furs, weapons, and slaves during the nineteenth century, and jewelry, money, and appliances in the twentieth.feature of Pacific Northwest Indian life today.

http://college.hmco.com/history/readers ... tlatch.htm


Of course what we are really celebrating is the winter solstice. I hope you have a happy warm holiday.

It has been postulated that Christians in the fourth century assigned December 25th as Christ's birthday (and thus Christmas) because pagans already observed this day as a holiday. This would sidestep the problem of eliminating an already popular holiday while Christianizing the population. It created other problems because of the coexistence of the two feasts: see Bishop Asterius of Amasea's New Year's sermon in AD 400, discussed at the entry Lord of Misrule. The medieval celebration of the Feast of Fools was another continuation of Saturnalia into the Christian era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia

My family never celebrated Christmas we had http://www.torah.org/learning/yomtov/chanukah/
Which was pretty cool because we got gifts for 8 days. But we felt kind of left out. One year me and brother dragged home a Christmas tree we found in a alley about a week after the holiday. We set it up and decorated it with paper ornanments. My grandmother was pretty outraged. I try to feed off the peace on earth energy and good will to mankind as much as possible. Every year I hope it will set the tone for the next 365 days but it never seems to last past new years day.

[jimboloco]

I like the lights in the neighboorhood
It shows me that folks actually live in those little boxes
I am a pagan unbeliever infidel yes
My wife loves Xmas because she has all these old things from her past, old muisic boxes and she loves to hang the socks and garlands, which th cats love to pull down.

As far as the commercial bit goes, well, I am strapped fpr cash as it is.
I buy the tree about 75$ this year I anticipate
I set it up un the stand. Suzie and grandson do the decorating.

Holidaytree or schmoliday tree
The religious right affirms once again that this is a Christian nation.

Sure as hell don't act like one tho.

I low key it. Send a few cardz.
twenty years ago, I did a drawing from an old print made by an old world artist around 1500, Jost Amman.
Left it with a woman in east Texas.
I would like
to find it again. It is a pic of St Nick as the patron saint of gluttony!
He is riding a donkey, they bath are laughing
donkey has strings of bells and branches for antlers
hanging with sausages and fishes
and the old man is lifting a big mug!
I am gonna spend some more time looking for it.

I have only bought one present so far, a used book about the history of jazz for my step son. Nada mas.

[jimboloco]

November 21, 2005
Whose Giving Thanks?

By Remi Kanazi*

Today I give thanks

Thanks for living as a privileged being

But from what I'm seeing

We aren’t believing the truth of our history

As I eat my turkey jerky before the turkey comes out of the kitchen

Something’s been itching me about the feast I'm so pleased to eat

As I walk down these streets images of pilgrims run through my mind

The divine ancestors of Europeans that crossed seas and colonized

I wonder how many Indians, now Native Americans, died swearing there was genocide

We came in and shocked an indigenous people with smallpox

Raped their women, killed their fathers, and didn’t even bother to cover the atrocities

Do we not see the hypocrisy in making colonization a holiday?

I know today we don't celebrate the actual event

We fired Christ and hired Santa for corporate sponsorship

We don’t memorialize the dead, only our three day weekend

Halloween’s about pre-teens and their candy

But we should also think, maybe not even on Thanksgiving

About the killing and enslavement of tribes that lived their lives without being colonized

And I realize the expansionist mind can't think back to a time without capitalism

But these crimes should at least be documented

They're misrepresented in our history books by crooks of the truth

The American history that sits on our shelves talks of cowboys and Indians

With little boys having fun with toy guns running after the bow and arrow

But now we're the facts on the ground

And the sounds of gobble gobble

Have gobbled up our awareness of the injustice that led to our feast

* Remi Kanazi is the primary writer for the political website www.PoeticInjustice.net. He lives in New York City as a Palestinian American freelance writer and can reached via email at remroum@gmail.com

[bohonato]

At times I feel little frustrated with Christmas, or rather with the people who celebrate it, because of the well worn complaint of the commercialization of the holiday.

That and the whole 'Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men' mantra being chanted as we bomb multiple nations. Oh Well.

But I love Christmas. Just for the 'Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men'. It gives me hope for humanity, something I sometimes desperately need.

I volunteer every year at the Salvation Army. Yes, I am one of those annoying bell ringers, and it is amazing. Amazing to see so many people willing to give to the needy. A lot of times it seems that people don't care, but many people do. They just don't advertise it.

'Sick of sorrow
I'm sick of the pain
I'm sick of hearing
Again and again
That there's gonna be
Peace on Earth'

[jimboloco]

Oh a Salvation Army bell ringer was robbed yeaterday here in Pinellass Country. The thief took his bucket, about 150 dallahs.

We bought a tree yesterday. It is a blue fir down from Jodjya.

We set it up, no decorations. It is sitting here relaxing, spreading the boughs. Smells lovely.

I don't have any money left for presents now, 100 bucks left to last a week. Yesterday I spent another fifty for some weed.

I think it's neat that Bonohato is a bell ringer for peace!

I decided to declare conscientious objector status during Xmas in 1971. I went home and talked it over with my sister, in secret.
Jan 4th 1972 I did it. That's how it all worked out. The folks were all cheery that Xmas, but the next year I was in disgrace and stayed away. Life with them was never the same again.

Oh well, XMAS endures. Someday long away in the future there will be a change of heart.

I think that Ramadan is certainly as spiritual if not more so.

We do not do church, altho I do a Quaker meeting occasionally. (My status there was downgraded from "attender" to "visitor." Not a member.)

We buy our tree from a nearby church every year. They are so glowing and this year we went early and got the choice of the lot.

In two weeks we will do Disney World, walk thru the Osborne lights (stoned) at MGM and we always do the candlelight processional at Epcot, an outdoor amphitheatre, Florita remember, I especially like the long trumpets that beam radical brass satori, and all the kids in their choir suits marchung up to fill the place, real great.

Then we go to the British restaurant, have a real old fashioned Xmas repast, and go to the hotel and pass out, satiated and filled with visions of lovely sights and sounds.

At work they have an XMAS party. I am supposed to bring a present, what am I gonna do?
And I am going to my wife's work party after that. She told me it is "bizness cazual." I can't fit into my slacks. Last time was two years ago. Mercy. I ain't got no pants to wear!

Then Xmas eve, when we do the presents. My presents are the housepayments, the tree, and good cheer. And I absolutely love the week starting with XMAS day and up til Newyears. It is so quiet, then a gradual cre·scen·do and the light of the New Year, when all the anticipated resolutions fall away in a peaceful demise and we start seeing all the Valentines in the stores, the second week of January or sooner. PEACE BABY!

[tinkerjack]

I think it's neat that Bonohato is a bell ringer for peace!

Salvation army is the charity that sends the most money to the people that need it. As I remember about 90% of the money collected actually goes to the intended cause. God only knows what the rest spend their money on. Millions of dollars for their CEO? Yeah I think it is neat too. I used to love driving on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. So quiet, no body on the CB looking for coin-operated beavers, the super truckers were all home beating their wives. Just a few gypsies running the road. I heard there was a super nova a few thousand years ago that was visible from earth. But I heard it was in the spring when the lambs were born not during the orgy of the Saturnalia. I never celebrated Christmas, just sat around in a darkened room and celebrated a festival of candlelights. I can never remember what day it falls on. Lunar calendars baffle me. Easter is another holiday that never seem to fall on the same day. I don’t know why I cringe when people say remember the reason for the season. The season of The Potlach. It sure ain’t Christ.

Ever since thanksgiving 1984 it has been a special Thursday for me. The day Alamo rose entered the hall of the grateful dead. How that woman clung to her life, until she got home from the hospital. We had all made our peace with that mighty smighty G-d of her mothers. I was so grateful that Homeboy and Diamond Lil were able to give her that good death at home, in her own room, looking into that mirror. Lil was upset with the doctor because we had all agreed on no heroics and Rose wanted it that way. The middle of the night when we were not around he put a pace maker in. Homeboy’s hands were twitching cause he wanted to choke the guy. Lil was upset because Rose had figured out how to go and that heroic doctor had brought her back for two more weeks of suffering. Finally they brought her home to die. November 22, 1984. Why do so many old folks slip away at dawn?


I got a great collection of blue grass songs by a band called Old and In The Way. This one might be my favorite song on the disk.


In the land of the Navajo

A hundred miles from nowhere out on the desert sand
One Eyed Jack the trader hold some turquoise in his hand
By his side sat Running Elk his longtime Indian friend
He vowed that he would stay by Jack until the bitter end

Jack had gambled everything he owned to leave this wondering life
He might have had a happy home and a tender loving wife
But his hunger was for trading trapper's furs for turquoise stones
Anything that the Indians had Jack wanted for his own

Said Jack to Running Elk I'll gamble all my precious stones
Before I leave my body here among these bleaching bones
Though now my time is drawing near and I'm filled with dark regrets
My spirit longs to journey as the sun begins to set

We raped and killed we stole your land
We rule with guns and knives add whiskey to your waters
While we stole away your wives
said Running Elk what's done is done you white men rule this land
so lay the cards face up and play your last broken hearted hand


* Refrain


When your dealing cards with death the joker's wild the ace is high
Jack bet the Mississippi River running Elk raised him the sky
Jack saw him with the sun and room and upped him with the stars
Running Elk bet the Rocky Mountains Jupiter and Mars

The sun was sinking in the west when Jack draw the ace of spades
Running Elk just rolled his eyes and smiled and passed away
Jack picked up his turquoise stones and cast them to the sky
He stared into the setting sun and made the mournful cry



* Refrain