Deep Thoughts for the Holidays
Please read the title of this post in big, swirly, cursive letters that implicitly mock my pretensions.
In recent years, it’s been my habit to devote holidays to writing one-off essays on whatever I happen to be brooding about that day. I’m not going to do that today. I’ve got too much to do for the sanctuary and I’m also in the middle of working on a couple of long and certain-to-be controversial essays on topics that are (in my view) of potentially greater import than whatever pattrice happens to be thinking about today.
But I’ve still got the impulse to spout off about holiday-related issues. So, here are links to some of my “deep thoughts” of previous holidays:
Thanksgiving 2006
Throwing the homosexuals to the hounds sounds like a metaphor for the Republican Party’s electoral strategy of recent years, but it actually happened back in 1513 in what is now Panama. Then, governor Vasco Nunez de Balboa condemned 50 homosexual Indians to be torn apart by dogs.
Seen by both Catholic Conquistadors and Protestant Pilgrims as a sign of godless animality, same-sex pleasure was ruthlessly suppressed throughout the process of the subjugation of the Americas. Today, the conquest of the senses continues, as billions of people and animals are forced to forgo all kinds of natural happiness so that a privileged few can enjoy the empty gluttony that has brought us to the brink of planetary catastrophe.
Christmas 2005
Grey rain hangs in the sky. Translucent drops splash on the blacktop, sluicing like a summer thunderstorm on this Christmas Day. I gaze with glazed eyes at the glassy surface of the water until the blare of a car horn blasts me back into my body. Heart pumping, I wave weakly. I’m cold and wet.
Six of us stand in a line with picket signs. One of the signs says HONK FOR PEACE.
Thanksgiving 2004
“Body parts are everywhere!” That’s what one US soldier had to say about the saddest city in Iraq, according to an AFP report. It’s also an apt description of the state of US dinner tables during the festival of gloating and gluttony known as Thanksgiving.
This year, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving in the wake of the taking of Falluja. Waving “drumsticks” and fighting for “wishbones,” complacent Christians will gorge themselves without fear, safe from the threats of gay marriage and Iraqi self-determination. Stuffing themselves beyond satiation, they and their children will partake of the proud Puritanical tradition of ruthless, reckless expansion.
Christmas 2002
As the Christians gather to celebrate the birth of the founder of their religion, I find myself asking a question that I wish Christians would ask themselves: Who would Jesus kill?
And, don’t forget not to go shopping tomorrow!
