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December 16, 2005

Holiday Commentary

The following is a commentary I did for Making Waves, a radio news magazine that airs on WSCA in Portsmouth, NH:

The holiday season is upon us! Like many people, I have conflicting feelings dancing in my head.

Here comes Thanksgiving. A day of Eating-- A LOT. A day of telling grade schoolers about Pilgrims coming to the new world and befriending Native Americans—a nice story, but distant from the reality of a genocidal taking of someone else’s homeland.

What can you say about Christmas. It’s a day when when lots of non-Christians buy friends and family members gifts, maybe go to church and definitely eat A LOT. At the risk of sounding like Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady”, I think Jesus of Nazareth might have a bit of a problem with the way we celebrate his birthday. If you disagree, please read the new testament.

Then there’s New Years Eve. A party night, followed by new year’s day, some nursing hangovers, some watching college football bowl games on the TV and most everyone eating A LOT.

Sure, there are other holidays that fall around the same time of year, like Kwanza, Hanakah, and Eid. But let’s face it, we’re all hit every year in this country with a barrage of messages about Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. One of the most prevalent messages being, of course, “buy, buy, buy!”

It’s true there are ways we can make the holidays more meaningful, but what I want to talk about is the idea of celebrating some alternative holidays. Here’s a few ideas that happen to fall around this time of year:

Nov 8 Dorothy Day’s B-day
Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, that started out with one community in New York, based on faith and resistance, and a desire to serve the poor. They not only provided food and clothing to the poor, they invited them to live at their house. There’s CW houses and communities all across the country today, and a few in other countries. Residents take on different aspects of running the communities in an atmosphere of at least voluntary simplicity, if not voluntary poverty. If materialism, greed, war, things like that are getting you down, pay a visit to one of these communities. You’ll be inspired, and you may even want to live at one. You don’t have to be Catholic to be part of this great peace and social justice movement, started as Dorothy Day herself wrote, just sitting around at her kitchen table, talking.

Later in November, there’s the National Day of Mourning:
Every year on Thanksgiving Day, in Plymouth, MA, Native Americans have what they call the National Day of Mourning, when the aforementioned genocide is observed. During this day-long event, there’s Native American speakers and music, followed by a march through town, followed by a terrific meal in a hall with more speakers and music. I visited the NDM for the first time last year, and had the most meaningful Thanksgiving Day I can remember. The speakers make a very clear connection between the western European imperialism of 500 years ago, and what is happening in the world today.

The day after Thanksgiving, we have Buy Nothing Day. This is a nationwide campaign started by AdBusters, and it’s pretty self explanatory. For years, the day after Thanksgiving has been touted as the busiest shopping day of the year. People have recovered from the eating binge of the day before, and they set out to start their Christmas shopping. For those of us who take issue with the commercialism and consumerism of Christmas, Buy Nothing Day rings true. Buy nothing day sends a signal to corporations. Many people have been inspired by this day to simplify their entire holiday season.

Dec 1 Rosa Parks Day
It was on this day the Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, thus breaking a racist, segregationist law, and creating a watershed moment in the history not only of the US civil rights movement, but also in the history of nonviolent civil disobediance. She broke an unjust law, because doing so was less of a crime than the law itself. Thank you, Rosa Parks.

Dec 10 Human Rights Day
What a great concept, especially in this time when too many people define each other in black and white terms like “good” and “evil”. Let’s focus on the rights that we all deserve. Rights that governments don’t “give” to us, but which those governments are compelled to recognize as our entitlements that they should keep their hands off. And while we’re exercizing our right to free speech on Human Rights Day, let’s push for making adequate health care, education, enough food & water and a place to live
inalienable human rights that are observed here in our country.

Dec 21 Winter Solstice
An alternative New Years Eve. Sure, we follow a calendar and January marks the beginning of our new year, but somehow the solstice seems like a more intuitive beginning to a new year. Days start getting longer again. More daylight is good! So, the past few years I’ve been joining my Pagan friends in welcoming in the new season on the Winter Solstice.

Finally, for January, we can go with one widely recognized holiday, observed even here in NH, finally, sort of, MLK Day! The term “modern day prophet” sometimes gets thrown around too much, but Martin Luther King deserves that term. Too often, especially in mainstream media, all we get is a quick sound bite of King saying “I have a dream”. Do yourself a favor this Martin Luther King Day and read the entire “I have a dream” speech. King said so many timeless things about race, class, social justice, war and peace, God, the human spirit, and so many other topics.

One MLK Day several years ago I was in a town where a radio station broadcast all of Kings speeches that had ever been recorded. King was so inspiring. Maybe our community radio station could broadcast his speeches this year!

Whatever holidays you observe this season, I wish you the best. Let’s celebrate in the spirit of bringing peace and justice to the world.

Posted by Joe Public at December 16, 2005 03:08 AM

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