from NHT's Writing Desk: Holiday Madness

Holiday Madness:

thus it begins ...

i don't mince words: i hate the holidays, starting with Hallowe'en --

and i mean, literally, really truly abhor this time of year –
i didn't always -

but blatant hypocrisy and capitalistic greed destroyed them for me ...

and yearly i wish that pre-thanksgiving i could go into some type
of hibernation from which i'd not emerge until sometime after March

(a family birthday marathon mercilessly extends the holidays),
i want to just entirely skip the whole entire holiday/birthday farce ...

i had begun this holiday revolt long before the family fractured –

for years i’d been trying to explore different ways of celebrating

the mid-winter holidays and late season birthdays, but to no avail –

and now with family no more, the painfulness of holidays simply serves to underscore the hypocrisy and capitalistic poison

which have destroyed any meaning to anything anymore ...

and so tell me again, what is it that you want me to celebrate?

what's that you say? ... Squanto's miracle of that first Thanksgiving?

pffft! i used to believe that too until i discovered

that Squanto's miracle lasted only 50 years –

barely two friggin’ generations!!

am i to celebrate that PEACE has only a two-generation sustainability?

as for my own family’s nightmare,

i am more cynical than ever, especially given the consistency
and the constancy of mankind’s general heartlessness and self-absorption…

few recognize any more how family makes this hell hole tolerable –

IME, from infancy abandonment triggered in these my elder years,

i look around and everywhere see misery as huge as
and larger than my own –

celebration has become intolerable with so much pain everywhere --

my life counts six decades' evidence against keeping hollow traditions

squanto Tisquantum Wampanoag Plymouth, MA Patuxet

explore Squanto

below, the reconstructed Mayflower, Plymouth MA

and spare me the religious rhetoric and usual lip service –
i’ve heard it all –
and we all know what is and iisn’t happening,
and what's not happening is ACTION -
action necessary enough to ‘stem the tides’ so to speak

please don’t point to activists as if you and they are one
because there are far too few of these courageous and
determined souls who fight for right
beyond their own comfort zones …

their work isn’t a license for the rest of us to slack off --
but that's exactly what we do -
we point at these activists not in honest praise,
but to make ourselves feel more comfortable
with our own compliant complacency…

so i pointedly ask: what action have YOU taken outside your comfort zone?

because, as i see it, if you have food, clothing, and shelter,

then humanitarian duty requires you to advocate for the suffering until all are fed, clothed and sheltered

this concept is nothing new – at least it shouldn’t be … every single prophet who ever came through here demanded nothing less

we are our brother’s keepers … like it or not …

so take some unsolicited advice from this half-breed American Indian Elder:

we all know someone who could use our help –

make this a true Thanksgiving for them -

bring them in from the cold, feed them,

and send them off with something you don’t need anymore but that would make their life more tolerable …

now that’d be reason to celebrate

-NHT