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Ruminations on Holidays and Gratitude
By
Anthony I. Mathews, Beyster Institute Staff
Well, the “Holiday Season” got an even headier start this year than in previous years. I know it is a cliché to mention that the seasons tend to melt together at the end of the year, but it sure seems to be headed more in that direction today than any time in my memory. I fully expect to see the first signs of Christmas before Labor Day some day soon.
This year, I spotted the first Christmas decoration on a business in our neighborhood on October 19th, almost two weeks before Halloween. Heck, it was still summer when the first one went up, and many others followed shortly thereafter. For the last half of October we “enjoyed” the paradoxical sight of skeletons and Santas cavorting on snowy fields and in bleak graveyards (the seasons homogenized by one creative surf shop depicted skeletal Santas surfing on Venice Beach). As far as I am concerned, these sorts of images are jarring and just plain wrong. No matter what your affiliation, Halloween and Christmas are the oil and water of holidays. They do not mix with each other, and people should not attempt to mix them as the result is almost certain to be explosive. In fact, it is a very difficult balance that they even exist so close together in the year, without extending them so as to actually overlap.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a sucker for holidays. I especially enjoy Halloween. When I was much younger, in fact, my extended family and I used to mount very elaborate Halloween shows on the balcony overlooking Harding Avenue in Venice, and we played to a couple of hundred trick or treaters at a time in 3 shows. The decorations were elaborate and terrifying and our hallmark was the dramatic defeat of Dr. Insano by some heroic youth who, against all odds, and by a new artifice each year, somehow managed to throw the evil Doctor off the balcony to the great horror of the audience who only at the last minute realized that the Doctor had been artfully replaced by a dummy. It was cathartic and incredibly fun, but it was consistent with itself and very temporary.
The day after Halloween, we dismantled the elaborate decorations and replaced them with turkeys and pumpkins and autumn leaves (which we imported from the mid-west or painted ourselves as Venice, California has no autumn). And, just like that, the tone of the season moved from the tension of the macabre to the comfort of the mundane. The demarcation between these is necessary, and that demarcation is Thanksgiving.
It is a great comfort to have Thanksgiving sit there in November as a clear transition between Halloween and the softer holidays at the end of the year (all of which have in common reflections on love and generosity). Kind of a demilitarized zone between hostile holidays where we can all adjust to the proper frame of mind in which to approach our major year-end holiday, whatever that may be.
Thanksgiving, as a holiday, represents the palliative to psychic ills of all sorts. For me, the process of giving thanks (being grateful) is like playing a psychic banjo. I know from experience that you can’t be unhappy while playing or listening to the banjo. I also know that you can’t be depressed or angry and grateful at the same time either.
One of the great characters in my life was an older gentleman named Lou Jordan. Whenever anyone would complain about anything, Lou would just shake his head and say, “You can’t be hateful and grateful at the same time. Find something to be grateful for and go help somebody who has less than you.” He always sounded mad when he said things like that, but he practiced exactly that and it turned out to be great advice. Giving thanks is as reliable a cure for anxiety, depression, fear and anger as any medication and the Thanksgiving holiday, for me, introduces the time of year in which that cure is institutionalized.
So, as we move into the “gratitude and helping others” season, I’d like to think we can look at it that way. In this country, we have so much to be grateful for and so many to help, that we should always have ready access to the cure for our problems, whatever they might be.
May you all have a grateful and generous holiday, and I promise I’ll get back to employee ownership (and sounding less like Andy Rooney) after the first of the year.
©2007 The Beyster Institute and its authors and their entities. All rights reserved.
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