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 hypocritical, capitalistic greed
destroyed any merriment for me ...

and yearly i wish pre-thanksgiving that i could go into some type

of hibernation from which i'd not emerge
until sometime after the new year -

i want to just entirely skip the whole entire holiday 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?

i am more cynical than ever, especially given the consistency

and the constancy of mankind’s general and historic
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-plus decades' evidence
against keeping hollow traditions,
which is actually a form of idolatry, isn't it,
for what are we celebrating but our own gluttony?

squanto Tisquantum Wampanoag Plymouth, MA Patuxet

explore Squanto

below, the reconstructed Mayflower, Plymouth MA

and spare me the usual religious and rhetorical lip service –

i’ve heard it all –

and we all know what is and isn’t happening,

and what's not happening is ACTION -

action necessary enough to ‘stem the tides’ so to speak

and 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 license for the rest of us to slack off --

but that's exactly what we do -

we point to these activists not in honest praise,

but to ease the discomfort

of 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 this minefield called Life
has demanded nothing less -

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

so take some unsolicited advice from a half-breed american indian elder¹ :

we all know someone who could use help –

make this a true holiday season for someone by sharing what you have with them-

bring them in from the cold, feed them,

and send them off with something you don’t need anymore
but might make their life more tolerable …
maybe the high of helping someone will become addictive,
and helping throughout the year will become second nature

now that’d be reason to celebrate

-NHT

National Day of Mourning plaque Plymouth MA

above, Baystate pride: a single town's honourability

¹American Indian vs Native American – do you know the difference? Indians typically refer to themselves as American Indian because the term Native American is a moniker created by the US government for monetary purposes and, via cultural understanding of the old adage that 'money is the root of all evil', the people did not see being called a Native American as necessarily honourable ...

moreover, the term American Indian does not recognize separation and instead addresses indigenous unity of both the northern and southern continents of America –

related reading: Feast of the Epiphany
un-Christmas

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