CSotD: Some traditional sorts of musings
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I really like today's Deflocked for no particular reason except that it's cynical and funny and true, despite having not quite plugged all the gaps.
That is, I suspect some readers would argue that Thanksgiving also celebrates our bloodthirsty need to possess things, but I'd say the charge, while certainly not baseless, is a bit misplaced.
Let's look at the holiday: Every farming community in the temperate zone has some kind of harvest festival, and I assume that, even in the tropics where food is less seasonal, there are still times when you plant the breadfruit and request fertility, or harvest it and thank whomever you credit for the bounty.
So the fact that the Pilgrims or Puritans or whoever the hell it was thanked their Lord for a successful harvest and then ate some of it is spectacularly unremarkable. And it seems equally logical that, following a war that wiped out an awful lot of our young men, Lincoln would call for a day of prayer and remembrance.
I recognize that the first Thanksgiving included guests who were subsequently murdered by their erstwhile hosts.
But then Lincoln included Confederates in his Thanksgiving invitation as well, and one of them blew his head apart, while the rest established their own tradition of undercutting abolition and, despite the total ass-kicking they had just endured, continuing to advocate the overthrow of the government.
You win some, you lose some, and what's a family gathering without a blow-up of some sort and accusations of having ruined it for everybody?
It's a Thanksgiving tradition that works on both the macro- and micro- level.
Christmas, meanwhile, is much more overtly hypocritical. I'd like all the people who piss and moan about "the war on Christmas" to explain how unbridled greed intersects with Christ in any meaningful way.
That's the hypocritical one. Thanksgiving is just a bit of Madison Avenue gone stale.
Thanksgiving, as a major holiday complete with the whole Pilgrim/Indian BFF mythology, was invented to help lure immigrants to America with a message of brotherhood and opportunity.
We will welcome you and help you, as our Indian brothers welcomed and helped us.
There was even a brief window in our westward expansion when it was sorta kinda true.
Anyway, here's the Thanksgiving tradition I'd like to get rid of: The cartoon showing the Indians looking at the Mayflower and complaining about illegal immigrants.
Man, that's right up there in the creative yucks department with the Christmas cartoon of kids putting a bear trap in the fireplace.
Come on, man. Just do a holiday-greetings panel and admit you're taking a day off.
Meanwhile — at the risk of actually discussing the comic strip of the day — I like the way Corriveau puts in the punchline and then, rather than having some kind of reaction which would surely only dull the gag, has the utterly clueless dialogue meander on, showing the utter futility of arguing the point.
But here's a tradition I kind of like
In the current Sherman's Lagoon arc, Thornton has gone home to meet the bride his mother has found for him.
Now, I no more expect that this will end with him married than I expect that Dagwood will get a raise or that Beetle Bailey will make corporal. But I'm enjoying the arc in part because it's funny and in part because it reminds me of how much I like the idea of arranged marriages, done right.
Okay, I guess once you slip below middleclass status, most arranged marriages probably suck, and the ones at the upper end, intended to unite family fortunes, probably suck, too.
But I had dinner once with a science professor from India and his wife, a pleasant and attractive woman his mother had found for him, at which point he had gone home to India to meet and marry her. Our evening together was about three years later and they were very happy.
It sounds bizarre to Western ears, but they explained that their mothers had worked this thing out as a win-win: Both young people were observant Hindus, they were intellectually very well-matched and — this was critical in the maternal negotiations — the bride was eager to live overseas.
And, while I'm not much of a judge of men, I can report that she was a knock-out with a great sense of humor, a lively sense of curiosity and a totally captivating personality.
Probably the exception that proves the rule, but, if their moms would ever like to prove the rule again, I'm available.
And this, in turn, puts me in mind of a very good friend from college who hitchhiked around the world as far as Japan, whereupon he met and married a young woman who was also smart, funny and good-looking.
However, this was an opportunity for modern romance to clash with cultural tradition, and he said her family could not have been more shocked that she wanted to marry a gaijin.
On the other hand, she was in her mid-twenties and, at that late point in the life of a Japanese girl, they were kind of shocked, and somewhat relieved, that she had found anyone at all to marry, which blunted any major objections to the match.
That sounds more like Thornton's situation and brings to mind this bizarre artifact of 20th Century culture:
On that infectious-but-offensive note, I'm off to Columbus. One more blog entry from the road tomorrow, and then look for coverage of the shindig.
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