Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Happy Christmas!

Look, we all know all about Christmas.

We all know about how it is derived from the Saturnalia and from the celebration of the virgin birth of Sol Invinctus and from Germanic and Scandinavian Yule festivals and, obviously, from Christian celebration of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

We know about Santa Claus and we know all the movies and all the songs and the cookies and the cakes and the roasts and the drinks and the lights.

And I am certain we all know how hectic it is this time of year when all we really want to to be able to soak it in like we did as kids.

so go soak it in and I'll do the same. who needs some rambling blog post about xmas, anyway?

Merry Christmas! (it's the bestest of the holidays, so enjoy the hell out of it!)

Monday, October 31, 2011

Halloween 2011

Halloween is one of the good ones, isn't it?

I mean, what a holiday! Masquerade parties! Candy! Ghosts! Draculas! Werewolf Barmitzvah! Mummies! Witches! Creatures From Black Lagoons! The Skeleton Dance! Horrible Monsters Defying Description! Zombies Intent On The Destruction Of Society Itself! Whatever THIS is!

So: All Hallow's Eve. Also called Samhain. The night before the Day Of The Dead. The Celtic New Year.

The good ones always collect lots of names. Here's the point, though: In many (most?) traditional cultures, there weren't four seasons, but only two. And this is the night that we pass from one (Summer, if you like) into the other. It is the transition, the cusp into the dead time of year, and so this is the night on which it is supposed that the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is at its thinnest, its most porous.

So definitely girls should wear their sluttiest costumes and we should all watch Peter Jackson's wonderful wonderful WONDERFUL gorefest Brain Dead/Dead Alive

Whatever. Have a big bonfire and remember your forebears or go out and stuff your gob with twix. I don't care; just so it matters. Halloween has everything that a holiday should have and the wheel of the year is better for it.