It’s odd how a tune can get stuck in
your head sometimes. Odder still, the choice of tune that gets stuck
in your head and the exact timing of this phenomenon. Maybe the tune
is an indication of what’s really going on in your subconscious?
But maybe—just maybe—it’s more ominous than that. Maybe it’s
a sign of what’s going on just beneath the surface of reality
itself...
For the past couple of days, I’ve
been humming the tune to A Very Merry Un-Birthday to You from
Disney’s animated classic Alice in Wonderland. It was one of
my oldest girl’s favorite movies as a kid, and she about wore out
the tape in the VHS player. The more I thought about it, the more odd
it seemed to me that I wasn’t humming Christmas carols (since the
radio stations are already blasting them) or even thinking of a more
traditional tune like the Thanksgiving hymn Come Ye Thankful
People, Come. Why was I thinking about the Mad Hatter’s
surrealist tea party and the idea of celebrating an un-anything?
It all began when I opened up the
shopper paper lying on our front lawn the other day. In the colorful
mass of recyclable materials I spied the big-box store flyers proudly
proclaiming, “We’re open on Thanksgiving Day at 6 AM!” My heart
sank. Now I know why that infuriatingly little tune from Alice in
Wonderland had become stuck in my head. I've fallen down the
rabbit hole like Alice, and the insanity surrounds me on all
sides.
There are no sacred days, no official
holidays, or special family gathering days anymore in America. There
is only naked commercialism, overpaid CEOs, retail-slave-laborers,
and poverty wages. Indeed, there is little to be thankful for in a
culture openly based on greed and consumerism.
So, let’s stop fooling ourselves. The
Thanksgiving holiday has been lovely for the past 300 odd years.
(Only the last 150 years of it has been official as Abraham Lincoln
declared it a federal holiday during the Civil War to promote unity). But, obviously, we’ve grown up as a society and grown past it. Why do we
need to be thankful for anything, let alone express thanks to anyone or any deity? We got all the idols you could want, all the stuff we
could ever need, and those with actual paying jobs (there are a few,
but I don’t happen to have one) can go on wild buying sprees at 6
AM on Thanksgiving Day itself without regrets or recrimination. Why
wait for Black Friday when we have a slightly dirty beige
“Un-Thanksgiving Day” to go on a shopping expedition?
The Mad Hatter proclaimed every day
that wasn’t your birthday was your “un-birthday” and worth
celebrating. Since we’ve become a society of ingrates, every
day—including the fourth Thursday of November—can be
“Un-Thanksgiving Day”, right? Celebrate it by shopping during the
wee small hours of the night! Celebrate by not paying your employees’
a living wage! Celebrate it by allowing 45,000 of your fellow
Americans to die each year (that’s one every 12 minutes) from lack
of health care! Celebrate it by glorifying the snarkiness, the
insipid (reality TV works well here), the materialistic, and the
capitalistic!
There is no one to give thanks to or
for or about since it’s Un-Thanksgiving Day! Remember, it’s all
about celebrating ME!
I want to “thank” you now, dear
reader, for reading thus far and putting up with my attitude, but
frankly I’m tired. I’m tired of the selfishness and
mean-spiritedness of our culture. I’m ashamed to be American
these past few years. We’ve become what we always prided ourselves
for not being—self-absorbed and uncaring. We don’t care a rat’s
behind for our own neighbors’ welfare, and our neighbor abroad is
useful only if he has resources we want to take advantage of, be they
animal, vegetable, mineral, or slave-labor.
Abraham Lincoln is lucky to have lived in the 19th century and not the 21st. I’m sure if he were alive today, he would simply walk away and forget all about preserving the union. Why bother to save the self-centered lot which currently dwells here...
Abraham Lincoln is lucky to have lived in the 19th century and not the 21st. I’m sure if he were alive today, he would simply walk away and forget all about preserving the union. Why bother to save the self-centered lot which currently dwells here...
...When you can save all your money to
hit the Thanksgiving Day 6 AM sales! Happy Un-Thanksgiving to you and
yours—and may all your shallow self-indulgences empty your bank
account and raise your cholesterol level.
