Ray St. Louis
12/2/02
BETWEEN THE LINES
As a well-traveled and worldly-wise newspaper columnist, I am often called upon to impart some
of my vast store of earthly knowledge to the younger generation.
More often, however, my wisdom simply spews forth like some impulsive and unpredictable
fountain without anyone requesting it whatsoever. Such is the case this time.
The subject of today’s spewing is “Holiday Traditions.”
My more erudite young readers will notice that I capitalize and place in quotes the topic of the
day. They will also be impressed that I used the word “erudite” in a sentence.
The rest of you will figure out that I simply looked it up in a thesaurus, an indispensable tool for
those who wish to pass themselves off as well-traveled and worldly-wise.
But I digress. The reason I capitalize and place in quotes the topic of the day is because that’s
the way I’ve always done it. At least, I think that’s the way I’ve always done it. I may have done it
another way at one time, but I don’t remember. And that, young readers, is the essence of
tradition.
With that in mind, we shall now examine some of the cherished long-standing traditions of the
season beginning with the holiday just completed, Thanksgiving.
A long time ago, so long ago that no one living today was even alive, except that Alan
Greenspan may have been running the Federal Reserve Board, and possibly the Rolling Stones
were going out on tour, our European forefathers got together with our native forefathers, not to
mention the respective foremothers, and had a feast.
Afterwards, all the forefathers settled back into their easy chairs to watch approximately
seventeen straight hours of football while the foremothers were stuck with the job of cleaning up.
The next day, all the foremothers spent the entire day shopping and racking up huge credit card
bills as a way of getting back at the forefathers. Thus began the cherished tradition of the After
Thanksgiving Day Sale.
Of course, some things were different about the way our ancestors celebrated that first
Thanksgiving than the way we celebrate it. In those days, giant inflatable balloons of cartoon
characters and corporate logos were rather hard to come by. As a result, the Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day parade was considerably shorter.
However, the parade even then ended with Santa Claus, which has been the signal ever since
for thousands of Salvation Army bell ringers to hit the streets.
Which brings us to the traditions of Christmas.
Christmas, of course, goes back even farther than Thanksgiving. So far back that the Rolling
Stones were probably just a garage band.
Similar to Thanksgiving, the main Christmas tradition we observe is, of course, shopping. And,
like most of our Christmas traditions, shopping goes back to ancient paganism.
Often during the days leading up to Christmas - or “Yuletide” as they called it – the Druid priests
and priestesses would go around purchasing whatever it was that Druids tended to use in their
holiday celebrations. Mistletoe, wolf’s bane and various kinds of forest roots come to mind.
Like most pagan Yuletide traditions, this practice was taken over by Christianity and soon
developed into the modern Christmas Shopping Season, which, thanks to the influence of
American retailers, has now grown to approximately 300 days out of every year.
As it has grown, our Christmas shopping tradition has gotten farther and farther away from its
pagan beginnings. These days, one can hardly find a decent display of wolf’s bane or forest
roots at any of our leading department stores, although the occasional sprig of mistletoe can still
be found. Since there’s no way even the most dedicated shopper can spend 300 consecutive
days shopping only for mistletoe, we are forced by necessity to rely heavily on purchases of VCR’
s, VHS’s and DVD’s.
We also rely far more heavily on credit cards than did the ancient druids who, according the
recent anthropological studies, carried only American Express.
Somewhere, my dear young readers, there’s a point to all this. If you can figure out what it is, you
are indeed erudite.
Happy holidays. Shop ‘til you drop.