Merry Christmas, belated Chanukah, Solstice, Kwanzaa - and last but certainly not least, Festivus For the Rest of Us. Despite our overlords doing their utmost to spoil this holiday, here's hoping that there is not too much gruel in your Yule this year.
Meanwhile, here at Sardonicky we will continue to do our best assailing and wassailing the obscenely wealthy pathocrats among us all year round. Back in medieval times, when Christmas actually was celebrated more like our own modern day Halloween, the serfs would go door to door demanding food and money from their particular overlords. The tradition was that the rich would invite the poor into their warm, well-lit homes in the deep dark of winter for cash tips and seasonal treats, which usually included a well-fortified mystery liquid from the Wassail Bowl.
Rich and poor at least made an occasional pretense of getting along back in the good old bad days. The exception was during times of plague, when the peasants got so desperate that they began escalating wassailing into armed home invasions. So there must be some kind of genetic plutocratic memory at work stemming from those days of yore, because the rich certainly have been operating with a siege mentality lately. Their Republican representatives, especially, act as though billionaires will starve if the masses of people get one-time $2000 checks to help tide them over during our own plague. The Democrats talk as though they really want to give people some holiday relief. They don't, after all, call their theatrics Pro Forma sessions for nothing!
Note, but have an antidote on hand:
ReplyDeleteHow Capitalism Saved Christmas —
The commercialization of the holiday, a familiar lament this time of year, helped rescue Christmas from the grip of violent street gangs.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-capitalism-saved-christmas-11608908441?st=m94okd1bky90vtp&reflink=share_mobilewebshare
Dec. 25, 2020 ~ by Jason Zweig
The attitude and arrogance of “our overlords” is revealed in the headline’s outrageous assertion, pompously compounded in the article as you would expect from Wall Street.
ReplyDeleteAh Christmas, the challenging intellectual and emotional comet that comes around every year. Time to put on a face that fits somewhere between belief and paganism. Frequent the churches and frequent the marketplaces. Jesus born of the Virgin Mary along with Eartha Kitt and “Santa Baby.”
That way you’ll please everybody: the religious who openly accept the shocking news of the Incarnation and the down-to-earth sophisticates who celebrate Festivus with a wink. The twin rails of spirituality and rationality, supported by countless crossties of silence, will get your flatcar through the holidays without going off the rails with relative or friend. Which side are you on? Both.
I’ve just happened upon an essay by an openly self-labeled Christian who aims for a spot roughly between belief and unbelief, but tending a degree or two towards the belief side. Yet it might have the right stuff to hold easy-go pagans to the page. See for yourself, Christian, Pagan, Mixed and Other.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/12/the-longest-night