Is There Any Meaning Left to the Holidays?

As I prepare to write this new addition to my blog this day after Thanksgiving, 2014, I feel like the old Crones of times past shaking my head wondering if there is any of the original meaning of Thanksgiving and Christmas left in this Country.

For the last few years, the traditional meaning of Thanksgiving Day, particularly, has been crumbling.  Thanksgiving has been one of the few secular days, one set aside for family and friends.  It has been some time since the advent of, "Black Friday"; the name given the day after Thanksgiving, a day on which we in the Western World put on display our dark side.  The day when we claw and maim our fellow humans in an effort to get more stuff at a discounted price!

With Thanksgiving Day now having been fully co-opted by retailers who cannot wait to take the money, or Charge Cards, shoved at them by over-eager shoppers, some of whom have been given the day (or the lucky ones, two days, plus the weekend) off from their places of employment.

Thus begins a whole month devoted to a preparation for Christmas, more accurately a month honoring madness and Mammon rather than Love and Peace.  Since Black Friday's start has been moved up into Thanksgiving, we are already presented with pictures of long lines of people waiting to get into stores.  Tomorrow's newspaper will undoubtedly present us with more news and pictures about more examples of the madness.

For many years I have mostly opted out of, what has become, these modern end-of-year rituals.  This year I expect to go into semi-hibernation until Spring with the hope that perhaps something will have changed by the time I again tentatively join the human race.

So, with that Crone-ish, "humbug," I leave you, with the hope that at least some people will decide to make this month a time when they find ways to create gifts reminiscent of what used to be what this season was about and thoughts of Love and Peace.

Shirley Gallup