Thankful

Frightfully busy am I these days, but I couldn't wait until bloody DECEMBER to thrill and entice my readers with a new post, now could I?

I will warn you that, at present, my brain possesses not a single clear thought. What exists there instead is a jumble of rants and ideas sadly devoid of any rational organization. Thanksgiving was thankfully quiet and uneventful, not counting the seven inches of snow that pounded us over the weekend, accompanied by freezing temperatures the likes of which I haven't felt since my flight from Manhattan ten months ago. Fuck, has it been ten months already? So sad, indeed. I'm tremendously nostalgic for New York lately, what with the holiday madness and all its decorational glory upon us. Somehow, it feels very wrong not to be in New York this time of year, a time I typically loathe but nevertheless managed to find wonder in while strolling the brightly-lit streets of Manhattan.

Speaking of Christmas, those of us in America with half a brain are fully aware the mass-marketed, 21st century version of the holiday has little, if anything, to do with Christ, as I hear was its original intent (I'm a Jew, what do I know of the Christ except that I had no desire to see the movie but can't wait to see the rumored Clerks sequel, The Passion of the Clerks, which has nothing to do with Christ but must piss Mel Gibson off good).

No, Christmas in America (like nearly every bloody holiday) has far more to do with maxing your credit cards at Wal-Mart and enduring the barrage of horridly cheesy TV commercials than anything remotely resembling a religious observance. This brings me to a recent conversation I had with my friend C., who is contemplating starting an anti-religion website out of contempt for those who blindly adhere (when its convenient, of course) to some religious ideology heaped on them by their elders without any real consideration for what it all means, the premise being that if you're anti-gay, anti-sex, anti-other races, anti-anything-but-what-we-believe-is-right, you are spreading hate and segregation and therefore, how dare you equate religion with love and tolerance?

Let me make one thing clear: I'm in no way knocking those who truly believe in a higher power and choose to engage in passionate worship of Him/Her/It. In fact, I'm somewhat envious of people who wholeheartedly cling to beliefs they're willing to uphold at any cost. But I'm skeptical that religion in the U.S. is practiced by more than a miniscule percentage of those who truly believe, instead populated by people who worship out of fear -- fear that they'll burn in Hell or that their children will be cursed or that they'll die a horrible death if they don't send checks to Jimmy Swaggart on a regular basis.

Once again, I have gone off on a tangent. My point in all this is that the reason I enjoy Thanksgiving so much (it's not the turkey, which I am generally unfond of) is that it's essentially the only American holiday with no religious or political overtones. Of course, there's that horrible history behind it, what with us slaughtering and displacing thousands of natives, but we'll gloss over that for a moment while we focus instead on the fact that Thanksgiving exists purely as a day to gather with loved ones in sharing a fabulous meal and (in our house, at least) plenty of wine. And for that, I'm thankful.

Posted by ayelet at November 30, 2004 05:24 PM