On Holidays; or Why I Spent My Saturday Evening Dressed As A Time Traveler

When you're a low to mid level bureaucrat working in an office, the majority of your time spent performing the same six tasks on a perpetual loop as though you were trapped in the purgatory of a CD stuck on infinite repeat, there is a tendency to lose track of time. Perhaps this is putting it too lightly. There is a tendency for days and weeks and months and even years to soften into a long smear of muddled and nebulous recollection. This quality often leaves one with the same feeling about their life as you might get were you to have just stepped in something unpleasant, a sort of "uhhh? Eeeeewwwww" and "well now what am I supposed to do?" feeling.

For many years, most likely beginning out of the last gasps of my childhood, I've not been much for holidays. My parents had been raised Catholic, Polish and Irish respectively, and they had a love of the major Christian holidays inculcated in them from a young age. As such, even though they had long since abandoned Catholocism before I was even a consideration, we still celebrated Christmas and Easter. Of course, as a young child I loved the idea of getting presents and chocolate regardless of the inducement. As I grew I eventually started to ask questions about religion. As I have likely mentioned here before, I had assumed for many years that we were Christian as we were Caucasian, American and because we celebrated Christmas and Easter. We did not celebrate either with a particularly Christian framework, for us they were about family and general good will, but as a child of the eighties I watched a lot of television and was naturally subject to a lot of cultural bleed. One day I simply asked my father what religion we were. His response was something along the lines of "Well, I don't really believe in any one religion, but I have a kindof Taoist leaning in my philosophy". There's more to that story, but I'll save that for a later time.

As I moved from childhood to adolescence I grew increasingly more concerned with things I believed were very serious. The state of the world, poverty, the disproportionate distribution of wealth, social theory, revolution, et cetera. My family's money concerns, particularly memories of my father struggling to maintain the solvency of the construction company that he owned and operated, were certainly the genesis of my feelings of great concern regarding these lofty topics; but while my concerns may have started at home, by high school my thoughts had spread to the entire world. One problem with thinking constantly of matters that you deem to be exceedingly serious is that it tends to take the flavor out of life. Why should I receive presents each year when those same toys were likely manufactured by children younger than I? Some people jokingly refer to this notion as liberal guilt. Personally, I still think it is a perfectly valid question, one that I have yet to answer acceptably. If you feel you have, feel free to let me know.

It was around that time that I began to move mentally towards minimalism and began to divest myself of attachment to unnecessary material possessions. Of course, being an American teenager this process was far from immediate. I was quite attached to some of my stuff. I still am. However, more so than the people I observed around me, I began to detach myself from the sort of commitment to possession and opulence that seemed so pervasive. As such, I became utterly disenfranchised with Christmas. And with Christians. The seriousness of my concerns made those who did not completely agree with me seem wicked in their excess. The hypocrisy of claiming to celebrate the ideas of charity, humility and peace through a commercial structure responsible for perpetuating the most pernicious ills of humanity made me furious to the point of exasperation.

Once I had decided to be actively opposed to Christmas, the rest of the holidays fell like dominoes. Hallmark holidays were the easiest to abandon as they were the most superficial and I had little to no emotional investment in their celebration. Easter was fairly easy. Once I knew enough to simply say, "I am not Christian. I do not believe in the things that this day celebrates" I quickly stopped caring. Thanksgiving and Halloween were the hardest, as they are arguably the most fun holidays (after Christmas, of course). For the last seven or so years, Thanksgiving has been the only major holiday that I have actively celebrated with any semblance of gusto.

Was this decision to abandon holidays based on some very reasonable ideas about the way of the world? That is a question that could lead to a lengthy debate. The point, however, is that I had intentionally divested myself of traditions that had lasted for thousands of years. These were memes that had survived and evolved through countless generations. Christmas had originally been the Roman celebration of Saturnalia and Easter is purported to be based on the Saxon celebration of the Goddess Eostre. People had believed in and found use for these ideas, these rites, and these customs for more than twenty times the likely maximum length of my entire life. By eighteen I felt I knew enough to chuck them out the window.

There is always an egocentrism to rebellion. Even if it is couched in sacrifice and benevolence. Especially so. One thing I will always admit to being is a dyed-in-the-wool egocentric. To assume that your ideas are more valid than those of Society - an organism almost infinitely larger, older and more powerful than yourself - requires a commitment to believing in the boundlessness of your own importance, as well as a pair of stones. However, sometimes you need to give in to that particular delusion. Sometimes you need to man up and say, "No, I don't think that is correct at all." After all, that's part of the process. Your rampant love of self is necessary to push the boundaries of what society knows and believes. Your acts of rebellious egocentrism are Society questioning itself. You are God's voice of self-doubt.

So, as I stated earlier, mindless repetition of action, day-in day-out, has a tendency to erase the temporal borders that we artificially established to define our perception of change. Effectively you become lost in a dream of one never-ending day. It was once asked, "How do you establish a point of reference if the whole of reality is one flat expanse". How do you know what days are important if they are all the same. How do you know what to care about? How do you establish a valuation system when everything is the same? The answer is . . . ?

I came to the conclusion a while ago that holidays are more than we give them credit for. Sure, Christmas has been co-opted by Commercialism into the worship of our own luxury, but that will only continue to be true as long as we choose to celebrate it that way. We are the ones celebrating, and we can do so however we like. Perhaps it is not important how, why or what we celebrate, but perhaps it is important that we celebrate. Holidays are temporal landmarks. They are pillars we have constructed in the vast expanse of human existence to remind us why we keep going. They are monuments to the things that we find useful. They are lighthouses to help us through the shadows and fog.

It can be very easy to convince yourself not to believe in something, not to care about something. My opposition to holidays never helped a single person. While my very serious concerns were perhaps well intentioned, they ultimately did nothing productive. If anything, by abandoning the spirit of hope that a holiday can bring it likely caused me to become more joyless, bitter, self-centered and misanthropic. To become an anti-social recluse out of an opposition to the suffering of others is as exactly as ridiculous as celebrating charity through commercialism.

What to do about it? Here's how the process goes: people create an idea, they use that idea until its usefulness fades, they realize that the idea no longer useful, they devalue that idea, they replace it with a new idea (often an updated version of the original idea). Simple enough. How do I apply that to this situation? I believe that the ideas and action patterns currently celebrated by our major cultural celebrations are at best ineffectively honored and at worst are actively corroding the well being of Society. Instead I will make or find new celebrations, or reinvent the manner in which I celebrate the existing ones.

Yesterday I threw together a ramshackle costume and headed off to Portland's Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day. Now, some would argue that this event is just a flimsy pretense to wander the streets getting drunk and acting weird. That is absolutely correct. But simultaneously it is also a celebration of fun, creativity and a sense of whimsy. The idea of virtual strangers coming together entirely for the purpose of amusing themselves and each other and by so doing make the world a slightly more interesting place to be is an idea that I have decided to support. The format of the drunken rampage is limited in its scope and application, but that is just the host meme, a pre-existing and socially acceptable action pattern within which the core concept can incubate. The important part is the idea. If that idea, that people should try to help each other have fun and learn not to take themselves so seriously, is fostered and encouraged to spread it might very well change the world.

Or maybe the only result will be that nerds get to feel comfortable being themselves for a little bit and get a chance to chat up a few pretty girls. I can support that too.