Hollidaze by Wishimay

TALK STORY

Hollidaze

POSTED BY: WISHIMAY
UPDATED: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 04:30
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VIEWED: 2861
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010 4:36 PM

Hello...

Well, we're coming onto *that* time of year again...

As someone who was raised in a minority religion (and who hasn't attended for anything other than a wedding or a funeral for over 15 years) I didn't have the holidays others did or the traditions. Hubby's from different religions, too, so I try to balance things. One thing he's never felt comfortable discussing is holidays. His mother jumped around religiously, so he feels lost most days. I tell him to find his OWN path, but that's easier said...

Anyways, I was just wondering if you all like the holidays, if they make sense to you, which is your most/least favorite and why?

I don't understand Halloween, it has always seemed ridiculously archaic to me. I like Thanksgiving but am divided between liking the idea of it, and being conflicted about the hypocracy as both him and I are about 1/8 native american. Christmas is just so massively hyped and obnoxious, I can't get past the commercialism to even try liking it. Don't know much about Hanukkah, Qwanzaa, or winter solstice... Anyone know of any other good wholesome winter traditions that don't come with a load of baggage or power wasting strings of lights???

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Wednesday, October 27, 2010 3:17 AM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Anyone know of any other good wholesome winter traditions that don't come with a load of baggage or power wasting strings of lights???

In my faith, righteousness and candy are inseparable. If you're a good little girl you get to bite the ears off a chocolate Easter bunny! Chocolate eggs are discounted at the grocer's so that eating them can be your very own nondenominational holy day ritual in the Spring.

In Autumn, the candy eating ritual certainly could be applied to Halloween. And in Winter there is Christmas, with its candy-canes. To participate, diabetics and atheists must use a blood glucose monitoring system. So celebrate the holidays with sweets. The turkey, yuletide tree, and trick or treat costumes are unnecessary distractions.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 27, 2010 3:49 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

I can't stand them either. I worked at a restaurant along time ago and did triple shifts during the holidays. They had a Xmas Hits tape that played on an endless loop. It was murder. To this day when I here Bing Crosby sing I go just a little mental - I may have heard White Christmas 6 million times.

I always wondered what holiday traditions - if any - would have made it to the 'Verse. How would Mal feel about Thanksgiving?

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Wednesday, October 27, 2010 6:00 AM

WISHIMAY

Unfortunately, Two, our faith would have to worship a low-sugar god, as my husband's father is diabetic and we are both borderline... We've never gotten into the sugar parts anyway, easter baskets and trick or treats go in the trash. That's also why my kid is one of the few without cavities in her grade...

-Pismo- A few years ago someone who didn't celebrate Christmas worked at a place that looped holiday music and she sued for emotional distress and won. There has been a couple studies that say holiday music can be the mental equivilent of waterboarding. I'm with that. All the high pitched fast paced stuff makes me nervous.

I'd have to think Mal would have a secret soft spot for Thanksgiving, happy times on a ranch and all. I doubt he'd be vocal about it though...

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Wednesday, October 27, 2010 6:31 AM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Wow, really? You can sue for bad music? Wish I knew that at my old crappy restaurant job, I can't stand country. Country music on a loop is way worse than holiday music, because country music is depressing. Talk about torture... Incidentally, studies have shown a higher correlation between country music and suicide than what is found in any other genre. Listening to anything on a loop would eventually become torturous, I wonder how people who work in shopping malls cope.

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Wednesday, October 27, 2010 11:13 AM

WISHIMAY

Mu hhahaaa- Fool! you have revealed your weakness!
This shall be your undoing....

(music plays) There's a tear in my beer 'cause I'm crying for you dear....

There's a tear in my beer, 'cause I'm crying for you dear.....

There's a tear in my beer, 'cause I'm crying for you dear...

I'm suprised it took this long for someone to sue. I think country now isn't half as bad as country used ta be... Not like hip-hop is any better, I can't even have it on in the car with my kid, every song is gettin naked and gettin booty. I was thinking this morning how tame Madonna was compared to Katy Perry, lol.

I guess all genres have a range of perspectives and annoyances, now... Shouldn't be forced to listen to mass repetition of any of them, either way. Went to a local theme park this summer and they played Beach Boys and Beatles looped all summer, you could tell the teenaged lifeguards just wanted to drown themselves, and one girl said she just couldn't take it anymore. I like the Beatles and after an hour or two I couldn't take it.

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Wednesday, October 27, 2010 6:15 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Quote:
(music plays) There's a tear in my beer 'cause I'm crying for you dear....

Gorramit, you're makin' me not like beer. You ruin rum for me and we'll have words

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Thursday, October 28, 2010 3:00 PM

WISHIMAY

Well, lemme see...

Pour me somethin' tall an strong make it a hurricaine before I go insane...
Hurricaine's rum, ain't it?

OR Give me two Pina Colada's- One for each hand

Or Yabba dabba doo, the king is gone and soooo are you...
That one's about whiskey...

Toes in the water, toes in the clay, not a worry in the world-a PBR on the way...

Does Margaritaville count as country?

I can ruin any poison, my one and only superpower

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Thursday, October 28, 2010 3:31 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Quote:
Give me two Pina Colada's- One for each hand

I actually like that song. Your powers have failed because you used a good country song (I forgot they existed). Truth be told, there are a few Garth Brooks and Brad Paisley tunes I really enjoy.

But in most cases I agree with Xander. Country is the music of pain.

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Thursday, October 28, 2010 3:52 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Just so you know, I collect demented "Holiday" music as ECM and counter assault, which I have done since I was about twelve, the crass commercialism of it all... ALWAYS bugged me, right along with the phony smiles pasted over brutal hate at "family" gatherings, you know ?

S'all bull biscuits anyway - but I will go out of my way to help children enjoy it, cause IMHO that's who these are for, and the way we treat em as a general rule I feel they deserve the happy.

This past April we had kind of a bunny overpopulation problem for a while (neatly solved by a pair of hungry owls a little later) and the few residents we have who got kids, well, the kiddies seein em hoppin everywhere were quite delighted, one in particular who was absolutely fascinated...

So I went out and got a couple of them plastic eggs filled with candy and hid em in the yards of the folk I knew had small kids, the night before as I did my security rounds, heh heh heh.

Holidays are what you make of em, really.

Although I *DO* have one "holiday", and it happens three times a year, just a little bit after Easter, Halloween, and Xmas...

*cue epic fanfare*

CLEARANCE CANDY RAID!!!!

And imma pretty bad about it, too - unless there's like a really large amount of it, you can always tell when I have hit the place, cause the only thing left is a couple tumbleweeds!
Seriously, I'll stagger off grinning with six freakin bags worth.

Hehehehehe.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Thursday, October 28, 2010 5:18 PM

WISHIMAY

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

Just so you know, I collect demented "Holiday" music as ECM and counter assault, which I have done since I was about twelve, the crass commercialism of it all... ALWAYS bugged me, right along with the phony smiles pasted over brutal hate at "family" gatherings, you know ?

One of the things that came with the whole hubby package deal was Dr. Demento :) Many a December day has been saved by Rudolph got ran over by my Grandma, The Channukah Song, or my personal fav- Rusty Chevrolet.

Thing is- me and Christmas got along OK until I got married, then in-laws get incensed I don't follow their example and go crazy about it. They put up several trees and spend months arguing about lights (incessantly) and it looks like a Christmas villiage threw up in her house...A few years ago I stopped going to their house for the "festivities" because I just couldn't take the phoney smiles coated with extra loud carols whenever I walked in the room(just and only for me). Now they are just passive aggressive from Halloween 'till New Years. At least my family is nice enough not to visit. If I didn't love my husband so damn much, I'd gladly divorce him just over his family...I'll probably be on here Dec 25, if anybody just wants to talk about the weather...Gosh, that sounds nice and...civil-like...Interraction without hostility...

I just want peace. ...Don't know how to do that without being a hermit, dammit.

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Thursday, October 28, 2010 5:18 PM

CYBERSNARK

Actually, it's only the traditional Christmas songs that (mostly) suck. There's quite a few coontemporary Christmas songs that I actually really like. I won't post them, though, because it's frackin' October still!

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Anyways, I was just wondering if you all like the holidays, if they make sense to you, which is your most/least favorite and why?

I'm (distantly) Celtic, so I tend to keep to the cross-quarter festivals: picture the year as a ring, with four spokes, falling at New Year (winter Solstice/Christmas), the beginning of Spring (Easter), Midsummer's Eve (summer solstice), and the harvest (Thanksgiving/Samhain/Hallowe'en). That's where our modern holidays all started; when humans discovered agriculture, this was how we learned to keep a calendar. March/April is the beginning of the planting season (marking Easter as a time for new life --thus the rabbits and eggs), October is when the Harvest comes in (and you make your blood/corn/candy sacrifices and hope you don't die when winter comes), Solstices are midway between the two (and in winter, the farmers aren't working, so they're free to party [plus, winter's halfway over and we're not dead yet]).

Pretty much every culture on Earth has their own variation of these basic festivals.

Despite what Christians are raised to think, "Christmas" has nothing to do with Jesus' birth (reading between the lines of the Gospels puts his birth in Summer --the sheep are lambing). It only happened that way because all the pagans had a big winter festival, and the Christians knew they had no chance of cancelling it, so they just co-opted it.

(Which makes it kinda hilarious when Christians complain about Christmas being "stolen" by commercialism. We stole it fair and square.)

I tend to treat Christmas as a celebration of family and togetherness --the whole family comes together around the hearth, where a fire is kindled. It is this light that keeps us alive when the rest of the universe grows cold and dead. Without our families, we are nothing.

As years passed and we became less agricultural, most of these holidays slipped around some. Thanksgiving was sold as a more Christian-friendly version of the pagan Hallowe'en, Midsummer's Eve was all but forgotten, and nobody even remembers the Corn God of Eostre.

Hell, Santa Claus is Odin Highfather. white-bearded, purveyor of Elven craftsmanship, all-seeing, all-knowing, headquartered in the extreme North, driver of a sleigh with eight reindeer (Odin rode Sleipnir, an eight-legged horse). The only thing missing is the eye-patch.

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Thursday, October 28, 2010 5:41 PM

WISHIMAY

All things I know, which also makes it hard to sort out... Also, my historians will want to fight your historians, mine say it was somewheres in late spring...

Celebration of the hearth, hmmm?

Not half bad, maybe me and him and my critter can all get together and bake something for each other?

I like that idea...

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Wednesday, November 24, 2010 4:30 AM

WISHIMAY

Also, we have found a new tradition for Thanksgiving... Turning off the TV for two days before...It'll give ya something to really be thankful for ;)

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