Mix of clouds and sun, a little warmer.
LiveJournal's holiday theme is pretty neatly done, don't you think?
I wrote in an earlier
post that I think Thanksgiving had become a forced holiday, like
Christmas, in this, Our Modern World. But I don't think it has to be
that way. Society's expectations can put so much pressure on us to
"enjoy" the holidays like Bing Crosby or something (I think the original
movie was called Holiday Inn and was rechristened -- pardon the pun
-- White Christmas later, after the famous Irving Berlin song featured
in the movie. Or maybe it was two separate movies. I'll look it up*.).
An old TV series called Thirtysomething premiered when I turned --
ulp! -- thirty-two, I think. One of the better episodes (often copied
since) had a disastrous Thanksgiving celebration by the Thirtysomething
gang, with the women trying to cook a frozen turkey an hour before
dinner, and the bird falls out of the oven still frozen solid with a
thud. They also broke somebody's mother's china (I think) and the men
hurt each other playing "touch" football so badly one had to go to the
emergency room. But come Christmas time, the conflicts generated by
tension over expecting more holiday pressure prompted one of the lead
characters to research her husband's Judaism, and -- with his sister's
help -- surprise him with what looked like (to this Gentile) a
traditional Hannukah celebration. I'm not necessarily promoting
orthodoxy here (I don't want to promote anything), just suggesting a
little creative thinking and relaxing into the season.
To me, "expectations" are the real joy killers.
They will never be met for any holiday, or any day, unless you set the
expectations so low they roll into reverse and you're happy they weren't
met. I prefer "anticipation" of what might be good (the better to enjoy
a sense of possibility, if nothing else) and what might go wrong (the
better to avert it).
So hey, enjoy.
____
*I corrected the movie information in a later post.
LJ orig.: 12/06/06
No comments:
Post a Comment