Pagan Angel and a Greeting Card

People do a lot of irritating things. One of them happens to be complaining about the so called bastardization of holidays. Well, Unless you're Jewish, Islamic, or Asian, chances are your holidays have always been a sham.

Take Christmas, for example. It's the poster child for bastard holidays. The first thing elitists will tell you is that x-mas is too commercial. But then...that's the whole point, isn't it? It's always been about selling one thing or another. Its first product was Jesus.

Christians would have you think the occasion is a celebration of the birth of J. H. Christ himself. But it's not, is it? Who says Jesus was born on December 25th? Why, Western Christians, of course. Eastern Christians, meanwhile, celebrate on an entirely different date. Some folks even say he was born in the Spring. Heck, the December 25th date doesn't even have anything to do with Christianity, it came from the supposed birth date of a Roman Empire Sun god!

And what of Christmas traditions? Decorating trees? Why, that was just a pagan way of enticing nature spirits to return from their winter vacations. Saint Nick and his gifts? He was a bloke that gave bags of money to some guy so his daughters wouldn't have to be prostitutes. I guess that means we should go out and slap some fruit on a tree and hand out fliff to the many whores we happen to meet!

How's about Easter, Christmas's sister celebration? The resurrection of Christ, right? Wrong. You don't actually believe that Christ comes back on a different day each year, do you? Of course not. So why does Easter happen on different days each year? Because of the lunar cycle, of course! Even the term 'Easter' comes from a pagan religion; the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. Easter bunnies and eggs? Merely fertility symbols! So go Have lots of sex during the Vernal Equinox, Jesus said it's cool.

Now that brings us to Thanksgiving. We all know the story: Malcolm X and his followers landed on Plymouth Rock, all the red indians taught them that dead fish turns into corn, and they ate lots of turkey and cranberry sauce.

OK, so that's not quite how it happened, but it's a gross generalization. I'd say it's about 80% accurate. Now, the elitists would tell you Thanksgiving is a celebration of the raping and pillaging of unsuspecting Native Americans and their land. As the son of a son of a daughter of Native Americans, I can safely say they had it coming. These guys traded half the country for trinkets, for god's sake! And all because they had no concept of ownership. Seems to me like commercialization would have done them a helluva lot of good. But Thanksgiving is really just an amalgamation of much older holidays celebrating the harvest. And the turkey? Yeah, the pilgrims had some. But it was by no means the centerpiece it is today. There were plenty of other worthy birds to be vanquished. But what they really had on their plates was shellfish, various vegetables, and lots of eels and beer. Sorry, no cranberry sauce, folks. They had no sugar to make it.

And that leaves us with Halloween. Easily the holiday considered most pagan. Some folks even go so far as to denounce it as being evil. But would you believe it if I told you it's probably the most traditionally in-tact holiday around? It's true. It comes from Hallowmas, a holiday devoted to honoring the saints and the dead folks that aren't. That sounds mighty white of Halloween, now doesn't it? So let's examine the traditions. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is Trick-or-Treat. Then there's costumes, carved pumpkins, and all manner of specters and spooks. That all sounds pretty exploitative, doesn't it? Well, it's not. In fact, that's exactly what makes it one of the most in-tact holidays in terms of tradition. I can see you're having trouble wrapping you head around this one, so I'll break it down.

Let's start from the beginning. As I said before, Halloween comes from Hallowmas, the celebrating of saints. That's Christian saints. And who's big on Christ? The Irish, that's who! What else do we know about the Irish? A shitload of them immigrated to America, for one. And with them came their traditions. One such tradition was the playing of tricks on unsuspecting neighbors. An example that I've seen is the stealing of gates from their hinges. They often wore masks and other disguises to hide their identities. Oh, those rascally Irish!

As the story goes, those rascally tricksters soon became real pains in the ass. Their tricks became more and more devious, to the point where they were demanding compensation lest they pull something really nasty. They say it got so bad that at one point the only solution to the mayhem was to offer goodies from the start, just to avoid the whole extortion deal all together. Pretty soon that became the norm, and thus a beloved holiday tradition was born! That is, a beloved holiday tradition if you're not an elitist killjoy.

And what of the carved pumpkins? That’s another one of the autumn-time activities given us by the wonderful Irish. As legend has it, there once lived a fellow by the name of Jack. Now, Jack was a right ass. A real shithead. Not a respectable bone in his body. But Jack was no fool. Eventually, Jack finds himself at a crossroads. Not a literal one, mind you. See, Jacky-boy done went and outsmarted the Devil himself. Double-crossed him somethin’ fierce. But even people that fuck over the Devil have to die sometime. And that’s where Jack got himself into a whole mess of trouble. He was too much of a prick to get into Heaven, and he certainly wasn't welcome around Satan’s neck of the woods. Having royally pissed off both God and the Devil, his soul was stuck on Earth, doomed to walk forever looking for a place to rest. To light his way he carried a turnip he’d fashioned into a lantern. To power it, the Devil gave him an ember. Sort of a final “Fuck you” from Satan. And thus our morally bankrupt hero came to be known as Jack of the lantern. People were known to light carved turnips and place them in their windows at night, to drive away unwanted spirits. This worked out fine for the Irish, until they landed on American soil and discovered the motherload: pumpkins! Behold, the birth of the jack-o-lantern!


So where does all of this leave us? Well, it leaves us with a choice:

We can take these holidays at face value and continue to celebrate them because our churches tell us to. We can boycott the whole shebang and bitch about how the true meaning of the holidays is lost on us and has given way to capitalist greed and the worship of objectivism. Or you can accept holidays for what they truly are; a time for families and friends to come together and celebrate each other’s happiness, whether that means buying presents, chowing on turkeys, or dressing up like a goblin and begging for candy from people that are all to happy too provide it.

So the next time some elitist asshole starts bombasting at you about the horrors of bastardizing holidays with commercialization, punch them in the face and shout “Merry Christmas”.