Skip to main content

Time to take the gloves off



Boxing Day never took hold in the States.  This traditional British holiday was a day off for the servants who obviously had to put in a full day on Christmas.  They were given gifts on this day in the form of a "Christmas box."  It seemed to evolve from Saturnalia, where slave owners and slaves would switch roles for one day  It later became a banking holiday throughout the Commonwealth nations.

For Americans the day after Christmas is the big day for returns.  The shops have to deal with exchanges for all those Christmas sweaters and other items Americans politely said thank you for but set aside to be redeemed for something else, assuming receipts were included.

It seems much of our holiday season is driven by consumption, and it seems this was a banner year for the retail and food industry as signs seem to be pointing up as far as the economy goes, although Conservatives would be loathe to admit it.  2014 is predicted to be a good year economically, which doesn't bode well for the Republicans, given all the doom and gloom they have been promoting the past five years, although Business Insider claims the bad rollout of "Obamacare" resulted in a 13-point swing in voter confidence, with Republicans now ahead 49-44 per cent in generic Congressional races.  Of course you can take these early polls with a grain of salt.

CNN sounded a hopeful note with their annual presentation of "Hero" awards for community and other non-profit workers around the world.  It's an interactive affair where you can nominate and vote for your favorite "hero."  This year, Chad Pregracke walked away with the top honor, but I was struck by Robin Emmons, who has been championing wholesome foods for poor communities in North Carolina.

However, I have to question the idea of "Heroes."   This seems to be a word too much bandied about these days, especially when I don't think any of these persons regard themselves as heroes.  Nevertheless, it is a refreshing change from the "heroes" the Right Wing has been promoting these days.

For me, Boxing Day is a good day for reflection.  A time to pull my thoughts together and sound a hopeful note for the New Year.  I try to avoid stores, avoid fights and avoid slippery patches on my run.  I hope everyone is having a chance to relax and look forward to resuming our Reading Group in the New Year.

Best Wishes!  Jim


Comments



  1. Santa on a bender:

    http://x.vukajlija.com/var/uploads/reactions/201312/133660/2h9V7bm.gif


    Started his New Year's holiday too soon! :)

    Hopefully, he'll be back in time for the Philadelphia Mummer's Day parade.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...