Yes Virginia, it depnds on what you mean by Santa

The disappearance of widespread fear of witches, (sorry Mrs. Palin) and the age old need for blaming things on them has left us trying to fill the void with Communists, sexual predators and racists, amongst a few others.  So when the somewhat loathsome Megyn Kelly, used her position on the always loathsome Fox News to stress that like Jesus, Santa Claus was a white man, the accusations of racism were not far behind.

I have to wonder however. Leaving the Jesus question aside -- the question of whether Jews are considered white by most modern 'authorities' -- I have to wonder just how biased it might be to assert that St. Nicholas, a 4th century Greek resident (and Bishop) of  Patara was white as well.  The sort of saint we Americans call Santa Claus  seems to have lost the connection with the real 4th century Saint in more ways than weight. The department store employee and Coca Cola pitch man whose nickname now rhymes with 'straws' rather than 'house' in America now only gives gifts to children and leaves prostitutes to fend for themselves. But he's still of European extraction.

Does that mean, as  Aisha Harris asserted in Slate.com, that 'forcing' Santa only to be white caused non-white children “insecurity and shame.”  Argue about the color of God and perhaps she has a valid idea, but I'm sorry, God is a human creation, created in our image. St. Nicholas was what he was - a Greek white male. Jesus was still Jewish even if it makes everyone else feel left out during Simchat Torah. If you want to get Biblicaly literal here, the first man was Red and if he was an image of God himself -- well then. More scientifically the first man was African and dark skinned.  Am I offended?  Seriously?

Now if she's suggesting that the real Santa is the guy at Macy's I once visited in the late 40's, that's a different question.  If he's the incarnate spirit of generosity Virginia was told about,?  Kindess, compassion, love -- these have no color.  I'm all for black Santas, Mohican Santas, Mexican Santas and Chinese elves because for atheist me, that's all there is to Christmas, but hey, some people are still serious about their religion and about history and have a right to be.  As Americans we get to determine our own traditions, or should and the often malicious Megyn may be right.  If history offends thee, thou getteth not  to rewrite it.

I have to wonder  about the controversy in the Netherlands, where the traditional Dutch Sinterklaas, a strong influence on our tradition is accompanied by companion Black Pete or Zwarte Piet,  giver of sweet treats to children. Wouldn't you know that the character, usually a Dutchman in blackface and curly wig, according to the racially sensitive Dutch could be interpreted as a "racist caricature of a black man."   I suppose it could be, but as an immensely loved character, which children is he alienating?  

Isn't racism, or at least the kind we rightly object to, about imputing negative things to a distinctive group? Is it racist to insist Michael Jordan is black?  Nelson Mandela? So we, or some of us,  are damned if he's black and damned if he's white and we go on arguing about which of us is free of prejudice while real racists are left alone.

You know what I want for Christmas? 

Paranoia, Inc.

If you've read this blog over the years you know I'm always griping about the "changes" occurring in my favorite language and I'm sorry but the "language has to change" argument misses my point. "Yes everything has to change but that's hardly a defense of sabotage, ignorance and malicious marketing schemes.

Sure it's usually some phrase like "We're efforting the details" or "here's a genius new technique."  It may be nothing more than some bozo saying "snap" over and over again as though he were selling Rice Crispies and couldn't remember the rest of the slogan. But these things things are probably no more than symptoms of a population in transition from thinking citizens to consumers and the products of American education trying to put a gloss of sorts on weak vocabulary and make up for confusion with jargon.  Worse things are happening.

Pernicious hipness is one thing, but for many Americans the fact that "patriot" now primarily means you think the President, the government and the "takers" are plotting to kill us all, that the nuclear attack from North Korea is imminent and inevitable and that the big question for the future is whether or not Obama will catastrophically destroy the economy first.  Yes, Patriots know all about the mass graves being prepared, the secret laws enabling  millions of us to be rounded up and incarcerated or worse.  Patriots know that before long, when the food stamps and Social Security payments stop, the armed mobs will be breaking down your doors, emptying your refrigerator and raping wives, daughters and grandaughters while you watch.  Patriots know that unless you fortify, arm and provision yourself today, the Liberals, Koreans, Obamaheads and the poor are gonna getcha.

How do I know this?  For some reason I attract salesmen. Every fear peddler on earth has my e-mail address and I suspect that if you ever bought hunting equipment or even fishing gear from a catalog, or searched for a crossbow or a gun cleaning kit on the internet, you're on a list too, the internet being a far more effective and perhaps intrusive method of surveillance and intelligence gathering than the NSA could ever cook up on their own.  Order some gizmo for your boat and be deluged with adds for boating gear on every web page you open up for weeks.  Somewhere, somehow, someone has me listed as a PATRIOT.


FEMA plans for massive depopulation, it screams.

---

FEMA Banned This Video...

First off.
If you care about your safety...
Stop what you're doing.
And watch this video with the door shut.

I wish this was a joke.
Unfortunately it isn't.
It's deadly serious.
I'm sending this to all my friends, family and patriot brothers...
As quickly as I can...
Because it's the ONLY video I've seen that reveals the lethal "December surprise" nobody is talking about...

Yes...
The "December surprise" is bigger and far more dangerous than Sandy could have ever been.
And it's headed to YOUR neighborhood...
WAY faster than you think.

The chilling speaker on the video (my new favorite patriot)...is going to give you the 3 practical steps you need to take TODAY...
To make it out alive and well...
This is the big one folks.
Don't take this lightly..
The "December surprise" has already begun in certain parts of the country.
And it's about to make Hurricane Sandy look like a six year old flower girl.
Your fellow Patriot,
Jason Richards
P.S. Do both Obama and Romney know ALL about this, but are SWORN to secrecy...?

___________________________________

 
 Read it and weep.

If you truly are a "Patriot" of course you won't be bothered that FEMA did not, has not, could not ban this video or any other video.  Patriots just know and never mind that this is a rerun of something that firswt ran over a year ago and that the author predicts the utter collapse of civilization by 2013. Never mind that the narrator is the same one selling a book that promises to make you irresistible to women if you know the three secret questions to ask them -- Patriots just know it's all true and only Patriots like Bubba and Bevis will survive to lead us all into the future.

About that Time Magazine cover ...

(Ahem ... modesty prevents)

Happy Holidays, y'all!

You know, it's that time of year again; as we approach the end of the year, we enter the Holiday Season. And just like every year of late, there are those who can't be happy unless they're given the opportunity to feel angry about something. And this time of year, the majority of them are the fine folks who don't believe in American values like "inclusiveness" and other sentiments best expressed at the base of the Statue of Liberty (you know, that whole "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" thing).

People like (just as an example) Bill O'Reilly, who want to pretend that there's some kind of "War on Christmas." They have decided to make themselves angry over something as innocuous as wishing people "Happy Holidays," instead of saying "Merry Christmas."

This is a particularly stupid thing to get cranky over, if you think about it, because the time in question, often referred to as the "Christmas season," runs from Thanksgiving through Christmas, and usually spills over into New Years, which is three holidays right there.

(I'm going with the current, somewhat commercialized version of the "Christmas season" - you know, "free market = good thing" - as practiced here in America in the 21st Century, so keep your cranky little historical interruptions to yourself - I might just mention them later anyway. And incidentally, the current "Christmas season" seems to have extended itself almost to Halloween at this point, which is yet a FOURTH holiday.)

December is just littered with minor Christian holidays, some of which (depending on your particular flavor of Christianity) are considered of relative importance, such as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8) and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12 (which is moderately popular here in New Mexico for some reason).

(A little trivia for you: the "Immaculate Conception" doesn't refer to the birth of Jesus, but to the day Mary was conceived, probably a decade and a half or so earlier: see, in order to give birth to the child of God, her birth had to be "immaculate." A lot of good Christians get that wrong - it's pretty much a Catholic thing.)

December is particularly full of Feast Days to various saints, from St Francis Xavier (December 3) to St Lucy of Syracuse (December 13). Yesterday, December 6, was St Nicholas Day, if it helps - that, at least, has a Christmas-based attachment to the holiday.

At least five of the December saints are Johns, if you count one non-English variation: St John Damascene (December 4), St Juan Diego (December 9), St John of the Cross (December 14), St John of Kanty (December 23) and, of course, St John the Apostle (December 27).

A lot of the saints were Johns; that's why Jesus needed to make sure that the prostitutes got into heaven first (Matthew 21:31). * ba-dum CHING *

Now, that last John (the Apostley one) is actually a part of a whole series of Feast Days (an even dozen of them, in fact), which make up a string of holidays immortalized in the song "the Twelve Days of Christmas." You'd think that somebody fixated on Christmas traditions could at least remember that much.

There's a whole buttload of secular holidays and commemorations going on: December 10 is Human Rights Day, December first was World AIDS Awareness Day; it seems like every time you turn around, somebody wants to remember, bring attention to, or sell something. Look up International Civil Aviation Day, and Poinsettia Day (which is also Christmas-related, if it helps - December 12). In fact, today (December 7, 2013) is National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. (Did you remember? SpaghettiOs did.)

December 22 is Forefather's Day, commemorating the Pilgrim's landing on Plymouth Rock. You want a whiter, more all-American holiday? And how come you didn't celebrate it last year, you commie?

The day after Christmas, December 26 (which is also St Stephen’s day, one of those Twelve Days of Christmas I mentioned earlier) is Boxing Day, which is mostly (but not entirely) only still celebrated in England.

December 4 through December 21, a roughly 2-week string, are considered Zappadan, celebrating the life and works of Frank Zappa. Popular culture also gave us Festivus (you know, for the rest of us) on December 23.

If you happen to be African-American, Kwanzaa runs from December 26 through January 1, and it's a commemoration of African heritage; having first been celebrated in 1966, it's now officially older than a lot of the people bitching about it. (Here's a thought: if you're going to complain about people not honoring your white, Christian traditions, perhaps you shouldn't complain when they hold celebrations in honor of theirs.)

But just because other religions aren't Christian doesn't mean they don't have their own celebrations. For example, if you're of a particularly pagan turn of mind, December 21, 2013 will be the Winter Solstice. Among the Germanic people, this was known as Yule - it's one of the many pagan celebrations that the early Christian church hijacked. (Where do you think the term "yuletide" comes from?) There's also Saturnalia, which is a festival based around fertility rituals that comes from the Greco-Roman traditions (and certainly sounds like more fun than another round of carol-singing).

For our Hindu friends, Friday the 13th this year will be Gita Jayanti, celebrating the "birth" (creation) of the Bhagavad Gita; technically, it's held on the Ekadasi (11th day of the waxing moon) of the month of Margashirsha in the Hindu calendar, so I did that math for you.

If you happen to be of the Buddhist persuasion, tomorrow (the eighth day of the twelfth month) is Rohatsu, or "Bodhi Day," commemorating the enlightenment of the Buddha. (If you happen to live in a Zen Buddhist monastery - I don't, but your mileage may vary - this would be the last day of a week-long sesshin, or meditative retreat.)

Hanukkah ended on December 5 this year. Since our right-wing friends like to trumpet the term "Judeo-Christian traditions," it's surprising how few menorahs I saw in the windows.

If you are a follower of the Jedi church, I really don't know what to tell you. "Life Day" is a Wookie holiday, and falls about once every three years on our calendar. But the first human awareness of it came about this time of year in 1978. Make of that what you will.

In that magical era of the Fifties that conservatives like to pretend was a special time in American history when everything was perfect, they liked to refer to America as "the melting pot," where people from all cultures could live and thrive. So, really, if the phrase "Happy Holidays" offends you, perhaps you should consider why you're such a crappy American.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Nelson Mandela

(1918-2013)

THE WART[s] ON CHRISTMAS

Tired of all the yawping about taking Christ out of Xmas? Tired of people--and you know who they are--who make a living out of pretending that there's a war on Xmas?  

Yeah.  

Me too.

Actually, there is no WAR ON CHRISTMAS.  The Christmas holiday season starts earlier and earlier each year, lapping over other traditional American holidays, like Halloween and Thanksgiving.  And this country is absolutely drenched in everything Christmas starting right after the 4th of July.

The complainers who claim there's a war on Xmas aren't really whining about not having enough Christmas, they're really complaining about people not being more religious about Christmas.  But the ones responsible for that are not the non-religious--(actually, the Christians stole the idea of celebrating the winter solstice and making it into the birthday for Jesus from pagans.) 

No.  The people most responsible for making Christmas into the biggest capitalist celebration of the calendar year are, well, they're the good ole all American apple pie, Mom, and flag waving corporations.  They're the ones who start the selling of stuff right after Labor Day and they keep it going right through the Baby Jesus's non-birthday. (According to Biblical scholars, Jesus was born in the spring.)

So all of this forced commercialism on what was originally a pagan celebration around the Winter Solstice is, to me, a WART on Xmas, not a WAR on Xmas.

A wart is an unpleasant growth on something.  Usually a hand or foot or other part of a human's or other animal's body [See Warthog.]  So we usually associate it with something unattractive.

I now associate the Christmas season with a lot of unattractive, annoying corporate, not family, traditions. When I was a kid, the Xmas season wasn't like that.  We actually made it through Thanksgiving without hearing a Xmas song or seeing a Xmas decoration in the neighborhood until at least the second week in December.  We didn't put our pagan-inspired tree up until the week before Xmas.  And we didn't feel like choking the person responsible for playing Christmas music because he/she imposed it on us in November. The Christmas songs were fun for the two weeks we endured them.  But because Xmas is the biggest selling season for corporations, we're exploited and hounded to get into the Xmas spirit so we'll feel all fuzzy and warm inside while spending a lot of money on a lot of cheap Chinese-made stuff.

I prefer the Xmas of my youth when we exchanged one present each, when we put food or sweets in our stockings, and we celebrated the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve, while our aunts and uncles played our favorite Xmas songs on the piano, violin, and guitar.



Here's my list of  what has become the WARTS ON XMAS:

1) Black Friday

2) Being forced to listen to "What a bright time, it's the right time to rock the night away," starting on November 1 in my local CVS.  And other Xmas ditties over and over and over and over in every store I walk into.

3) The teevee adverts on children's toys.  Children's ugly made-in-China plastic toys.

4) Salvation Army ringers.  I heard them in October outside of my local Whole Foods.

5) Gigantic plastic blow-up reindeer, Santas, snowmen, and creches on sad little lawns in suburbia.

6)  Colored lights -- not the kind that Stanley Kowalski told Stella about in "A Street Car Named Desire," the colored, flashing lights that are festooned on houses so that they look like nightmarish casinos.

7) Fake Christmas trees (unless you have allergies.)  Why not enjoy the smell of pine in your home--one of the nicest things about the season.

8) Fake snow

9) Teevee specials with awful music and singing.

10)  Fruitcake.  (Except the one a friend from South Africa made me one year--it was the best I'd ever tasted in my life.)

11)  Commercially baked Xmas cookies from the supermarkets

12)  Christmas "letters" included in cards bragging about all your families' achievements.

13)  Putting up Xmas decorations on December 1.

14) Shopping malls.

15) Office parties.

16) "I want, I want, I want!"

17)  FAUX NOOZ telling their viewers that saying "Happy Holidays," is leaving Christ out of Xmas.

17) FAUX NOOZ, Bill O'Reilly, and their viewers telling me there's a "War on Christmas."

18)  There isn't.

Feel free to add more.



There's no war on Christmas, there are only WARTS on Christmas, and that's because the corporatists need to make as much money as possible in this limited period of time.  That means we have to endure annoying inducements to buy, buy, buy.

I was raised a Catholic.  I am no longer a believer, but I do enjoy the pagan tradition of putting up a tree and celebrating the winter solstice.  

Jesus was not born in the winter. Shepherds did not keep watch over their flocks by night in the fields in winter.  But no one seems to mind that part of the story's contradiction.  

Why people who believe in the Christmas story participate in making it into a wart on the season is a mystery to me.


Happy Holidays and Festivus for the rest of us!

Debunking "A Tale of Two Cities"

You know, now that the holidays are over, I can spend a little time clearing out my email. And what do I find? A message from my dad! Let's see what he has to say!

Aw, it's cute. It really is. I love it when unsubstantiated facts and statistical anomalies are stirred together and turn into fertilizer. And this one has tables and everything! In fact, it looks something like this.

A Tale of Two Cities

	Chicago, IL	Houston, TX
Population	2.7 million	2.15 million
Median HH Income	$38,600	$37,000
% African-American	38.9%	24%
% Hispanic	29.9%	44%
% Asian	5.5%	6%
% Non-Hispanic White	28.7%	26%

Pretty similar until you compare the following:

	Chicago, IL	Houston, TX
Concealed Carry gun law	no	yes
# of Gun Stores	0	184 - Dedicated gun stores plus 1500 - legal places to buy guns- Walmart, K-mart, sporting goods, etc.
Homicides, 2012	1,806	207
Homicides per 100K	38.4	9.6
Avg. January high temperature (F)	31	63

Conclusion: Cold weather causes murder

Now, my dad is a reasonably smart person, so I can't assume that this is evidence of incipient Alzheimer's or anything. In fact, mostly, it looks like he just forwarded somebody else's data, without bothering to fact-check it (I'm sure most of us have relatives who do that). But since it's sitting there stinking up my inbox, I guess it deserves an answer.

First off, let's start with the fact that any time the NRA tries to claim that Chicago's "unreasonable gun laws" don't do any good, it ignores the fact that Chicago is surrounded by unreasonably loose gun laws, and anybody who wants a gun just needs to drive an hour to get someplace where they can buy one without a problem. So, you know, that part's crap - Chicago's laws have minimal effect because those laws have been nullified. Or, if you really want to look at how it works:

More than a quarter of the firearms seized on the streets here by the Chicago Police Department over the past five years were bought just outside city limits in Cook County suburbs, according to an analysis by the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Others came from stores around Illinois and from other states, like Indiana, less than an hour’s drive away. Since 2008, more than 1,300 of the confiscated guns, the analysis showed, were bought from just one store, Chuck’s Gun Shop in Riverdale, Ill., within a few miles of Chicago’s city limits.

Now, let's look at the statistics as presented. Assuming they're accurate (and we'll get to that in a second), remember the phrase "pretty similar until you compare the following." Because, just taking them at face value, you have a 15% difference in African American populations, and a 14% difference in Hispanic populations. Anybody who thinks those numbers are "pretty similar" either failed statistics, or never graduated high school.

But you can just feel free to pull out your Klan membership card and claim that the higher number of blacks explain the difference in the murder rate. (Trust me, the argument has been made.) Of course, you'd then also have to explain how the lower percentage of Hispanics has affected these statistics, and I'd LOVE to hear you try to argue around that corner.

But then, just for fun, let's consider the REAL facts. (You remember "facts," right? Those things Fox News has no time for?) First of all, this link here goes to a Cost of Living calculator. Now, I want you to do a little homework (calm down, it isn't difficult). Compare the costs of living between Houston and Chicago.

Done? Did you notice that tricky little 22% percent (average) difference in the cost of living? So that a person making $78,000 in Houston would need to earn $100,000 to live in the same style in Chicago? Hmmm... I wonder if that has any effect?

But, you know, those numbers in the chart still seem a little off. And statistical analysis is probably a real pain when you're working with incorrect data, isn't it?

So I went looking, and it seems that there's this thing the census bureau does, and it's called the American Community Survey. But those are all these tables, filled with numbers and stuff, and I don't want to make anybody's head hurt worse than it probably does. So I found a website that extracts numbers from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, and you know, it's funny. There seems to be a discrepancy here. Just a slight one.

Because, as it turns out, the median household income for the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet Illinois metro area was $59,261 in 2012. Not $38,600, as claimed. Wow, that's a little bit of a difference, isn't it?

And look here: the median household income for the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown Texas metro area was $55,910 in 2012. Not $37,000. That's kind of interesting, too.

But, you know what else? I seem to remember just a couple of months ago, when it was big news that Chicago was the "murder capital of the USA." But, funny thing. The number of homicides wasn't 1,806, like that cute little table claimed. Seems like it was more like 500 or so. Isn't that odd?

But let's check that, shall we? How about we look at the FBI's official data? And we poke around for a while, and we see that, sure enough, the number under "Murder and non-negligent manslaughter" for Chicago was exactly 500. Kind of a round number - you know, the kind of number that might stick in your head if you had any interest in actual facts, instead of... well, I don't want to call it "fecal matter," because that would be rude. But still...

So they were... well, maybe they were off by a little bit. Roughly 1306 homicides off, to be exact: they were wrong by almost three times the actual figure! I wonder how they did with the number of homicides in Houston? Well, right there, they were MUCH closer! Houston had 217 homicides, instead of the 207 in the table! That's so much closer! I mean, it's still wrong, but it's so much better than they've been doing!

But still, it seems like a lot more people have been killed in Chicago than in Houston, doesn't it? That's just weird. Is there some sort of difference between the Chicago mobster and the Texas cowboy that could account for these numbers? I wonder if anybody has looked into this problem?

Efforts to compare the strictness of gun laws and the level of violence across major American cities are fraught with contradiction and complication, not least because of varying degrees of coordination between local and state laws and differing levels of enforcement. In New York City, where homicides and shootings have decreased, the gun laws are generally seen as at least as strict as Chicago's, and the state laws in New York and many of its neighboring states are viewed as still tougher than those in and around Illinois. Philadelphia, like cities in many states, is limited in writing gun measures that go beyond those set by Pennsylvania law. Some city officials there have chafed under what they see as relatively lax state controls...

"The way the laws are structured facilitates the flow of those guns to hit our streets," Garry F. McCarthy, the Chicago police superintendent, said in an interview, later adding, "Chicago may have comprehensive gun laws, but they are not strict because the sanctions don't exist."

So, really, even if you used accurate numbers and factored in socioeconomic data, the numbers wouldn't really mean a thing, would they? It's almost as if this email was comparing two completely unrelated things, isn't it?

I wonder if whoever put together the original chart knew that when he wrote it?

U.S. Embassy Moving Outside Vatican City Walls.*** Rightwing Blogsphere and Pundits Go Berserk

***Where it always was.


So the U.S. is closing its Vatican embassy and relocating it outside Vatican City, where it always was, and guess what?

The right wing blosphere and punditry went viral with its misinformation, lies, and outrage.  

See, this is how they operate.  Half-assedly learn something the Obama Administration is going to do, take that half-assed information and apply a nefarious motive to it because OBUMMER!  Spread the misinformation and lies to every corner of the rightwing blogsphere.  Get all paliny over it.  

Rinse.  Repeat.

It's wearying.  It really is.  The U.S. Embassy's Vatican move?  There is no there there.  But apparently it's the default reaction to anything the Obama Administration does.  So the best thing to do is let them have their tantrum, close the door, and quietly walk away.


From Time Magazine website:



"...[F]irst you find all the FACTS, things like: Who, What Where When and Why. Then you report those facts. 

 WHAT: The US embassy to the Vatican is moving. 

WHERE: It is moving from what was a private residence to better secured building that is adjacent to the US Embassy to Italy, - the two will maintain separate entrances on separate streets. Oh, and the new embassy is a tenth of a mile CLOSER to the Vatican than the old one was. (and please note that no country has an embassy inside the Vatican City walls - there isn't room.) 

WHY: Because the new location offers more in place security and we will save 1.4 million a year in lease and operating costs. 

WHEN: the move will occur in 2015. The buildings were purchased several years ago during a different administration. 

WHO: Well, since the buildings were purchased under the Bush 2 administration - you should be able to figure out when the plan to move began and whose State Department initiated it. 

What you don't do is try to blame the current president for closing an embassy that isn't closing or imply that the current embassy is inside the Vatican walls when NO country has an embassy inside those walls.

Idjits!

Thanksgiving in the retail Earth

Stopped for gas yesterday, the kind of magnificent, glorious day that makes your heart sing and your body forget its age.  74 degrees, with a few little clouds, the bright sun shining off the newly waxed red convertible, air as fresh as it is anywhere wafting like the smell of jasmine off the blue Atlantic. 

The advertising sign on the gas pump has a picture of bundled up people on a toboggan and snow. My neighbors have begun to put up fake icicles, fake frost, chrome caribou and sleds festooned with lights and  other reminders that Christmas, a month away, is really a pastiche of ancient Northern European winter celebrations.  It's jarring, a disturbing denial of reality as though all the world were northern. It's jarring like wearing a wool suit and wing tip shoes on the beach.

It's in the teens up North where I used to live and when I say live I mean huddle in the dark waiting for Spring, leaving for work in the dark, returning in the dark, spending hours each week shoveling snow in subzero temperatures, but you can't have Christmas without archaic imagery and the more modern but strictly above the 40th parallel iconography as given to us by such bards as the Coca Cola company, Montgomery Wards and all the commercial interests that have latched on to the holiday. The plastic fat men, robed in plastic furs -- the descendants of  a skinny Nikolaos of Myra, will bloom on manicured green lawns bordered by bougainvillea and hibiscus and not an iota of irony will spoil the spirit unless the polystyrene saint is shattered by a falling coconut.

But right on schedule, as it seems, it's cold today, probably won't be more than 70 although with the southern sun it will feel warmer. Wool wrapped people will wait outside Wal-Mart for the retail rampage to begin and driving to dinner with my few remaining family members I may wear one of my old leather jackets and if I can find one, a pair of long pants. It's Thanksgiving in this formerly Spanish bit of the tropics.  Florida where the flowers still bloom, where oranges and bananas and lemons ripen behind the house; Florida where the "pilgrims" never came and the Puritan ventureth not nor did the Europeans ever sit down to dinner with the natives.

But never mind the latitude, it's about the attitude. It's about tradition. It's about a fictional past from far away and as people do, we'll make up our own reality even though it's nowhere as good as the one nature provides and I'll sit indoors eating things I shouldn't instead of sitting by the pool or at a restaurant by the water listening to steel drums and  being thankful for where and what and who I am.

The War on Thanksgiving

The entire country (outside of corporate boardrooms) seems to be up in arms about all the stores being open on Thanksgiving, which is traditionally a national holiday. It all started when Wal-Mart, that bastion of worker abuse, announced that they were going to beat "Black Friday" by a day, and everybody started following suit.

The lefties view it as just another example of the corporations treating workers like machines, with no time for their families. The right wing, on the other hand, has a somewhat more nuanced view: knee-jerk patriotism demands that they wail and cry about this abandonment of traditional American values, but brainwashed worship of unfettered capitalism won't allow them to criticize big corporations. So the whole situation makes them angry, but they don't know what to do about it.

The answer is fairly simple, though. If you don't like stores being open on Thanksgiving, don't shop on Thanksgiving. Tell all your friends not to shop on Thanksgiving, and explain why. Social media is an important part of this: send out the word on Facebook and Twitter, post videos on YouTube and Vine, or even post a message on Google+ (if you're particularly fond of the sound of your own voice echoing off empty walls).

You can even slant your message to match your audience. "Abusing the workers" won't resonate with the Fox News crowd, but "destruction of American values" seems to do it for them.

Protests might work, but you'd be giving up your holiday at that point, and it's a little late in the game for that anyway: you aren't going to get massive crowds to help you out. So the best way to get your message across is through your wallet - by not using it. If the profits for sales on Thanksgiving don't pay for the employees to come in that day, the corporations aren't going to do it again.