Category: Holidays

3 Dangerous Lies

crossed-fingers

We all lie: it’s built into our psyche.  I’m pretty sure that somewhere back in caveman days, somebody looked around and said, “Does this sabretooth pelt make me look fat?”  And her mate grunted the equivalent of, “No, darling!  It’s perfect.”  Thus our species continued populating the Earth.  Personally, I think lying is an essential part of civilization.  It gets us through social situations, keeps our friends and enemies in line and helps us not look like jerks – most of the time.  Plus, in general, lying is no big deal.  The rewards are large and the consequences quite small.  However, sometimes lies can be dangerous.  These are the lies we tell ourselves.  Here are just three examples.

1 – Remember, back in school when Brittany, Class President, hooked you into helping with the Annual Charity Drive because “It’ll be fun!”  And remember how is wasn’t because, while she and her friends were up at the dance, “collecting” non-perishable food items, you spent the evening down in the school basement, working your ass off, sorting cans of tuna and packages of macaroni.  Remember that?  So how come you’re phoning everybody in the family (on both sides) and saying, “We’re doing Christmas at our house this year.  C’mon over for dinner.  It’ll be fun!”

2 — Normally, this lie comes right after some celebrity TV know-it-all has created a beautiful gingerbread sculpture shaped like the British House of Parliament.  You watched them fashion this marvel — from finding fresh ginger at the local farmer’s market to carving out the wooden molds on a lathe.  They’ve spun sugar to a transparent sheen for the windows and even installed battery-operated lights – all in less than 30 minutes!  So, you say to yourself, “That looks easy” and go out a buy a Gingerbread House kit from the grocery store.  Two weekends and three Gingerbread House kits later, your own mother won’t speak to you, the kids have filed a restraining order and whatever’s left of the gingerbread mess is sitting in the corner – where you threw it.

3 — Once again, this lie started in school.  Your term project was due at the end of the semester, and that was three months away.  Three months!  That’s a lifetime when you’re a teenager.  So, you decided to do a kick-ass/best ever treatise on the Pre-Cambrian Shield – complete with rock samples, charts, hand-drawn illustrations and a working model of a Canadian glacier because, you say to yourself, “I’ve got plenty of time.”  And you keep saying that for the next 2 months and 27 days while your project slowly melts away like that glacier you’re never going to build.  Finally, you end up with 10 pages (double-spaced) that you borrowed from an encyclopedia (no Wikipedia in those days) a Xeroxed copy of an aerial photograph of Ontario and couple of stones from your garden . . . .

Well, folks!  Today is the 4th of December, and Christmas is exactly three weeks away.  Just sayin’!

 

November 11th, 2018

cross

Next Sunday at 11 A.M., the Western World will collectively hold its breath for a silent moment in a frail attempt to remember a war that human memory has now forgotten.  It’s been 100 years since the guns went quiet at the end of The War to End all Wars, and there are no veterans left.  No one who heard the guns, smelled the blood, tasted the fear or touched the dying.  They are all gone, and it’s up to us and those who come after us to remember them.  Not for their deeds or their politics — but simply because they lived and endured in a time that we must never, ever, ever repeat.

So, once again, I have a very simple story.

One hot summer day when I was a young man, I paused in front of the World War I cenotaph in Hedley British Columbia.  It’s a single grey obelisk about two metres high.  I’d seen it many times before but never bothered to stop.  On that day in the glorious sunshine, its weathered grey was bright and warm and dry. There was no breeze in the drowsy afternoon, and no sound, just settling puffs of dust at my boot heels.  No one was there but me.  There were four or six or maybe even eight names etched at the base (Hedley wasn’t a very big town in 1918.)  I touched the stone where the names were cut and read them to myself.  These were men my age — sons and brothers.  They had looked at the same mountains I saw that day; saw the same creek wandering down to the Similkameen River.  They’d played games on that street, run and laughed and learned how to talk to girls.  They were in their time what I was in mine.

Every year on November 11th, Remembrance Day, we pause for a moment.  We touch the names cut into stone.  Every year, I remember that I’ve forgotten those names.

I’m Beginning To Hate Hallowe’en

horror-clown

I’m beginning to hate Hallowe’en.  Why?  Let me count the ways.  But first, a little background.  I remember when Hallowe’en was the second biggest celebration of the year – right behind Christmas.  (St. Paddy’s Day doesn’t count ‘cause — it’s “adults only,” and Thanksgiving and Easter are just too family/family/best behaviour type of occasions.)  No, Christmas and Hallowe’en used to be kick-up-your-heels holidays when kids could be kids and adults could be kids, too.  In short — they were fun.  Unfortunately, these days, a sizeable section of our society has declared war on fun — and Hallowe’en is one of the casualties.  The irony is so thick you have to cut it with an axe.  Here are a few examples.

1 – For weeks before October 31st there’s nothing but wall-to-wall butchery on TV.  Folks! Hallowe’en is not the German word for slaughter.  The last night of October was never about mass murder, serial killers or even the occasional homicide.  It’s All Hallows’ Eve, for God’s sake, and it started out as a religious holiday.

2 – Somehow, a 10-year-old girl dressed up as Pocahontas is offensive, but take that same kid, stick a rubber cleaver in her head (a la The Walking Dead) cover her in red dye and plastic gore and nobody bats an eyeball – even though she’s missing one.

3 – In some places, teenagers are forbidden by law from Trick or Treating.  Forbidden by law?  What are you supposed to do — check ID?  Meanwhile, I’ve had parents push their kids up to the door in strollers.  The little buggers have no clue where they are or why, and chances are good they’re not even eating solid food yet.  So, who’s getting that Mars Bar™, Dad?

4 – I don’t care what your political persuasion is, making a child wear a Trump mask is abuse.

5 – And putting a toddler in a Handmaid’s costume is just creepy.

6 – Giving out sensible treats.  Seriously?  Gluten-free, sugar free, sodium free, oak, flax and quinoa bars!  People, lighten up!  It’s not as if 10 grams of sugar, chocolate, wax and artificial flavouring is going to kill anybody.

And finally:

7 – If you insist on having an “agenda” on Hallowe’en and being a politically-correct pain in the ass about it, why not just turn off your lights, turn on your television and spend the evening watching Jason, Krueger (or whatever they’re calling him this year) dismember a battalion of half-naked, nubile young ladies.  That’s the Hallowe’en you’ve created – why not enjoy it?   It would certainly give the rest of us a chance to go back to having a little fun on October 31st.