November Looms....

November looms. And in late Oct 2011, somewhere in Wolverhampton. A confused and addled twenty something inflicts his crazy if amusing views onto a nearby note pad in frenzied fashion.

November looms.

And with it; the gloomy realisation that the icy hand of winter is now preparing to take a firm grip of our shoulder.

And collectively we shudder…..

 

As I look about me I notice; everywhere is novelty just now.

As October approaches its point of expiry we have Halloween; an ancient pagan festival synonymous with evil, that we take as an opportunity to put on silly masks and try to frighten one another. Because it’s a right lark apparently……

Swiftly following this is Guy Fawkes Day, or Bonfire Night. Another curious ritual in which we cheerfully commemorate the fact that we as a nation once upon a time, used to burn people alive as a means of judicial procedure. Even going so far as to re-enact the spectacle across our fair land….

 

And finally, the nation and indeed the word can rejoice, in the universal head rush that is Christmas. The annual event during which we celebrate the birth of a fictional character with the most over told tale of them all, while simultaneously conjuring yet another (even less plausible) fictional character to deceive children.

Meanwhile we as a collective people spend all of our money on over priced gifts for our friends/family, because oh it makes us feel so very good to be giving….

 

What’s it all about?

It strikes me that this time of year is so mournfully depressing that we are just plain desperate for a distraction;

Dressing up as the Wolf Man? Fine I’m there.

Standing outside in the freezing cold next to a pile of burning wood? What a great idea, I’ll bring the booze!

Sending the old credit card into the red to keep the family happy and get fat and drunk? Why not!

 

These token events aren’t the only ones circulating at this time of year either. Apparently their sedation not numbing us quite enough to the harsh reality that we are getting up at the start of the day, looking out of the window at what appears to be the middle of the night, dithering ourselves silly because we haven’t put the heating on for fear of the bills expense when it ominously plops through our letter box in a few months time when we are broke.

And yet to comfort our woes we have Children In Need. Funny isn’t it? The human race is all contradictions. Times are hard, we are depressed. So to make ourselves fell something like approaching better we donate to charity while watching a marathon evening of laughs and light entertainment. All just prior to the festive season in the course of which we shall again precipitate a mass exodus of currency from our wallets.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not knocking the charity, or any charity for that matter. I myself always donate.

But you have to hand it to them don’t you? They know just the right time to strike; when we are all feeling a little bit low, somewhat vulnerable and a tad hard done by…. But look at the T.V. Here are some people a damn sight worse off than you selfish fascist!

Suitably guilty, every year we donate. And no bad thing that we do as we sit in the opulence of out DVD players and X Box’s…. That charity is a fine institution and long may it continue.

 

Also at this time of year we have Remembrance Day. Out come the poppies! With an annual avalanche like enforcement on the part of the media; who ensures that anyone seen on our televisions for even an instant is sporting a poppy from at least mid October! The nation almost robotically adheres to this convention and soon the safety pin affixed paper flower is adorning our lapels…

Again, I hasten to add that I mock not the charity to which I’m referring. Even as I write this on October 31^st I myself have just purchased my poppy, to be worn with pride. My insinuation rather is this:

Just how many people who wear one of these things really know, or I’d venture to add CARE about what this represents on so many levels? Particularly the very young; I remember when I was at school as a youngster the wearing of poppies was almost enforced; even when we were all nothing more than gurgling five year olds, who couldn’t possibly be asked to comprehend what this powerful symbol meant.

 

I’m afraid I can’t believe for a second that the selfish rabble of teens who were turning my home city upside down with riots and looting little over two months ago give a damn in all fairness. And I make that statement not as a brash generalisation, but an observation of visible fact. I understand fully that not all teens are that way inclined in their points of view and behaviour.

I was one once…..

 

But I wouldn’t stop there. As I said earlier the purchasing of poppies has become an almost robotic act on the part of the public. And admittedly; the money spent, the poppy purchased, the purpose served, the message displayed. It’s functional.

It does its job.

But how many I wonder observe the minutes silence on November 11^th to remember the deaths of those lost to the nonsense of war? In this techno-hell of i-pods and i-phones and i-pads and laptops and pointlessly constant social networking?

I’ll warrant: not many…..

The majority (not all) of people who wear poppies do it for the same reason they wear Dracula teeth on Halloween; it’s a novelty, its distracting for them.

It makes them feel a part of something which takes away in some small measure from the hopelessness of it all.

They do it for themselves, as with so many things in life.

 

Halloween is an odd one.

Shunned by the religious and superstitious types; viewed as obscene devil worship and meddling in uncharted dark forces…..

The undoubtedly American led commercialisation of Halloween has transformed the ancient pagan ritual into an annual dressing up contest of sorts. Kids are granted the right to freely make a nuisance of themselves; knocking on strangers doors and demanding the unjustified right to be given things.

 A right that lets face it; they basically exercise all year round with their long suffering parents anyway. Halloween simply giving them a license to inflict this on innocent bystanders….

 

While we adults now take this time of year as a prompt for “themed” parties.

Which are fundamentally an excuse to dress up in ridiculous clothes, and indulge in our favourite pastime of ingesting copious amounts of branded poison into our blood streams, before kissing the face of a complete stranger.

The combination of the hallucinogenic effects of alcohol combing well with the practise of adorning ones face with masks or make up; Thus rendering it of no consequence with whom we end up swapping saliva with on that particular evening.

 

There is no dancing in circles around fire in an effort to vanquish the evil spirits.

Just a good old fashioned party; the only evil spirits we wish to vanquish contained in bottles marked please drink responsibly….

 

With that out of the way, and November making its unwelcome and chilly presents felt. We effectively OD on distractions;

Remembrance Day, and our lovely smart red poppies.

Children in need; affording us the opportunity to wear silly get ups once again, and this time in the workplace no less!

And of course Guy Fawkes Celebrations……

 

Of all the rituals in which we engage, it is this uniquely English tradition that is surely the most bizarre, and in a sense the most disturbing of all…….

 

But what on earth does it mean?

Are we proclaiming loud and proud as we set alight our very own home made sacrificial victim that we believe it is a fair and just means of punishment to do this?!

Alas for some at least I’d say that this is exactly what they think, it’s no secret that there is a vocal contingency of the populace that lament the abolishment of the death penalty. Quite happy are they for human beings to be slaughtered in their name……

But I refuse even to invoke a debate as to whether or not setting a human being on fire is a reasonable option to be considered as part of legal proceedings. As those of us of a rational inclination know it simply is NOT.

And I apply that definition to the death penalty in all of its varying degrees of barbarity….. It is not the way forward!!

 

But in all actuality I don’t think that the vast majority of those that do engage in the annual ritual are doing so to profess their endorsement of the treatment of Fawkes following the Gun Powder Plot.  Indeed it’s more about Fire Works now than bonfires, which is ironic when you think about it……

In effect you might as well be handing dangerous weapons to teenagers as giving them fireworks. As very few use them for the purpose for which they were conceived; preferring instead to put them through people’s letter boxes, attack poor defenceless Animals with them, or indeed each other.

It is my contention that Fireworks should be entrusted only to those qualified individuals who have the expressed intention of utilizing them as a professional display which the public can attend.

They shouldn’t be sold in shops for amateurs to blow themselves up with……

 

As for bonfires; most I don’t think even have a Guy Fawkes atop them anymore. And I dare venture to say that most who huddle around them know very little of the events of The Gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament. And if they ever did they forgot.

Rather it’s a symbolic gesture for the time of year. It’s getting colder and everyone is miserable. A bonfire affords us the chance to get warm with the company of friends and that old pal alcohol all without running up a massive gas bill.

Oh and cheer up; you’ll be able to look listlessly at the sky in a moment and see lots of loud bangs and flashes…… Oh joy, I’m so happy.

 

And so we arrive at Christmas.

And even as I sit here and write this, with October not even out the door; already I see the festive iconography of tinsel, baubles, holly, and mistletoe. Beginning to creep carefully into visibility around me; like the earliest signs of some horrendous fungal infection upon the skin of society……

 

Yes. We’ve had Halloween, the charity marathons, and bonfire �" blow yourself up �" night…..

But all are dwarfed by the commercial onslaught that ensues with this tradition each year, which has basically become a brand more than anything else……

Yes it’s true that the original premise upon which Christmas finds its foundations is suitably stupid; as we celebrate and tell tales of the birth of what most would now concur is a fictional character. But if that wasn’t absurd enough we then seized upon the concept of Christmas as an opportunity to pacify our children.

Inventing that time honoured figure of “Santa Claus” of “Father Christmas” whatever’s your preference… Professing to our young to whom all year round it is we who are the supplier from which all their demands can be met. That at Christmas time Santa is the one who gets you your treasured presents, not mommy and daddy, and if you don’t behave………

 

While the totalitarian benefits upon the behaviour of unruly little brats is not lost upon me, this ideas is when you think about it quite a flawed concept.

While you may indeed get the kids to behave for a short while, you are in effect removing the boundaries ordinarily in place as to what they can realistically expect as a gift, and telling them instead tales of a larger than life immortal super being. Who has a workshop in the snowy wastes of Lapland, in which he and his army of pointy eared elves can construct all manner of wonderful toy, which this superman can then deliver all in one night on his time zone defying sleigh.

Pulled through the air by a pack of gravity defying reigndeers, the most well known of whom has a red radioactive luminous nose!

I mean who came up with that? Were they unwell? Were they on drugs?!

 

Nevertheless the youngsters buy into it. At least for a while……

But they soon see through it. And frankly it’s a good thing they do, as where can such a concept lead a child other than crushing disappointment or mental breakdown?!

The unrealistic expectations that this utterly preposterous idea conjures could never ever be satisfied for any child.

Unless your parents are millionaires of course, in which case I imagine you go on believing in Saint Nick until have kids of your own. What a shocker that day must be for the wealthy when it arrives…

But alas in most cases the parent has to admit to the child that the reason they don’t have the pet chimpanzee or man size lollypop they requested. Is not because they have been “bad” but because Mommy and Daddy have been lying to them for the sake of their own convenience for most of their child life…….

And parents wonder why kids go through puberty hating them and making their life hell!!

 

For adults Christmas is but more novelty and distraction…..

And excuse to stuff ourselves as well as the turkey. Pull crackers and tell silly jokes. And enforce confined and uncomfortable communion to eat drink and be supposedly “merry” with family members we spend the rest of the year either shouting at and hating or desperately trying to ignore…….

 

Merry Christmas everybody.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

I was as I said at the top, a confused twenty something when I wrote this ranty piece.
I still am a confused twenty something! But an altogether more rounded and tolerable one now. I don't agree now with all I wrote here, but still think its rather entertaining and even amusing in places.
Enjoy!