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Dec. 29th, 2006 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI really like heating my house with wood because it gives me built-in thinking time for my day while I'm lighting the fire.
Today I considered an ongoing thought I've had regarding the holidays. I understand that the more-devout among us have good reason for celebrating Xmas on the 25th of December and for celebrating Hannukah on the 25th day of Kislev, which is held anywhere from late November through the end of December, depending on the year. The rest of us, the unchurched heathens who celebrate some sort of midwinter festivity that we may or may not call Christmas, have no actual reason for celebrating on any given day.
It's kind of stupid to get all pressed about celebrating Christmas on December 25 if you're not particularly celebrating the Birth of the Savior. In fact, True Believers frequently *bitch* about the secularization of the holidays and feel that those of us for whom Rudolph is as real as the baby in the manger should maybe not be contaminating their Feast of St. Ossory with our commercialized excesses, our Grinches, and our reindeer with glowing red noses. Yes, we get off work for Xmas day, most of us, but it's not like we'll be heartbroken if we don't celebrate THAT DAY.
Besides, more than a few households could use another day for celebrating. Modern families are, at best, complicated and many children have more than the normal two sets of grandparents and possibly as many as three "parent" households that need to be visited. Getting to see everyone who needs to be seen on the actual DAY is a bit of a bitch, if not an impossibility. Even if it is possible to see everyone, spending Xmas in a car tooling between obligatory Family Visits is no fun at all. We could do with a formal backup holiday that'd be regularly and automatically scheduled (like Xmas is) for the seeing of the people who don't get to attend the "real" holiday because it isn't their year or their turn or whatever.
Finally, I think it'd be a tremendous cost savings if we could schedule this secondary backup holiday *after* the traditional holiday gifting and the post-holiday sales. That way, the people who have to suck back tit on the holiday preference at least get to (a) regift icky presents and (b) shop for new presents when it's cheap. Presents should be minimally wrapped with leftover paper from weddings, baby showers, or on-sale paper for holidays you do not personally celebrate. The 1/3 price Kwanzaa paper that they had at Wal-Mart three years ago? (My town is mostly white and located in a very redneck part of Pennsylvania.) That stuff would have been tops for this holiday. Points should be awarded for most inappropriate wrapping paper.
Because there's only about a week between Xmas and New Year's and because there's no way people can get off work for Kwanzaa let alone some made-up honky holiday, I suggest that we hold this function on the Second Saturday of January. That's the date. It'll be a different *day* every year, but at least it'll be the same weekend every year. Most office-job people get Saturdays off, the kids will not be in school, and it's far enough away from New Year's that people have probably recovered from that.
The official food for the holiday should be something that damn well isn't turkey. By the end of Xmas, I'm turkeyed out. The offical meat-eater food SHALL be beef because there isn't a beef holiday yet. (Ham is for Easter, if you don't eat lamb then. Pork & kraut is for New Year's. Corned beef is not exactly beef and it's for St. Patrick's Day.) Beef is what is for dinner. You can do a lovely pot roast with gravy or steaks or fucking burgers... but your meat should, at some point, have gone moo. Persons with some objection to eating of the bovine are allowed to substitute shellfish, molluscs, or crustaceans (but not finny fish like tuna or salmon). Vegetarians should consume something containing black turtle beans. (Why? There is no why. Tradition has to start somewhere.) Also, no pie. It shall be a holiday of cake, NOT FRUITCAKE. (Serving suggestion: Yellow cake with chocolate icing.)
There. We have a date. Second Saturday in January. We have a menu. We need a name. I'm okay with calling it Back Tit, but probably for marketing purposes, something a little more euphonic might be more appropriate. Until my director of marketing gets back to me, though, I'll continue to call it Back Tit.
Do you decorate? No. You do not decorate. If there are still decorations (including outdoor lights) up, you UNdecorate during Back Tit. It's what you do after dinner and before going home.
Do you dress up? Not if you don't want. Jeans and sweaters is about as dressy as it should get. Remember, there may be undecorating involved.
Are there cookies? Yes, if the hosting household wishes there to be. There are two appropriate kinds of cookies for Back Tit. The first kind is Rice Krispie Treats (home-made) and the second is No-Bake Cookies. On no account should there be fussy, difficult, time-consuming family heirloom cookies. The cut-n-bake Pillsbury kind are also OK, if you want to go that route.
Generally, you should be trying for low-stress family together time on Back Tit. This may not actually be possible to achieve, but it is the overall goal of the holiday. (We could spell it Baktit or something so that people wouldn't KNOW it was Back Tit. Well, except for us. We'd know.)
Today I considered an ongoing thought I've had regarding the holidays. I understand that the more-devout among us have good reason for celebrating Xmas on the 25th of December and for celebrating Hannukah on the 25th day of Kislev, which is held anywhere from late November through the end of December, depending on the year. The rest of us, the unchurched heathens who celebrate some sort of midwinter festivity that we may or may not call Christmas, have no actual reason for celebrating on any given day.
It's kind of stupid to get all pressed about celebrating Christmas on December 25 if you're not particularly celebrating the Birth of the Savior. In fact, True Believers frequently *bitch* about the secularization of the holidays and feel that those of us for whom Rudolph is as real as the baby in the manger should maybe not be contaminating their Feast of St. Ossory with our commercialized excesses, our Grinches, and our reindeer with glowing red noses. Yes, we get off work for Xmas day, most of us, but it's not like we'll be heartbroken if we don't celebrate THAT DAY.
Besides, more than a few households could use another day for celebrating. Modern families are, at best, complicated and many children have more than the normal two sets of grandparents and possibly as many as three "parent" households that need to be visited. Getting to see everyone who needs to be seen on the actual DAY is a bit of a bitch, if not an impossibility. Even if it is possible to see everyone, spending Xmas in a car tooling between obligatory Family Visits is no fun at all. We could do with a formal backup holiday that'd be regularly and automatically scheduled (like Xmas is) for the seeing of the people who don't get to attend the "real" holiday because it isn't their year or their turn or whatever.
Finally, I think it'd be a tremendous cost savings if we could schedule this secondary backup holiday *after* the traditional holiday gifting and the post-holiday sales. That way, the people who have to suck back tit on the holiday preference at least get to (a) regift icky presents and (b) shop for new presents when it's cheap. Presents should be minimally wrapped with leftover paper from weddings, baby showers, or on-sale paper for holidays you do not personally celebrate. The 1/3 price Kwanzaa paper that they had at Wal-Mart three years ago? (My town is mostly white and located in a very redneck part of Pennsylvania.) That stuff would have been tops for this holiday. Points should be awarded for most inappropriate wrapping paper.
Because there's only about a week between Xmas and New Year's and because there's no way people can get off work for Kwanzaa let alone some made-up honky holiday, I suggest that we hold this function on the Second Saturday of January. That's the date. It'll be a different *day* every year, but at least it'll be the same weekend every year. Most office-job people get Saturdays off, the kids will not be in school, and it's far enough away from New Year's that people have probably recovered from that.
The official food for the holiday should be something that damn well isn't turkey. By the end of Xmas, I'm turkeyed out. The offical meat-eater food SHALL be beef because there isn't a beef holiday yet. (Ham is for Easter, if you don't eat lamb then. Pork & kraut is for New Year's. Corned beef is not exactly beef and it's for St. Patrick's Day.) Beef is what is for dinner. You can do a lovely pot roast with gravy or steaks or fucking burgers... but your meat should, at some point, have gone moo. Persons with some objection to eating of the bovine are allowed to substitute shellfish, molluscs, or crustaceans (but not finny fish like tuna or salmon). Vegetarians should consume something containing black turtle beans. (Why? There is no why. Tradition has to start somewhere.) Also, no pie. It shall be a holiday of cake, NOT FRUITCAKE. (Serving suggestion: Yellow cake with chocolate icing.)
There. We have a date. Second Saturday in January. We have a menu. We need a name. I'm okay with calling it Back Tit, but probably for marketing purposes, something a little more euphonic might be more appropriate. Until my director of marketing gets back to me, though, I'll continue to call it Back Tit.
Do you decorate? No. You do not decorate. If there are still decorations (including outdoor lights) up, you UNdecorate during Back Tit. It's what you do after dinner and before going home.
Do you dress up? Not if you don't want. Jeans and sweaters is about as dressy as it should get. Remember, there may be undecorating involved.
Are there cookies? Yes, if the hosting household wishes there to be. There are two appropriate kinds of cookies for Back Tit. The first kind is Rice Krispie Treats (home-made) and the second is No-Bake Cookies. On no account should there be fussy, difficult, time-consuming family heirloom cookies. The cut-n-bake Pillsbury kind are also OK, if you want to go that route.
Generally, you should be trying for low-stress family together time on Back Tit. This may not actually be possible to achieve, but it is the overall goal of the holiday. (We could spell it Baktit or something so that people wouldn't KNOW it was Back Tit. Well, except for us. We'd know.)
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-30 01:49 am (UTC)Though, in our household Christmas is celebrated with a standing rib roast, so...beef and all...
no subject
Date: 2006-12-30 09:31 pm (UTC)Thank you, I needed that.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-30 09:41 pm (UTC)Alis volat propiis: "She flies with her own wings," state motto of Oregon. The other, cooler states were already taken.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-31 03:39 am (UTC)