Heterodoxy

Daily writing prompt

Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.

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New holidays succeed or fail on their ability to encourage incredible feats of gluttony, excess alcohol consumption, and vast amounts of spending. The faithful gather in gin joints, sports bars, beer halls, and other gathering spots in hopes of becoming excessively inebriated. This is all linked to other forms of conspicuous consumption: buying and wearing oddments of attire, bumper stickers, home decorations, or such. Annualizing these celebrations is an integral part of making the new holiday into a ritual and commercial success. The underlying objective of the supporting business community is ongoing growth, enhancement, consumption, and spending.

It is easier to commercialize an existing holiday rather than start from scratch. A good example of this is the recently passed Halloween celebration. In recent years, the celebration has ramped up from a low-key event for youth to a major commercial event. Decorations were once somewhat limited to pumpkins and stuffed leaf men. But now, massive displays of inflated figures, enormous skeletons looming over the house, and foods and drinks are the rule. All this is directed towards an increasing degree of conspicuous consumption, and ritualized spending behavior.

In my neighborhood, there are one or two households that are continuously decorated for the holiday throughout the year. This makes decoration for Christmas an interesting proposition. Skeletons in Santa outfits, and headstones trimmed in festive Christmas lighting. The rather bizarre Creche display two streets over suggests a form of syncretism that i am sure might worry the more orthodox of Christians.

It’s almost too much heterodoxy for a poor cultural anthropologist to analyze.