holiday schmoliday

i get anxious around the holidays. one reason is all the quality family time, which most times is overwhelming and used to require me to split my holidays or trips between two families, one of which was greatly more psycho than the other. but the main reason is i have a tendancy to question the legitimacy of the holiday itself. for example, why do we celebrate some great feeling (valentine's day) just once a year? why not celebrate our love (or lust, for some) every other day? or better yet, every day? i also have major concsious-cluttering issues with "historical days of significance." take thanksgiving as an example. we, the lovely tribe-killing, disease-spreading white man, encourages everyone to celebrate that we have a "land" of our own. unlike july 4th, where we celebrate... a land of our own. so we give thanks for all the hard work those white christians did in creating positive relations with the local indigenous peoples.... before we wiped them out or stole their women and land or hoarded them into camps and tried to assimilate them and then drove them to their new lands which were reservations "given" to them by the us government complete with us post office and trading outpost for national and international tourists. or new year's, which is where we glorify a day determined by ancient christian scientists who decided to allot 24 hours to a day and then 365 days to a year along with an extra day every 4 years. then those christians also decided that january 1 denotes the beginning of a new year as oposed to march 1 or august 16. so we're really celebrating the christian calendar, and this allows us a day off from work and champagne galore along with a midnight kiss.

i know it seems like i have issues with christian holidays, but we don't get many that aren't christian based. there's memorial day, where we honor the dead who went and fought for us (most times in the name of god or if god told us to go to war), and this one seems justified (i don't support the military, but i support our troops. really, it makes sense), but we only honor them one day a year? maybe these holidays are mainly enforced to give government and bank employees their 10 days off a year. but i guess what i wish is that we could be more objective about our "holidays," and take a critical eye to why we do things the way we do. i don't want to sit around the table, staring at someone's turkey carcass, and pretend to give thanks for all in the world. and i am thankful, i am. but i don't want to ignore that injustice prevails every day, that just because i'm some white girl from florida who lives in the liberal city by the bay. that i don't think and contemplate, that i don't see that for the most part, i've had it easy, and i'm lucky to be where i am. that you don't control who you are, yet you can control who you become. so that's what i'll give thanks for this year: that eventhough you're one measly person, you have a voice, you make a difference, and you matter, yet everyone else also matters, and you should be conscious of this, no matter who "they" are. unless they're white christians. (just kidding!)