Never-ending Holidays

It's Jan. 6, Epiphany, in the Christian/Christmas liturgical cycle, the 12th and last day of Christmas. But for so many, I can tell Christmas is long gone, all done on Dec. 25.  Why do we expend so much energy in the run-up to things, and not savor the actual time, as if it were just one minute or a day and not a period?  We were supposed to have our Christmas trees out of the condo earlier this week --that seemed wrong to me, and I like my tree so much, the lights and color and symbols, it is hard for me even now to think of dismantling it.  Especially in the Hawaii winter with gusty winds and a lot of rain. It makes things cheerful!

When I was in the grocery yesterday, (or was it last week?) the first thing I saw was the Valentine candy display.  Does anyone buy such things now, a full month and half out?

Since Halloween (Labor Day really) my life has been a virtual whirl of holidays, markers in the year...Halloween, the scorpio moment that precedes the Wizard's birthday. Then there were elections (you'd think they were holidays, the way folks go on and on) and other federal observances leading up to Thanksgiving. We managed to spend some serious holiday time with family and friends on the Mainland.  Then my birthday, then our wedding anniversary/winter solstice and Christmas.  And now... Valentine's Day?  It isn't even Chinese New Year yet!

On Christmas eve, in addition to my annual ritualistic baby boomer nostalgic viewing of Polar Express, I also watched Holiday Inn, a DVD of the 1942 musical with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire with Irving Berlin music. It recalled to me the cycle of holidays of grade school in the '50s, construction paper craft projects making silhouettes of Washington and Lincoln, and Valentine hearts to decorate the box in which we deposited little cards for classmates, unaware of any erotic significance,  and on and on through the year. But they never seemed to run together, those holidays, as they do now in consumer-based celebrations.

Holiday Inn was fun to watch, including Fred Astaire's famous patriotic firecracker dance, (compare to Gangnam Style) and Bing and Marjorie Reynolds singing White Christmas to a tree, using the bells on its boughs as part of the acompaniment.  It was a quaint reverie, except for the colossal embarrassment (and bizarre counterpoint to White Christmas) of the Lincoln's Birthday celebration, with Bing Crosby in blackface, giving the shameful impression that Abe freed the slaves so they could find acting jobs in Hollywood movies as stereotypical mammys and pickaninnys.  Well, it was 1942 and Irving Berlin.  We still had a long way to go.  (Who would go to a sophisticated song and dance inn in the country to celebrate Lincoln's Birthday anyway?)  Apparently broadcast versions of the film edit this number out; I suppose if Hollywood wanted to remake the movie, in a politically correct fashion, they might add Kwaanza to the holiday celebrations or replace the Lincoln scene with Martin Luther King Day.

And it would be cool to add some lion dancing and kung fu for a Chinese New Year scene.  That's the next holiday I'm looking forward to!  Fifteen days! Spring festival! The Chinese know how to stretch out a holiday.

Overcoming the Yin

Gosh, has it been so long, months have gone by since I felt like putting something here.  Well, the solstice brings that to a point, can't neglect the yin, to which I attribute a couple of months of good sleeping weather and interesting travel, by planes and in my dreams.

Commuting home tonight, sans radio still, I was doing my occasional practice of numbers in French and Chinese by reciting, as quickly as I could, the digits on license plates.  Which got me to observing vanity plates and the slogans people put on their cars.  "Na Kane O Ke Kai" on the back of a pickup, which I think means "belonging to the man of the sea."  I know very little of Hawaiian language, but after a while, it just seems natural.

A vanity plate confused me.  F8HFUL. I think it is supposed to be "faithful" but I read it as "fateful." Who knows. (Although local people tend to say "th" as "t", as in Tanksgiving or one-two-tree, so it could go either way.)

Solstice observations:  the fateful spider is gone from my lanai, the faithful kolea are busy in the yard, and I was pleased to note that, despite my neglect (or perhaps because of it) over these past two months, the Christmas cactuses have set blossoms and look like at least a few will be blooming on Christmas Day.  Faith or fate seem to have nothing to do with that. Tao at work, the ziran of the Christmas cactus.

And at the rate I update this blog, the next time will be at the New Year...and I don't mean next week, but the lunar Year of Snake, in February.  So many calendars.  In any case, for the Gregorian New Year, I will hang up my 1957 scenic French ESSO calendar.  Turns out 2013 works the same as 1957 (and 1963 and 1974 and many other years). So if the Mayan calendar prevented you from investing in a 2013 calendar, you can just recycle an old one.  Look in your attic or go to eBay (where you will find among others, an incredible offering of old gas station Vargas and Betty Page pinup calendars...someone found those worth saving!) In fact, I also just found in my storage a gorgeous Sierra Club calendar from 1991, works too. A reminder of the beauty of the earth, which still exists for preservation.  I won't be buying calendars this year! But not because the Mayan Calendar ended.