Preparing for Christmas avec Acadie Man

As we approach the shortest daylight-period of the year, we, many of us, prepare to celebrate Midwinter, Yule, Winter Solstice, or... Christmas, a week from today — yes, even some of us who do not celebrate Christ do follow the secular festivities. We’ll enjoy indoor trees, lights and doo-dads, cookies, cakes, and “stocking stuffers”. We’ll listen to seasonal music (whether we want to or not), and we’ll read A Christmas Carol and A Child’s Christmas in Wales. In the northern part of the northern hemisphere, some will hope for a “white Christmas”. (What do my friends at the other end of the world hope for? A sunny beach day, perhaps?)

As you all make preparations, I think you need to take some advice from the very northern reaches of the northern hemisphere, from a strange part of the world once called Acadia, and now known as “The Maritimes”. Thence, in Acadie Man vs Noël, Acadie Man (the first Acadian superhero) gives us tips for how to survive the holidays — in a fractured, hilarious “Franglish”.

The accent is thick, and the switching back and forth between French and English can be a challenge, but give it a go. I probably only understand 30% or so of what he’s saying, but that’s enough to make it a real hoot.

Ceci n’est pas un Fruitcake

Giving thanks

Tomorrow I’ll be being thankful, as will most Americans, over plates full of far too much food, glasses too full of wine, and desserts too plentiful to contemplate.

I’ll be thankful for all the things in my life that continue to be good, year after year. I have plenty of good friends. I have a good place to live. I’m safe and sound and healthy, despite my now having to deal daily with pills for blood pressure and cholesterol — stuff happens when you pass 50, and I used to think that was just a joke. I’m able to enjoy the things that I enjoy, and that’s very much worth being thankful for.

I’ll be thankful, even, for the things that have changed this year. The economy is awful, and I lost my job, as did many others around me. But I’ve found new work that makes me happy, and I’m thankful for that.

And people sometimes ask me to whom or what I’m thankful. As an atheist, I’m not thankful to God, to a god, to gods. I don’t thank any deity or other entity for what I have (or, as many would put it, for what has been given to me). What does it mean, then, for an atheist to “be thankful,” when there’s not someone to be thankful to?

This atheist, at least, treats this kind of thankfulness as a combination of introspection and contemplation of the state of the world. I understand, as I think about all these things, that there are many who don’t have them. There are people who are alone, people who are ill, people who are hungry, jobless, homeless, oppressed. I look at what I have that makes me happy, and I think about how I can help others be happy as well.

There’s plenty to think about, there, and plenty to contemplate doing about it. It does no good to “pray” for others less fortunate, because there’s no one to hear those prayers nor to answer them. But if my contemplation moves me to contribute in some way to helping them, that will be the real blessing. And there don’t need to be any gods around for that one.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I hope you all have much to be thankful for.

Believing

It’s that time of year.

It’s the time of year when we let children believe that there’s an old man with a white beard, who lives “up there” somewhere. We let them think that if you’re good, you’ll be in his graces and he’ll lavish you with his gifts... but if you’re bad, you’ll suffer the consequences. He looks at all the world from his mysterious abode, and he knows what’s in the hearts of all of us, so the story goes. There’s no escaping his notice.

We encourage the children to ask him for things, implying that they’ll get them (if they’re good, and they believe, and they ask properly). What we gloss over, of course, is that it’s really we who deliver on those promises, but we’re happy to attribute the beneficence to the man up there. After all, it’s harmless fun for the kids.

It’s a time when we take children to places where many believers queue up, where they can see the old man and talk to him. And that’s a major way for them to beseech him for his gifts. It’s not really the old man, of course; it’s just an image. But the kids accept it, and at least pretend that they think he’s real.

And when, in a week or so, the kids’ prayers are answered, they’ll thank the old man and praise him for having made them happy. We’ll all smile, knowing the truth, knowing that their time as children is all too brief, and that they'll grow out of it, that one year soon they will no longer believe in the old man with the white beard.

Because, after all, only a child would believe in these fantasies, right?