Holiday Terminology
It seems that simply participating in the holidays isn’t enough anymore. No, now we have to be able to talk about them and understand them with each other. So, I offer a small handful of holiday terms and advice to help you get through the season!
Black Friday – an offensive term for the Friday immediately following Thanksgiving Thursday. Stores are now advertising using the term ‘Black Friday’. There are two schools of thought as to how this term came about. 1) this is the day businesses move from the red into the black. If this is the reasoning then it would be more honestly called ‘just give us your money day’.
2) stores are so crowded with shoppers that people have actually been killed in stampedes that resemble the panicked buffalo of the old west. If this is the reason for the term, then everyone who smiles at the camera and suggests that we all come out for a “Black Friday Sale!” should be lined up and shot. No wait, they should be trampled.
Protest insulting advertising while staying safe, stay home.
Thanksgiving – 1) a gluttonous American holiday that celebrates conquering a native people and taking their land. Pass the corn!
2) a gluttonous American Thursday that used to signal the start of the ‘holiday season’
Holiday Season – a term referring to a series of winter days wherein we are supposed to be thankful and joyous even though most of us are freezing our butts off. The ‘season’ used to begin with Thanksgiving and run through New Years. Though New Years still signals the end, Thanksgiving is no longer the beginning. Now, we start with Halloween.
Halloween – 1) a pagan holiday appropriated for dressing in costumes and begging for candy. This day is unusual in that it runs the entire gamut from being protested as profane, passes by apathy and humor in the middle and goes all the way through to the sacred.
2) The new beginning of the season. Starting the holidays with Thanksgiving is so . . . last season. While Thanksgiving, a purely American day, offers up much in sacrifice to the supermarket gods, it does virtually nothing for the retail sector. Thus, stores now begin decorating for and pushing merchandise for winter days starting on November 1st.
Protest stores pushing you to buy tinsel mid-November by vomiting when you see this. If you are anything like me, this won’t be difficult as you probably already have the urge!
Winter holidays – no longer referred to as the “Christmas Season”, the Winter Holidays include a wide variety of mid-season celebrations from a variety of faiths. The major versions practiced in America are “Christmas” and “Hannakah”, although Pagan days such as “Yule” are observed as are festivals like “Kwanzaa”. There are also made-up holidays from places that have no naturally occurring mid-winter holiday because, well, they don’t really have winter.
Deep Fried Turkey – a turkey cooked by a process in which you heat a large cauldron of oil, usually on a stand with a gas burner under the pot. Then, using a strong wire and sensible turkey-roping technique, you dunk the entire bird under the hot oil until it is fried. Though this is customarily done outside, it remains the number one cause of burning your house to the ground during the ‘holiday season’. Notice I said ‘you’ do these things to get a deep fried turkey, because I sure don’t. I like my house. If you hate your house, but hate the idea of going to jail for fraud, may I recommend deep-frying a turkey in your back yard? As I have pointed out other times, there’s no law against stupid.
Semi-boneless – I have no idea what this means, but you can get a ‘semi-boneless’ ham. Still, it had a big ole honkin’ bone right there in the middle, right where you would expect one in a ham. Go figure.
Turducken – a stuffed chicken, stuffed inside a duck, stuffed inside a turkey then cooked. Because all three birds are de-boned while left whole, a turducken is often the sign of an overzealous cook.
Tofurkey – tofu. That’s all it is. Just soy product. Though vegetarians will try to convince you that it tastes just like turkey, it does not. A torfurkey is often the sign of an overzealous environmentalist.
Small Turkey – Thirteen to fifteen pounds. An indicator that Butterball thinks I am unloved and low on friends. As there were only eight people at my house this year, this is far too much bird (even when accounting for the planned gluttonous leftovers). This comes out to about 1.5pounds of meat per person! (I figure this because birds fly (well, turkeys kindof do) and therefore have hollow lightweight bones. Allowing a full pound and a half for skeleton, the smallest turkey we could find still had twelve-plus pounds of meat on it!) This, along with the six pound, semi-boneless ham, should make us all fat and make the supermarket gods happy for approximately another month, when we will make another nearly identical sacrifice.
Crazy-ass – the idea that we need to eat more, buy more and pretend to be happier during this portion of the year. It’s just winter. If we are supposed to be happier, then why do we spend so much time running around like fried turkeys looking for a gift that we have been designated to get? Seriously, with this kind of attitude, you would think it was Valentine’s day – another day where Hallmark and Wal-Mart designate how you should feel and that you should feel like less if you haven’t given them a lot of your money. Okay, like many others, I am full of a lot of hot air on this one. I love getting my family gifts. I actually love when I can find just the right thing. But I am working on being better.
Giving Thanks – many of us SAY thanks, but do we really GIVE it? This holiday season, whatever you celebrate, I challenge you to truly GIVE thanks for something in your life.
I am grateful that I can pay my bills, so today I gave to an organization that helps people who can’t.
What will you do?
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