The Days of HallowThanksMas

We are now in the holiday season, a time of year when multiple holidays have become so prevalent they begin to merge together into one big two month long holiday.  Some people respond to this by insisting everyone say “Merry Christmas” to them and taking great offense when this doesn’t happen.  These people call this time of year “The War on Christmas”.  If it were a little more like an actual war, with guns and bombs and tanks and such, it might be kinda cool, but as it is, the name does not live up to the hype.

I take a slightly different approach. Over the past few years I and others have been referring to this time of year as “HallowThanksMas”, as a way of indicating the merging of three of the larger holidays of the season. But, even this is insufficient, as there are far more than just three holidays. Let’s take a holiday moment and look at them all…

July 5th

Not a holiday, per se, but it is rapidly becoming the new beginning of the HallowThanksMas season. This is the day Walmart first puts out their Christmas decorations.

Halloween

October 31st, the official beginning of HallowThanksMas. This is the night our children get dressed up in costumes and go door to door begging for candy. It celebrates the twin values of childhood obesity and panhandling.

All Saints Day

The day after Halloween. No one celebrates this day. Except maybe Catholics.  Maybe. Once upon a time.

Dia de los Muertos

Also the day after Halloween. This is still mostly celebrated by those of Latin American descent, but the anglos are starting to take notice. I predict Dia de los Muertos will quickly become the new Cinco de Mayo, what with anglos becoming increasingly disillusioned with Cindo de Mayo once they learn it is not, in fact, Mexican Indpendence Day, but instead celebrates a small but significant defeat of the French. After all, if we celebrated every time the French lost, we’d be celebrating all year long.

Blackout Wednesday / Drinksgiving

The day before Thanksgiving. This day has replaced New Year’s Eve as the night non-alcoholics get blackout drunk and do stupid things. Fun fact: This holiday was once sponsored by Four Loco.

Thanksgiving

The last Thursday of November. After the previous night of over-drinking, we celebrate a day devoted to over-eating. The traditions include preparing gigantic poultry-based meals while hungover, watching Detroit lose a football game, arguing about cranberry sauce, throwing shade at relatives, both present and absent, slipping into a life threatening food coma, and preparing one’s Black Friday battle strategy for the following day. Some traditionalists even include a giving of thanks, but this has become increasingly optional and downright passe.

Black Friday

The Friday after Thanksgiving is the first of four annual shopping holidays. If there was ever a holiday that resembled a “war on” anything it is Black Friday. This is the day, immediately following the day we gave thanks for the wonderful bounty that is our life of plenty, when we go out and beat perfect strangers to death for a flat screen TV. This is both the largest shopping day of the year, and the day with the most small appliance related rectal injuries of the year.

Local Saturday

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the second of the shopping holidays. Local Saturday is an attempt to encourage shoppers to shop local. It does not work, as most people who actually would shop local are instead spending their day visiting friends and relatives in the hospital due to their Black Friday related rectal injuries. This holiday will soon pass the way of All Saints Day, nothing more than an interesting relic of a kinder time.

Cyber Monday

The Monday after Thanksgiving, the third of the shopping holidays, this one devoted to online shopping. This holiday was born of necessity, back in the dark ages when people only had Internet access at work. While this is no longer true, the holiday continues as a fun productivity-killing tradition. Why go shopping from the comfort of your home when you can do it on the clock instead. By the way, tradition says you are not allowed to participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so choose wisely.

Christmas Eve

December 24th, the night before Christmas, and the final of the annual shopping holidays. While the previous three were devoted to online shopping, local shopping, and full combat shopping, Christmas Eve is the day for panic shopping. Christmas Eve is the reason, and the only reason, that drug stores sell perfume and clock radios. It is also a time for gathering, drinking a little too much, and letting the kids open just one present, so they will finally shut the hell up about it and stop harshing your eggnog and wine induced buzz.

Christmas

December 25th, the big one. This is the day everyone has been telling you that you must mention by name when wishing others well on any of the previous holidays.  It is the only holiday allowed to use the word “Merry”, all others must make do with less jovial “Happy”.  It is the day we celebrate keeping our consumer driven economy afloat for just one more year by giving toys to kids, and worthless do-dads to everyone else. There is also a religious element to the day, as about five or six deities all claim this as their birthday, so… Happy Birthday Santa!

Boxing Day

December 26th. That weird day Canadians celebrate that no one else understands.

Hanukkah / Chanuka

Sometime in December, nobody really knows for sure. Also, nobody really knows how it is spelled, which is kinda nice, because any guess at it is pretty much valid. From what I understand, Hanukkah is the Jewish version of Christmas, only without a baby Jew in a barn. Also the presents are spread out over eight days because of this eight candle candelabra thing. The presents are a little different as well, consisting mostly of chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil. I will admit, for some reason the chocolate does taste better when shaped like a coin.

Ramadan

Sometime in November or December or January, again nobody really knows for sure, but at least we can agree on the spelling. Ramadan is like the Muslim version of Christmas, only without anything even remotely like Christmas, and instead you can’t eat or drink during the daylight hours.  They were smart putting this holiday in the winter months.

New Years Eve

December 31st, the last day of the year. This used to be the night everyone got drunk, but that is no longer fashionable, especially since the advent of Blackout Wednesday. So instead we face the end of another year, facing an uncertain future and our own impending mortality with all of the fear and regret as before, but now without the alcohol. I recommend skipping this one.

New Years Day

January 1st, the first day of the year. This used to be the day we watched the college football championship, but for reasons no one understands that no longer happens until a few days later. Activities include: eating black-eyed peas, for some reason, and pledging to join a gym, because dammit this is the year. Personally I recommend drinking the booze you skipped the previous night, and listening to the Black-Eyed Peas.

Epiphany

January 6th. Another one just for the Catholics. I think it’s like a Catholic Boxing Day. In some areas it is celebrated by having young boys dive into really cold water to retrieve something. For the rest of us, it means it is the last acceptable day to drag that Christmas Tree out to the curb.

Kwanzaa

I don’t know, I wanna say January sometime, or maybe March?  No one takes Kwanzaa seriously because it’s so new, but I say that’s not fair. All holidays were new at some time right?  Plus we’ve adopted other new holidays, like Blackout Wednesday. Yeah, honestly I don’t know anything about Kwanzaa, but I am all for adding a new holiday, even if people will insist on saying “Merry Christmas” to it.

What a difference a Pomeranian makes…

I gained a new insight into the Trump phenomenon this weekend, in a most unexpected way.

(And before you’re all like “There he goes again with his anti-Trump rantings”, hold on.  This post isn’t anti-Trump.  I am actually coming out right now and saying I am pro-Trump.  Well, I am pro-Trump: the ideal.  Relax, I firmly remain anti-Trump: the man. But this post is not about the man. I’ve had plenty to say about that already, and frankly there’s not much more can be said that hasn’t been said before. No, this post is about the ideal of Trump, which I fully support. And it is about a stuffed Pomeranian, but more on that later.)

Okay, how this all started…

Every year our company has a Halloween party and costume contest.  That’s something of an understatement.  In past years this has been a week long Halloween extravaganza, with multiple costumes, themes, skits, and daily voting, all leading up to one final week long team winner, and usually not a small amount of controversy over the voting process.  In recent years this has been augmented with us then attending the “13 Ugly Men” Halloween Party – one of THE big social charity events of the season in these parts.  This year, due to popular demand, and escalating expenses, we scaled it back to one day of contests, and the big event that night, but… it’s still a big deal.

One of the things I love about where I work is, the people there are, well, the only way to put it is… they are competitive as fuck.  It didn’t matter the prize, they just wanted to win it. And they go all out. Thus the escalating expenses from a week long extravaganza.  But even in it’s one-day scaled back form, it is still a highly competitive event. You’ve gotta bring your “A” game.

When deciding on what costume I would do this year, I looked at the rules, and one of the categories for points was “scariest costume”.  I thought to myself, what is the scariest thing I have ever seen, and my answer came to me immediately.  I would go as Donald Trump.

But it’s not enough just to dress as Trump, there has to be a hook.  Just dressing like a clown is not enough, I expect there would be plenty of Trumps walking around, no, there has to be something unique.  That’s where the Pomeranian comes in.

There’s a old comedy trope about Trumps hair, going back decades, that it’s actually a small, furry, possibly rabid, animal the sleeps on his head by day, and presumably wanders off having it’s own adventures by night.  So there was my hook.  Instead of the usual Trump wig, I would wear a stuffed Pomeranian on my head.

Now, the logistics of strapping a Pomeranian to one’s head is more difficult than one might expect.  (There’s one of those sentences I never thought I’d say.)  First, said stuffed Pomeranian wasn’t quite big enough to cover my giant head, so I ended up assembling something of a Trump-hair-sandwich with safety pins, a Trump wig on the bottom, a poly-fill eviscerated Pomeranian in the middle, and the ubiquitous red hat on top.

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Just a quick word about the hat. My red hat says “Make America ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Again”. I wasn’t about to risk any of my money going to Trump’s pocket by accidentally purchasing official campaign merchandise.

This arrangement had the desired effect.  It was a Trump costume, with a hook, a slight tongue-in-cheek nod that the costume was meant to be humorous.  It was meant in good fun, and it was received as such, even amongst the handful of Trump supporters in our office.

Unfortunately all was not well.  While visually it work perfectly, it was somewhat top-heavy, and for reasons I won’t go into, we were outside on a windy day, and as you might expect a Pomeranian to do, it frequently leapt off my head and attempted to scurry away.

This was not a problem for the costume contest during the day, but for the big party that night it would be a big problem.  There would be much dancing, or in my case white people bouncing up and down, and much moving about, and the floor of the venue was not a place I wanted to retrieve something from to then put back on my head, so… Modifications were needed. Reluctantly, after all we had been through, I made the tough call, and decided the Pomeranian must go. Yes, I fired the Pomeranian.

This minor alteration had an unexpected consequence at the big event. Originally I had envisioned my costume as Trump: the Monster.  Maybe with devil horns poking out of that massive hair, or maybe Frankenstein bolts attached to an orange neck, or… well you get the idea.  So many possibilities.  But early on I decided that while it might be funny, out of respect for a small handful of people I know who liked him, but not for all the wrong reasons, demonizing him was not the best way to go.  No, I decided instead to stay closer to the truth, and portray him as Trump: the Buffoon.  Thus the Pomeranian for a hairpiece.  But now, that visual clue was gone.  I was just Trump.  There were no clues that I was Trump: the Buffoon, or Trump: the Monster, although a few who saw me made that interpretation anyway.

But not all. Something weird started happening.  I expected people to see me wearing my Trump costume as one would a Vampire or Frankenstein or Werewolf costume. People instead began seeing me wearing my Trump costume as one would Batman, or Captain America, or the Hulk.  In short, in the absence of visual clues otherwise, they were seeing me as Trump: the Superhero.

I started getting genuinely heart-felt thumbs-up, statements of adoration like “Love it!” and “You’re wonderful!”  There was lots of shaking of hands and taking of pictures, and appreciative smiles.  They genuinely adored this guy, and they instantly liked me, a perfect stranger to them, for this loving homage I had created to their hero.

That’s when it occurred to me… Well a few things, but first it occurred to me that, for the duration of this night at least, I had no political opinion. None. I would be just a guy having fun with a bunch of other humans having fun, and together we would celebrate, well I don’t know what exactly, but we would celebrate.  Tonight I would be a member of everyone’s tribe.

And it worked.  The highlight of the evening was when I ran into the unknown woman in a Hillary mask. I admit, that was a tense encounter at first, but she was a good sport about it, and I was committed to being a good sport about it, and it led to some wonderful photos. (Let it be known, far and wide, to one and all… I grabbed nothing.) Somewhere out there too are some interesting selfies of me with a very convincing Ken Bone.

But the other thing that occurred to me is, this really was hero worship.  This guy, or at least this image of a guy, is the hero they wanted, and after a few hours, I very much wanted them to have that hero. They deserved that hero, even if I knew deep down, having studied this man for literally decades, that this man was nowhere near the hero they held him to be. I wanted it for them.

I’ve talked with some of you before, for some time now, about the fact that I actually LIKE the idea of Trump. I do. An outsider, coming in to shake things up. Someone bold who tells it like it is. A businessman, not a politician. I like that. That really is what we need. That’s what I want too. That is EXACTLY who I want for president.

That ideal was H. Ross Perot in 92, before he went bat-shit crazy and dropped out of the race.  Believe me, up until that point, I was firmly on the Perot train. He was everything people want to believe Trump is today. Only, he was the real thing.

I have studied businessmen all of my adult life. There are several I would love see run for president. I know which ones are brilliant, and which ones are mediocre, and honestly, I would support even the mediocre ones (Carly Fiorina for example). But in that study, I also knew Trump, I knew his successes and failures, I knew how he ran his businesses and the philosophies that guided him. And I knew, even before he announced his run with the Reform Party in 2000, I knew that he was a fraud, albeit at times a successful one, and I knew beyond anything else that he was unequipped to lead a nation.

Others don’t see that, they don’t see Trump: the Very Flawed Angry Little Man, they see only Trump: the Hero.  And no matter what is shown to them, all they will ever see is Trump: the Hero. They just want it SO bad. They are practically willing it to be true. And I don’t blame them for wanting it, like I said, I do too. I wish it were true. I want a Trump. Just not this Trump.

On the other hand, I do blame them, at least a little, for allowing themselves to become so blinded by Trump: the Hero that they cannot see the truth of Trump: the Man. And I have no idea what it will take to shake that belief in Trump: the Hero. If nothing so far has, I don’t know that anything can. What does a hero have to do for you to lose faith in him?

When Trump said he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any support, he was right. He knew then that they were following Trump: the Hero. I think he was a surprised as anyone.

Of course, this is the great danger of dictators.  They are all seen at first as the conquering hero.  The champion of the people. The savior and liberator of the common man.

That was the appeal of Stalin and Lenin, they were the outsiders who came in to shake up the status quo. That was the appeal of Mao Tse-Tung, reclaiming China for the people, from the wealthy elite and foreign influence. That was the appeal of Hitler, to put Germans first, to make Germany great again. That was the appeal of Mussolini, to restore the greatness of old Rome. That was the appeal of Julius Caesar, to wrest power from the politically corrupt Senate, and give Rome back to the people.

ALL peacetime dictators begin this way. All of them. It is HOW they come to power. This is the path of Trump: the Dictator.

So what have I learned from all this?  Well, first let me say, there are people out there who support Trump because they believe he supports their racist, bigoted, “alt.right” ideals. And whether Trump does or not, he certainly does nothing to dissuade them, and what matters is that they believe he does. Those are the true “deplorables” Hillary was speaking of.

Not all Trump supporters are bigots, and it troubles me deeply when they take to calling themselves “deplorables” as a badge of honor. To me that signals that maybe they are okay with the racism and bigotry, or at least they are okay with an alliance with the racists and bigots. I assume they are not, but their embrace of the term introduces a troubling doubt.

For the other Trump supporters, many I know to be good people, I think I have a better understanding of them. For a few hours, I was one of them, I was celebrating Trump: the ideal, I was celebrating Trump: the hero, or maybe even Trump: the super-hero.

So, yeah, I get it.  I understand the appeal. Deep down I feel that same appeal, I desire it too. I wish I could join you, the hope and joy you feel seems absolutely blissful.

But, I cannot. It was only a moment, and I must return to the real world. I cannot abandon the rational world, the world of facts. I will stubbornly cling to it with my dying breath. Your world is more appealing, but it’s a false hope, it’s an unfounded joy. It is the bliss born of ignorance. I cannot un-know what I know. I cannot un-see what I’ve seen. And I cannot live in a dream world, no matter how pleasant the dream.

If you chose to remain there, in your dream, in your bliss. I understand. And I sympathize. I share your desire. I believe in your ideals. I yearn for the same champion as you. But I cannot worship your chosen hero. I have seen what you wish him to be, and it is beautiful, but I have also seen him for what he really is.