A Little Too Early!

Two days from tonight we will all, at least those of us in the US, will be sitting down for Thanksgiving Dinner. After stuffing our faces many of us will be heading home on the slow sleepy drive back home while others will roll themselves into the adjacent room, beach themselves on the couch, and go to sleep. It is a great day to spend with family without the obligation or expectation of gifts, it’s simply a time to get together and give thanks for what you have and the people around you (at least most of them).

At the tail end of the day, with only a couple/few hours until the calendar page is turned, stores will be opening their doors to throngs of people looking for the best deal of the year (until it hits the clearance rack) and the cheapest gifts possible for the impending gift giving season. Every family has that one person who goes to the Black Friday sales (or whatever you call the Thursday openings) and I will admit it that I am no stranger to the chaos although I have never waited in line to get into a store.

I can understand the need for a good deal and with Thanksgiving over it is natural for retailers to capitalize on the next big holiday on the horizon… Christmas. However, Black Friday does not mark the debut of the decorations, displays, cards, or freaking music. All of that holiday gaudiness begins creeping out right after Halloween.

At this point, I am pretty sick of it. It is too much, too soon, and it has to stop. Growing up I loved the Christmas season and I recall the sights, sounds, and music immediately surrounding the big day. Immediately surrounding, not the surrounding months. What has happened over the years?

While it is not my chosen celebration in my adult life, it is still a season that surrounds us. The message is positive and people are generally in a good mood but let’s stop trying to extend the season every year. Let’s go back to simple way that it should be and start all of the extravagance just after Thanksgiving. Actually, start it on Thanksgiving as it used to be. When Santa comes down the street on the float, the holiday season has officially begun.

So, sit back and enjoy the holiday season. Enjoy the fact that you are allowed to blame the dog for your farts for an entire month. Embrace the gifting ability to pick favorites in the family without saying a word. Reminisce about the days when Chevy Chase was funny and watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (snicker, snicker, snicker).

And, finally, enjoy your one day late in the year… long after we celebrated our eight days of Hanukkah (we will be celebrating while you are just starting your shopping). You might have missed the beginning since we don’t have a lot of songs to mark the holiday because we were too busy writing Christmas songs. By the way… O J Simpson, still not a Jew.

A Long Weekend With Meaning

Today we celebrate Labor Day. Well, really, let’s be honest. No one is celebrating a holiday to honor the blue collar laborers. In fact, most of the people who have to work on this holiday are the ones that this day is supposed to honor.

This is why I just wanted to take a step back and share with you a little bit about the holiday. First, a little overview as to the purpose of Labor Day as written on the Department of Labor’s website:

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country… Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886.

From these, a movement developed to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

Slowly the movement took hold and crossed the country until finally it was declared a national holiday. Don’t you love the irony from the very beginning when it took a bunch of guys in suits and sitting behind desks in order to pass a holiday that honors the people that, up until that point, were coerced to place their votes in favor of the party that would be most beneficial to their employer. Remember, the formation of this day was long before the sale of Carnegie Steel in 1901 and the dissolution of Standard Oil in 1911.

The means by which the day is celebrated has changed greatly over the years. While today it usually means one last trip to the beach, shopping for bargains at the mall, and generally just enjoying a long weekend away from work that was not the way the day was meant to be observed. Parades and speeches were the order of the day. And while I believe that to be an appropriate way to celebrate at the time, I think the laborers during the turn of the 20^th century would join right along in the modern incarnation of their holiday.

Specifically, this is how the celebrations were supposed to be scheduled (again from the DOL website):

The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

Essentially we have a dichotomy between the meaning and means of celebration of this holiday in the modern world. Like many celebrations, this is just one of those things that changes over time. As the world changes so do the people and events in it. However, I would like to propose an idea to attempt to tie the two together, past with present.

It is very simple, take some time out of the day to remember members of your family, past and present, for whom this holiday was created. Appreciate the people that you meet during the day for whom this holiday was established. Find something that you can do yourself that you would normally hire someone to do and work with your hands (once you mess it up and make it worse, then you can call someone). It all comes down to appreciation so find some way to not just show your appreciation but mean it as well. 

Never Settle For Disappointment

My Rotary week started off on a high point as I was looking forward to representing my club on The 4^th of July in the parade in Center City Philadelphia. However, that anticipation was soon extinguished as district participation in the parade was cancelled due to not enough people registering for the event. I guess I can add this to my list of goals for next year to rally my club and the clubs in the district to participate. I choose to look forward to next year at this point.

Wednesday quickly rolled around and I was at Aldar Bistro for our regular meeting. I guess you could say that this was both a high point and a low point as I was happy that we had a great meeting and we were able to talk a bit more in depth about the recent transition but the disappointing part was that we were a small group of three. Great company, great discussion, poor turnout; I guess Wednesday could be considered a wash.

Independence Day was a great day, as it is every year, but also in a Rotary sense as well. My wife and I started our day (we slept in quite a bit) by heading into Narberth and selling popcorn at the town carnival to benefit the club. We only signed up for a two hour ‘shift’ but I really don’t know where the time went even with a temperamental popcorn cart. It was a great event that I look forward to repeating next year after the parade.

Later that evening as I was finishing writing my last post and listening to the sounds of fireworks reverberating off the neighboring apartment building I received a message from a fellow Rotarian I met at a district event some time ago and with whom I have stayed in touch had read my Sons of the American Revolution blog post on Wednesday and wanted to connect me with someone who could help with the genealogy research. This is excellent news not just for me but for my family as we are all looking forward to learning more and taking this final step of solidifying and verifying this research. I am looking forward to exploring all six lines further and updating my relatives.

So, overall, it could have been a better week but I am content with the Rotary activity this week. What started with a little disappointment was quickly followed by great fellowship on Wednesday and satisfying service and an unexpected camaraderie on Thursday. I would say that is a pretty good week that I wouldn’t mind repeating every week.