The Tyranny of Thanksgiving

Why bother?

 

A glance around my Facebook feed this morning produced some sharp contrasts.

There were all the usual suspects, rounded up and smiling: professional family portraits, amateur shots of glowing landscapes, pictures of pies galore. Most were captioned with some permutation of the word “thankful.”

Then there were the others. Quotidian. Candid.

“Just having stress-free cereal and playing Minecraft this morning because it’s what we like to do.”

“I used to try to do all the fixings, but this year I’m just doing what I like.”

“I’m going out for Chinese food.”

“The stress of the turkey fixings is on its last gasp in society. I just don’t care enough to bother anymore.”

“I made my pumpkin pie on Tuesday. Why wait?”

Why wait, indeed? In a society that can have anything at any moment, what value is there in being forced to mark special days off with food and feasting and fellowship? Isn’t it all just a bunch of unnecessary bother and work? And believe me, I know the sort of work Thanksgiving involves. You have to travel. You have to dress up, or clean up, or shut up about politics, or step up and volunteer to make the yeast rolls (even though you have two kids with the sniffles at home). Your mother interrupts your precious day off of school and demands that you hand-peel twenty pounds of damp potatoes. You have to plot and plan how to use the oven for days ahead of schedule—and then it breaks. Why put up with all those demands? Why put up with the tyranny of Thanksgiving expectations—familial, edible, or personal? Can’t we all just sit at home and eat Chinese in peace? 

Book of the Month October 2022: De Doctrina Christiana

 

You know, someone really needs to paint a good portrait of Augustine of Hippo that doesn't involve A) a miter or B) a flaming heart. One can only take so much Roman iconography, after all, but there doesn't really appear to be a viable alternative amongst the vast resources of the Googles.

But aside from the fact that he's been the subject of a rather terrible set of portraits, the man has a distinguished track record. Writing October's Book of the Month would be an example. While hardly known at all today compared to his even greater works Confessions and City of God, this was a key text for many men in the medieval period, such as Cassiodorus Senator.

De Doctrina Christiana (translated as either "On Christian Teaching" or "On Christian Doctrine") was composed in two major chunks: the first was finished about 397 A.D., and the last book was finally added about thirty years later. In it, Augustine set out to provide the reader with the knowledge necessary to understand and teach the Scriptures. Beginning with his famous distinction between things to be enjoyed (only God) and things to be used (everything else) he lays out a path that leads to wisdom. One major step on that journey is knowledge, and most human knowledge is gained though signs (such as, say, letters). Thus Augustine lays the groundwork for both medieval literary accumulation (particularly in the monasteries) and modern semiotics. [For a fascinating fusion of the two, see Eco's The Name of the Rose] He then proceeds to attempt to adjust the rhetorical training of his pagan career with Christianity's needs, leading to his famous "plundering the Egyptians" metaphor that is itself often plundered by the modern classical movement.

This was most fascinating to take in parallel with Benedict's Rule for Monasteries, although that will probably wind up being a separate post someday. Suffice to say I think there's some interesting connections in there, particularly about holiness, literature, and learning.

If you're interested in classical rhetoric or education, definitely take a look at this one. Just make sure to find a good guide--there's a lot flying under the surface of this text.

The Myth of the Silent Majority

 

It turns out all the assumptions of the Conservative political project were built on sand.

For years, the “normal folks” assumed that the small-town America of the 1980s was still lurking, unseen, around the corner. That when the crazies (on either end of the spectrum) raised one flag too many, pushed a little too hard, or assumed a bit too much, the “Silent Majority” would rise up and toss them all out. That A-mericuh—Land of the Red, White, AND Blue—would resume its customary sanity and we could all go back to normal. That folks just wouldn’t stand for any more of that s---.

They were wrong.