In Gratis

                Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are token holidays.  Actually, for a non-religious person, all of the holidays are a token.  On the 4^th of July people blow things up, and I guarantee that most kids are NOT thinking about the cost of American independence when they light each fuse.  But Mother’s and Father’s Day are unique because they don’t celebrate an event so much as they attempt to celebrate an IDEA:  “you are appreciated”. 

                The best presents are trivial:  handmade cards, hand-picked flowers, an invitation to lunch.  The present itself is largely irrelevant.  Children are not supposed to present lavish gifts to their parents; it’s the thought that counts.  I realize the propensity to revert to a cliché here, but clichés are sometimes idioms:  self-evident truths.  I don’t care about the gift, but I do pay attention to the effort.  When a child makes no effort to reciprocate generosity or acknowledge sacrifice, the “token” gift becomes symbolic.  It’s no longer just a card; it’s a LACK of a card.  It’s a LACK of acknowledgement.  That means something.

                A birthday falls under the same general category.  A birth is an incredible series of events, in which a mother takes every single bit of energy (both mental and physical) she has, and gives birth to a person.  And who gets celebrated?  Not the person who agonized through labor or worried about the details for nine months.  The child gets celebrated.  The one person who did absolutely nothing but arrive is the one who is showered with gifts and taught to think they did something special.

                All the celebratory things that people do seem so odd to me.  They celebrate Christmas by buying gifts under the guise of Jesus’s birth.  They celebrate Lent by giving up something inane, when they should really being giving up FOOD for 40 days. 

                I want to celebrate, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to create my own celebratory days to acknowledge, because I can’t subscribe to the stupidity of common culture.  I’m not a downer; I’m not a depressive – I’m simply tired of the same old bullshit masquerading as “tradition”.  Celebrations should be spontaneous and revolutionary, not required.  Suggestions welcome.