Thanksgiving

Today is a day dominated for many Americans by food and family--two excellent things to be grateful for. However, in the repetition and stress and tryptophan the actual meaning of the day often gets a little lost. So here are a few thoughts from Chesterton on gratitude:

"Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace."

"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera,

and grace before the play and pantomime,

and grace before I open a book,

and grace before sketching,

painting,

swimming,

fencing,

boxing,

walking,

playing,

dancing

and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

"Aren't those sparks splendid?" I said.
"Yes," he replied.
'That is all that I ask you to admit," said I. "Give me those few red specks and I will deduce Christian morality. Once I thought like you, that one's pleasure in a flying spark was a thing that could come and go with that spark. Once I thought that the delight was as free as the fire. Once I thought that red star we see was alone in space. But now I know that the red star is only on the apex of an invisible pyramid of virtues. That red fire is only the flower on a stalk of living habits, which you cannot see. Only because your mother made you say 'Thank you' for a bun are you now able to thank Nature or chaos for those red stars of an instant or for the white stars of all time. Only because you were humble before fireworks on the fifth of November do you now enjoy any fireworks that you chance to see. You only like them being red because you were told about the blood of the martyrs; you only like them being bright because brightness is a glory. That flame flowered out of virtues, and it will fade with virtues. Seduce a woman, and that spark will be less bright. Shed blood, and that spark will be less red. Be really bad, and they will be to you like the spots on a wallpaper."

Stop looking start seeing

Terry Pratchett continually uses the trope that people see what they want to see. When confronted with something too big, or amazing, or terrible or out of the ordinary the human mind refuses to recognize it, or amends reality till it comes up with something acceptable. In Good Omens the characters ignore the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, for acknowledging them, even when they are right in front of their face is neither convenient nor comfortable. "No one paid any attention to them. Perhaps they saw nothing at all. Perhaps they saw what their minds were instructed to see, because the human brain is not equipped to see War, Famine, Pollution, and Death when they don't want to be seen, and has got so good at not seeing that it often manages not to see them even when they abound on every side." It is what allows characters to function, to go about their day to day activities without going insane.

Fiction is the opposite of this panacea for life's madness found on Discworld. Good fiction is not escapism but the opposite. They use the wondrous, the fantastic, faerie land as an escape into reality. It holds a mirror up to our world, but a funhouse mirror that tweaks and twists what it shows making you pay attention to details never noticed before. As Chesterton notes in the Napoleon of Notting Hill, "Now, there is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time." This is what fiction is in danger of doing, of make us see the world instead of merely looking at it.

I know that I am returning to a topic I touched on shortly after the inception of this blog and I am sorry to be repetitive. But it is something I think about a lot, for the idea of "Classics" and a literary cannon have ingrained in me that some things are more noble reads while others are fluff. I do not believe this but every once and a while I have to justify my forays into the fantastic.

Better to light a candle

... One day a tortoise will learn how to fly

Everyday life is saturated by traditions that most people perform without thought. Removing one's hat upon entering a building, placing flowers on a grave or candles on a birthday cake, even putting the fork on the left when setting a table--these are customs that people observe on a daily basis, usually without giving their actions any thought. Just, however, because people do not think about the rituals they perform or the traditions to which they subscribe does not mean that those traditions should be abolished. Each of these has a meaning and purpose which they do not loose just because people no longer think about them. In his book "The Thing--Why I am Catholic" Chesterton tells a parable of a gate approached by two reformers, the first of whom looks at it and says "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." The second, whom Chesterton calls the more intelligent reformer, replies "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

The same can be said about the traditions surrounding Halloween. Carving jack-o-lanterns, distributing candy, dressing in costume, there was a meaning behind the establishment of each of these and they should not be abolished until that meaning is remembered and understood. Because a knowledge of the origin of these things is not reflected in peoples current practise of them is not a reason to stop, nor, as Aloysha claims, does it turn them into nothing. Whether giving out candy on Halloween originated from grave offerings for the dead, from the tradition of providing strangers with hospitality or from something else entirely, the original meaning is honored whether people do so intentionally or not. And, perhaps more importantly in this day and age, there is something to be said about people performing rituals and practicing tradition whether they realise what they are doing or not. For, whether you bow or courtesy to the queen, genuflect before a tabernacle, watch fireworks on the 4th of July, or merely hold a door for a stranger, the point of rituals is to pay respect to something outside oneself and to put oneself in perspective of system larger than themselves--something modernity, with its emphasis on individuality and conflation of liberty and a complete lack of rules, tends to forget.

So the beauty of the day is in the traditions. The mystery of the Danse Macabre is that it was not a one time thing but rather happened regularly allowing everyone to participate. So, if Aloysha wants to attempt to be alive this Halloween he will attempt to carry out the traditions, but with the proper reflection about what those traditions mean and proper reverence to those they honor.