The Chaplain’s Weekly Screed
In the United States, a big deal is made of the many winter holidays from various cultures. The reason for this is that, culturally, the United States’ history and the background of the great majority of its population is Protestant and Catholic, yet the country is constitutionally and Constitutionally secular. And, despite perpetual backlash, Americans, by and large, still take pride in diversity.
We end up in this situation where most of the country wants to celebrate the fuck out of Christmas: worship Jesus or worship materialism; anoint themselves in prayer or anoint themselves in brandy; connect with a thousand years of Christian heritage or some cultural lighthouse in a black void of American culture, long ago converted into dollars and mass culture, neglected by mass secularism and finished off by the guilt associated with conscious prosperity. At the same time, we Americans want all to feel welcome and we enjoy the quaint and vibrant winter holidays of others, much as one might delight over accessorizing his Burning Man outfit with, say, an LED smiley face. So, Americans now make a huge deal out of the very minor, nationalist Jewish holiday of Hanukkah; acknowledge the made-up holiday of Kwanzaa for black Americans; make room for Diwali, which gets reinterpreted as Hindu Christmas; and acclaim whatever other holidays we can look up on Wikipedia to show how conscious of diversity we are.
In my household, we go balls out. My December schedule and budget is a disaster every year. We have to do the Christmas thing for Gianna, which certainly elevates Gifting over Decommodification. We murder a tree, cover its corpse in lights, display it as a trophy and give the kids far more presents than could do them any good.
My response has been to double down: eight fucking nights of gifts for Hanukkah, even though when I was a kid, I got $50 from the grandparents and that was it. But I’m not just going to bend over and take it from Santa – I’m putting up as much of a fight as I can to defend this little island of Jewishness in a sea of Yuletide. After all, Hanukkah isn’t actually the milquetoast “Festival of Lights” it’s known as in the United States. It celebrates the expulsion, by blood and blade, of cultural interlopers – the Greeks, who are now celebrated as the genesis of Western civilization. It’s something the Taliban would surely applaud, in form, if not religious affiliation. Of course, by fighting fire with fire, I just make a bigger fire.
But we do have a household tradition that I dig and that is much more Burning Man than Hanukkah or Christmas. On the winter solstice we invite over friends to join us for the longest of nights and huddle around a big ass fire, in our front yard. We get drunk on all sorts of homemade concoctions and break bread together. The fire brings us together, though it’s much less than 80 people, not Black Rock City’s 80,000. In it’s little way our event echoes Burning Man: it’s inclusive; it’s our gift to others; we serve the food we’ve grown and made and burn the wood we’ve grown and cut; it’s just a little bit of living the Burn outside of Black Rock City.
So, on that note: Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas and Sloppy Solstice!
Group News
No group news right now. Depending on what Placement does when, I’ll be feeling out who wants to camp with the Chapel in February.
Black Rock City News
This is a great video of BRC 2022, worth watching.
I’ve wanted to go to Midburn in Israel for a while now, but it’s too soon after Burning Man. If you’re interested, here’s an account of Midburn.
An interesting blog post about how great decommodified art is.
If you don’t know how to answer people when they ask what Burning Man is like, there are a couple of options from the 2022 Burn:
· These photos, with this soundtrack.
· This multimedia article.
Placement / Ticket News
Still waiting for news from Placement. We still don’t even know if we’re in good standing. Time will tell…
Upcoming Tasks
Not much on the horizon, just keep living the Ten Principles in the default world.
Closing Thoughts
In the US, there’s a tradition known as The Elf on a Shelf. It’s a little Elf who you put on a shelf. You move him around sometimes and convince your children that he’s a spy for Santa and, if a child misbehaves, he’ll snitch. Then Santa will only give him coal. The Elf on the Shelf is the inheritor of the role of Krampus who, in Alpine Europe, would beat the misbehavior out of children with a birch rod for Christmas. Some Jews instead deploy the Mensch on the Bench (Mensch is a Yiddish word for man). Not sure who the Mensch on the Bench reports to (Hanukkah Harry?)
I have another, personal tradition: Yourself on a Shelf. It’s the idea that the person I ultimately need to answer to is myself. Only I see all my sins and few, if any people, care more about who I am as a person than myself. It’s like Radical Self-Reliance for morality. And that reminds me… it’s time to find that mirror and put it up.
The Man burns in 270 days!
This is a Santa sleigh from Burning Man, 2012. Interestingly, one of the camps that claims to be Burning Man’s first theme camp was Christmas Camp.
This is a Santa sleigh from Burning Man, 2012. Interestingly, one of the camps that claims to be Burning Man’s first theme camp was Christmas Camp.
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