October 2003
by Barry Stagg
The so-called modern age brings with it a retail haze that obscures the simple realism of a Sunday in October set aside for honouring the fact that we are all well and shaping up for the hard push through the cold bare months ahead. We are either well or as well as can be expected but we push on in the collective expression of Samuel Beckett's profound fatalist aphorism: "I can't go on. I'll go on."
Modernity is often a cruel foe to holiday festivals as the clever and the fashionable work in the same harness of benighted nihilism to ridicule such rituals that give credit and tribute to the past and our ancestors. Our Western democracies are made of sufficiently stern stuff that fashion will not ruin them. However, care and conscious awareness of the need to celebrate and honour our venerable way of life- our civilization- is vital to maintaining the strength and integrated fibre of the way we go on. And, mark our words, we do go on, in spite of fashion and in particular defiance of any foul attempts to destroy our spirit- September 11, 2001 being a prime and vivid example of such failed barbarity.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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