Christmas comes but four or five times a year
Depending on what you count as Christmas. Today is the eve of St. Nicholas Day, a big deal in some European countries. Then there’s December 25, the birth of Sol Invictus Mithras Jesus. There’s Boxing Day, which isn’t really Christmas but might as well be, seeing how the Brits carry on about it. There’s Three Kings Day around January 6, and Eastern Orthodox Christmas around January 7.
This year, I’ve promised my family and myself I’m actually going to observe the holidays. I still have book chapters due and projects a-boil, but I figure all that will still be there after Christmas. Plenty of time after the holidays to save the world.
So the blog is now officially in holiday mode. (I should put up lights. Maybe an animatronic Nativity scene on the lawn.) That means that instead of writing a post today about the infuriating rehabilitation of Larry Summers and the associated acid reflux in my esophagus, I’m going to write about Sinterklaas (which is how the Dutch say “St. Nicholas,” since they have so much trouble pronouncing English) and his politically incorrect assistant, Black Pete:
Ouch. Kind of puts a crimp in your happy, doesn’t it?
(I totally dig Sinterklaas’s bishop rig, by the way. I wish our Santa looked like that. I suppose the mitre and the big crooked staff could get tangled up in the chimney, though.)
Black Pete is supposed to be a Moor, but his appearance is based on the “black Sambo” type iconography of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which is when the Black Pete character emerged in Dutch tradition. It’s your basic hideous blackface.
Racially-sensitive Dutch people are appalled by Black Pete, and urge that the character be replaced or overhauled. In a country as tolerant as The Netherlands, they say, there is no room for that kind of prejudice.
I think they should replace Black Pete with the character of a trafficked Thai prostitute in Amsterdam’s Red Light district. That would suit the tolerant Dutch sensibility much better.
Goddamnit. There it goes again! This holiday thing is supposed to cut down on the acid in my stomach.
80 Responses to “Christmas comes but four or five times a year”
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
My ex MIL was from Maastricht and she was one of the most intolerant, prejudiced and whacko woman I have ever met.
Then there’s the image of Santa that I like - that of Shaman in Siberia. Gnostic Media has a very interesting DVD out (and I think you can look at it free online, if I recall) which explains the holiday in terms I understand. From what happens astrologically to going down the chimney to explanations of “ornaments” on the tree - much more to my pagan liking.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:09 am EST -
Unree says:
Great idea, but please do publish the Larry Summers rehab post too, because Gretchen didn’t cover the point that I know you’d handle smashingly: What’s incorrect about Summers’ assertion that there are more men at the very top of the math/science aptitude scale, and so the laydeez need to shut up?
I could refute him by pointing out a few simple things. First, if this innate ability is so telling, then women should be lording it over men on anything to do with reading and writing, yet they don’t. Second, we know that women do better in math and science when they have hospitable environments to live in. Third, the gender gap on tests is tiny, yet the gap in the real world of occupation is huge.
But what I don’t know is whether he is wrong on the basic claim that Ruth Marcus was so quick to concede: that men, to a small but significant extent, show up more at the high end. Here is where I think you could say a whole lot that I don’t know. Please do!
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Violet says:
I’m going to beg off on writing a post about that just now, but here are some good links about the Summers business:
And especially, just read Elizabeth Spelke’s presentation at Harvard (you can skip the inanity from Stephen Pinker):
As Spelke shows clearly, when all currently available evidence is taken into account, there is no reason to conclude that either male or female humans are innately better at mathematics.
But what I don’t know is whether he is wrong on the basic claim that Ruth Marcus was so quick to concede: that men, to a small but significant extent, show up more at the high end.
We’re talking about tests of teenagers and adults. The only thing such tests demonstrate conclusively is how well the test-takers did on the tests. Consider that the same tests which show more males than females at the high end also show disproportionately more white students than black students at the high end. Genetic? Consider that those same test scores have shifted significantly over time, with there now being more females at the high end than there were 20 years ago. Genetic?
Anybody who imagines that IQ and SAT tests of adolescents and adults provide a perfect reflection of innate human ability, untouched by social factors of any kind, is extremely naive.
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Ciccina says:
Are you sure Zwarte Piet is based on “Sambo” and not “Golliwog”?
Actually I thought neither was true - that Zwarte Piet was associated with notion that Sinterklaas came from Turkey, or was it Spain?
As for the red light district - I had the impression that the mayor of A’dam was shutting down most of the brothels because of direct and indirect links to trafficking in slaves.
Their weather still sucks, though.
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Sis says:
The women working in the Amsterdam brothels are slaves, no matter what their colour or country of origin; they are sex slaves. Women are the slave trade, women forced by, violence, poverty, war to sell their bodies.
Relevant threads:
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/.....age-study/ -
Sis says:
Ok. That link above is not what I planned to post. Although, it’s also related to sex slavery.
This will take you to rebecca mott’s post on women’s space, where rebecca talks about being a slave. a sex slave.
ttp://www.womensspace.org/phpBB2/ -
Violet says:
Are you sure Zwarte Piet is based on “Sambo” and not “Golliwog”?
No, I don’t mean he’s based on Sambo; I was just using the Sambo type as the tag for that whole iconography, which is inaccurate. Actually I think Golliwog, Black Pete, Sambo, etc. are all based on the same caricature-type rather than on each other.
It’s my understanding that the current depictions of Black Pete only go back to 1850, which makes him no older than our Santa Claus. Which would explain why he looks exactly like other 19th century depictions of “darkies.”
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sister of ye says:
Maybe it’s being American, maybe it’s having been raised Catholic, but I’m absolutely in favor of co-opting everyone’s holidays. Well, as long as they involve eating and drinking - if I want to fast, I’ll start paying attention to Lent again.
Here’s another feast day: St. Lucia Day, Dec. 13. It’s a big deal in Sweden, where girls dress in white and wear candles on their heads. But apparently not real candles anymore - you can guess the incidents of hair on fire. And there are specific Swedish goodies, of course.
I’m not Swedish, but I read a historical romance where the heroine was Swedish (hey, we’re all allowed a guilty pleasure) and celebrated the day. Since my coolest sister-in-law was part Swedish, the memory stuck.
In my Polish family, Christmas Eve was even a bigger deal than the next day, at least as far as the meal, eaten when the first star appeared, or would have if MI weren’t so damn cloudy. We’d eat a slightly altered version of the traditional meal - we included meat, for one. It began with taking a piece of unconsecrated communion wafer and breaking off smaller pieces with each other while exchanging good wishes for the year.
I ditched most of the family a few years back, but I do still enjoy the food.
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Violet says:
St. Lucia Day! Funny you should mention it — it’s been on my mind. I’m planning to make a St. Lucia ornament for the tree. A female figure with candles on her head, the whole bit.
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Oma K says:
The Dutch reputation for tolerance is not a deserved reputation. If the Dutch are so tolerant, then why were there 140,000 Jews in The Netherlands before World War II and only 30,000 left in 1945 — one of the worst records in occupied Europe?
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yttik says:
I’m currently emeshed in Candlemas. I know, I’m a couple of months early, but it’s so dark and gloomy out there, I’m having a celebration of light right now.
If I remember right, Candlemas was taken over by the feast of the purification of the virgin. I can’t recall why a virgin must be purified, but I think it had something to do with being contaminated by childbirth. I also can’t remember why giving birth to the son of God would cause you to need purification.
LOL, don’t mind me, I’m half crazy from winter already and this is the time of year the ancient roots of patriarchy really start to get on my nerves.
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Ali says:
Thank you, Violet, for bringing up acid reflux and the acid in the stomach issues. I, too, am plagued by the life of acid in the esophagus. I am hoping that the New Agenda will help…
This Black Pete photo is striking. It shows how when when one is deeply and culturally involved in a bigotry it can be almost impossible to see. Thus is the life of the contemporary feminist and thus the acidity. Also reminds me of a convo that I’ve been having elsewhere - regarding our youngin’s dressing up in Native American drag on Thanksgiving. I am told that I am being overly PC for protesting but my Navajo and Hopi friends and colleagues would say otherwise….
Enjoy the holidays, Violet, everyone! We all deserve it:)
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Anna Belle says:
Great idea, but please do publish the Larry Summers rehab post too, because Gretchen didn’t cover the point that I know you’d handle smashingly: What’s incorrect about Summers’ assertion that there are more men at the very top of the math/science aptitude scale, and so the laydeez need to shut up?
You know, someone could apply Linda Nochlin’s essay Why No Great Women Artists? to Summers commentary. A better refutation has yet to be written, which is why her essay is read in all sorts of undergraduate and graduate courses, and is not just relegated to art classes.
Better yet, someone could use it as inspiration for an analogous essay on sexism and misogyny in economics and science.
I’d do it, but my own plate is already so full (I feel your pain, V!). I’m putting it out there in case some other enterprising person wanted to run with it.
Oh, and V, maybe the Dutch could replace the nativity with one of those glass store fronts. Keep the poor Thai prostitute warm and all that.
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Anna Belle says:
That last line is supposed to be wry humor, not snark, ftr. I don’t always pull that off correctly…alas, I am humor impaired. Just ask my daughter.
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Greenconsciousness says:
Why not celebrate the Winter Solstice which is REAL. That would teach us something about the natural world, the sun and the planet, the tilt and the orbit and why we have seasons. Why not have the children dress up as the sun (with a flashlight or lantern a strong light)and the other children as the earth, her moon and the other planets; all enacting the orbit.
Winter Solstice is Dec 21 -the darkest day — after which comes the coldest time of the year because the sun has been withdrawing and we are losing its’ warmth since the Summer Solstice on June 21. Now it is the farthest away from earth in its orbit.
Change and return; extreme and balance; this is the true meaning of the seasons and human life. Winter solstice is the dark night of nature and symbolizes the dark night of the Soul. When everything dies and when it all becomes the worst worst - the darkest time, when the hours of dark are twice that of the light time - the day of the shortest light, longest dark time - that
day is the Winter Solstice.The meaning associated with the Winter Solstice is that the next day the light begins its return. Even though this is the coldest time and the cruelest time every day will be a little more light until we begin to notice the light at
Feb 1 at Groundhog day. On Winter Solstice DAY, the SUN is born again even though it is the darkest time. And even though we are cold, the sun is imperceptibly warming the earth. Not the SON but the SUN is the savior of us all.The evergreen is the symbol of this period and in our life. The evergreen is the symbol of life in seeming death because it never loses its green. It reminds us that the light and abundance will return.
Don’t kill any evergreens and bring in them in your house. Hang food (for the birds and critters), lights, and decorations on a live one outside or get a live one to plant in the spring
and decorate that.It is better to have an artificial tree you made, cloth, wire, ceramic, or discarded pine boughs as a symbol in the house because it is hard to keep an evergreen alive in the house; you have to mist them alot.
It is not good to cut down the evergreen tree
because then it is transformed into a death symbol - death without rebirth. At least put it outside afterward for animal shelter or mulch.All my good wishes to you — you do not have to decorate — or celebrate — but it is good and fun to do so but the quiet and meditation and soft singing and good friends and sharing your bounty is all good now. The harvest is stored and there is no more outer work to do. Maintenance is the lessons until the Spring Equinox when we being the outer work again.
You can be in the dark night of the soul all during this season - that is natural –all the celebration is supposed to help people through this time; but it has somewhat lost its’ meaning and sometimes becomes a burden. If you are grieving and feeling loss, try to remember that the light will return after the dark time — because you are part of nature and THE RETURN is
nature’s way. -
Greenconsciousness says:
yttik
WAIT FOR CANDLEMAS — YOU KNIOW THE RULES.
First the darkness, then the light; first the cold and then the awakening. The earth element NEEDS each time. When you try to avoid the dark it just craps up the light.
And Here in Your culture, the New Age, and your body and soul and subconscious; it is known as First Light.
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Greenconsciousness says:
The Earth Holidays are celebrated in the quarter days and the cross quarters which are half way between them. They are not wiccan but older and all religious holidays are a spin off of them because the people would not give up marking these times which were important in their lives. They are about the light which is seen as the friend and how to use the dark. They are called the great wheel and are reversed in the southern hemisphere.
The wheel, in the Northern Hemisphere:
Winter Solstice - Dec 21
First Light (groundhog day) Feb 2
Spring Equinox March 21
May Day (first flowers) May 1
Summer Solstice June 21
First Fruit - Aug 1 (First Harvest)
Autumnal Equinox Sept 21 (Full Harvest - Thanksgiving)
All Hallows Eve (Last Harvest) Oct 31I have always believed that these are the holidays our govt should officially recognize and celebrate as a country, a secular country. Religious holidays should be celebrated privately by the religions. But we, as a people, could find unity and education by recognizing where we are in relation to the earth’s orbit and our food cycle. The schools could educate about science and biology with plays and costumes where the children dress in costumes of the planets and the sun and mimic the orbits, dress as leaf plant and evergreen sing and make poetry. So much beauty lost while people fight over merry Xmas vs happy holiday.
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Greenconsciousness says:
yttik
Thinking about you –you do know all the rituals and re enactments on the 21 are about the birth of the SUN more than the darkness. About the sun’s beginning journey of Return — how the heart decides to come back before the ego knows it - that the struggle is not without worth. That is why all the LIGHTS everywhere — colored lights decorating the outside in honor of the suns return to encourage people to remember so light your candles at the Winter Solstice — you don’t have to wait for First light. Just recognize that birth is long and the light IS returning during the cold, long before it can be seen or felt.
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MsFeasance says:
There’s a similar tradition in Switzerland, where the helpers are called Schmutzli but in my experience they don’t do blackface, they use masks.
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Ciccina says:
St. Lucia’s day !! Everyone should see Judy Davis’ bravura performance as a woman who has gone waaaaay beyond the point of frustration with her marriage in the Ted Demme movie “The Ref.”
She does a scene where she is trying to make the family celebrate St. Lucia’s day, taking them all to task while wearing lit candles on her head. She is awesome.
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Yanni Znaio says:
Anna Belle says:
That last line is supposed to be wry humor, not snark, ftr. I don’t always pull that off correctly…alas, I am humor impaired. Just ask my daughter.
December 6th, 2008 at 10:47 am EST
My daughter’s fourteen.
Most of the time, she doesn’t think I’m even HUMAN, not to mention funny.
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samanthasmom says:
Greenconsciousness,
For those of us who live in the northern hemisphere, the sun is actually at its closest point to us on the winter solstice and farthest away at summer solstice, and it’s the opposite in the southern hemisphere. I would love for children to become more in tune with the motion of our planet and its position in the universe. Not only would it make them more knowledgeable, it would also foster some humility.
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Violet says:
Why not celebrate the Winter Solstice which is REAL.
I do. Matter of fact, I celebrate both solstices. Have for years.
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Sis says:
I celebrate the Winter Solstice too. Have for years. 67 of them in fact, coming up.
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Greenconsciousness says:
samanthas mom
Hi I like your dog. At the winter solstice in the NH, the earth is tilted away from the sun and I also thought the earth was at its farthest point in its oval orbit around the sun but this is why I wish we celebrated as a nation the natural world. For the explanations. For the melding of the group mind.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/to.....inter.html
For five days we could have scientists talking about this and doing visual graphics on TV instead of the mind numbing BS as usual. When I say celebrate, Violet, I do not mean acknowledge. I mean the Big Deal.
I would like to see a reversal of the emphasis on Xmas et all and give it to the WS complete with media obsession, explanations, celebration, song and ritual. Dioramas of the sun in relation to the earth or rather, every state’s place in relation to the earth, in the state capitals instead of the nativity scenes. No 100 year old evergreens cut down to br dragged to Wash DC but the president traveling to the forest to honor its’ life. Evergreens Planted at the Spring Equonox and decorated at the WS.
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Greenconsciousness says:
Equinox
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Yanni Znaio says:
Ali says:
[snip]
regarding our youngin’s dressing up in Native American drag on Thanksgiving.
And they’re usually dressing up as Plains Indians.
They could at least be historically correct if they’re going to do that.Of course, if you really wanted to rattle their chains, Thanksgiving was a actually celebration of private enterprise.
Plymouth Colony was founded on the “company settlement” concept, where all property was collective and, since nobody felt like working any harder than was absolutely necessary on the communal land, the colonists damn near starved to death the first couple of years or so.
William Bradford, being an intelligent man, realized that this arrangement was just not working out, and so he subdivided up the communal land into individually-owned plots. (His History of Plymouth Colony is on the shelf above my monitor.)
The result: bounty, and the first Thanksgiving.
Have a happy holiday season, whichever one y’all celebrate.
YZ
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Violet says:
Dear God.
The first Thanksgiving was a celebration of the triumph of European disease and robbery and slavery, and the remarkable kindness of the remaining Indians.
The Plymouth colonists waltzed into a beautiful farmland with fields already planted with corn and took it over, seeing as how the inhabitants had been decimated by European-borne disease. Plymouth town itself was originally Squanto’s home of Patuxet, now deserted because everyone had died.
The colonists took over the fields and the homes of the dead, and as for the few remaining Indians, the colonists robbed them whenever they could. They even robbed Indian graves. They ate the corn that had been planted, but had no idea how to fend for themselves, so Squanto and other kind Indians taught them how to manage the native crops.
And speaking of Squanto, how is it that he had survived the plague and could speak English? Because he’d been kidnapped and enslaved by an English sea captain.
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Ali says:
Thanks, Yanni and Violet for the history lessons. Honestly, I need them, as do most Americans.
Now speaking of my historical illiteracy, this might be a good time for me to ask for some history book recommendations. Women’s history. Ya know, for someone who had never even heard of Alice Paul before watching Iron Jawed Angels on HBO five years ago. Yep.
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samanthasmom says:
Greenconsciousness,
Samantha is my best friend. She has a seizure disorder, but for a long time we had them under control. Then they started up again but much worse than before. Just before Thanksgiving her vet added KBr to her drugs, and she’s been seizure free since. Not long enough to relax again, but we’re hopeful.
I majored in physics in college with a concentration in astronomy. The first time I got the chance to see the sky through a powerful telescope, we pointed it to the nebula in the constellation Orion. When the prof asked us what we were thinking as we gazed at the giant “star nursery”, I told him I was feeling totally insignificant. It’s a feeling I tried to replicate for my students when I taught. Humility when you’re 13 or 14 is a good thing to experience. I would have loved to have a celebration of the winter solstice in my class, but I would have had parents complaining that I was teaching witchcraft.
These days I design online curriculum courses and materials. I’m currently working on a high school level course whose working title is, “What if the Earth Could Talk?”
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Heidi says:
My family is from Europe and I can say that for all of the obsessing about how racist America is, Europe, and much of the rest of the world is far worse. This picture is un-surprising. I’m actually surprised that the Dutch are protesting. And great point on the Thai prostitute, although from what I understand they are working hard on the trafficking issue. Progress is slowly…creeking…along.
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tinfoil hattie says:
http://voices.washingtonpost.c.....stion.html
Merry Christmas/Happy Boxing Day/Blessed Solstice, everyone.
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
tinfoil, Riverdaughter has a few posts about this photo going on at her place.
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Sis says:
Does it never end. He’s ‘groping’ her. If a woman who is the Secretary of State of the western world’s most eminent country can be treated that way.. . I can’t believe it.
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Sis says:
Wait. Refresh my memory; wasn’t Bush photographed groping Merkel not so long ago?
Ah yes. Change.
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
Yes, Sis, Bush decided to give Merkel a “massage” during a meeting.
Dakinikat has a few alterations to the groping picture - her post is entitled “Does it offend you now?” - where photoshop has been employed.
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Ciccina says:
@ TheOtherDelphyne
Link !?!
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Greenconsciousness says:
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
Ciccina - sorry. Often when I link, I find myself in the moderation corner.
Here is Riverdaughter’s site - most of the pictures and comments are over there.
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Sis says:
Feminists don’t do that to other women.
Also, when those posters at RD behave as badly as the men (and it’s allowed) what’s to chose? It’s not misogyny, it’s just a pissing match. Tit for tat. One as bad as the other.
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
You’re right, Sis - feminists don’t do anything abusive to other women and call out the abuse when it happens.
That said, I don’t think that the photoshop pictures were a pissing match. I think the question being asked - are you offended now - with other women’s pictures in place of Hillary was to jar those who thought nothing of a frat boy “prank.” So many of this mindset think it’s okay to do things like this if it’s a woman they don’t like - Hillary, for example. But, that groping Hillary cardboard cut out was directed at all women - just like the sexist crap we saw during the primaries was directed at all women, not just Hillary or Sarah Palin.
What does one do to call this bull$hit out when you can’t call it out face to face? Asking - what if this was your wife, your daughter, your lover, your mother, your grandmother, your niece - put their picture in that frame instead of Hillary’s and how would you feel? Would you find it offensive then? Why would it be any different because it’s someone you know, care for than it would be for any woman to be subjected to that?
Sometimes it is appropriate when pushed to push back. Sometimes when being charged at, one sticks out one’s foot to trip up the charger. Sometimes one blesses and sometimes one curses. I don’t consider that tit for tat.
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Yanni Znaio says:
FGM Update:
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Sis says:
Your post does what you contend their posts did. I disagree their photoshopping accomplished anything for our cause. I say ‘our’ because this is about women, not about Hillary or American politics.
Hillary’s response is quite elegant and brilliant. It sends a message not just to Favreau et al, but also to Obama. They have all forgotten just how powerful she is. Favreau and kind should now finally have got it, and may even see that Obama has been wrong for giving them the go ahead on this kind of behaviour which included the c*nt t-shirts and Palin bashing.
They have all forgotten how powerful she is.
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reader says:
Could William Bradford’s account of his own success be the tiniest bit self-serving? And then there us this:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall.....dford.html
“At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other thing to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
Thanks, Sis.
Hillary’s response was understated and quite Scorpionic in its quiet warning. Yes, they have forgotten how powerful she actually is - and how powerful we can be. Sadly, sometimes, I think we’ve forgotten how powerful we actually are. Can it be that we - we women - are actually afraid of our own authentic power of being a woman?
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Greenconsciousness says:
I think the photo shop pictures are a brilliant response - pictures worth 1000 words and all that. I think it also makes the point that Hillary bashing is woman bashing –Hillary is all women.
They think they have a special dispensation to go after her — the more we do actions that show she is ALL women and a hit against her is a hit on all women, the better for all of us.
All of you talked your head off during the election and it did not protect her. She needs REAL protection and this will work. It is creative action and you are being hypercritical in the face of bullets directed at another woman.
They got Hillary out of the senate so Carolyn Kennedy could buy her seat. Once that is done, they will come for her again. So don’t say we should play nice while Hillary goes down because, I, for one, will not be listening. No one plays nice with her while we sit around on our hands and tell each other not to throw their cr-p back in their face. It is time to be a threat.
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yttik says:
“Can it be that we - we women - are actually afraid of our own authentic power of being a woman?”
I’m going to vote yes on that one.
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polly styrene says:
Strange I’ve been getting the acid reflux as well…..
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qaz says:
Tit for tat. One as bad as the other.
I don’t know. Sometimes they need to know you will push back the same way.
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qaz says:
…except I would have put a man in the picture not a woman. Really the misogynistic Obama supporters do not really care that Michelle’s picture is their either.
Also, who normally has cutouts of politicians hanging around their place? I find that weird.
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Yanni Znaio says:
reader says:
Could William Bradford’s account of his own success be the tiniest bit self-serving? And then there us this:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall.....dford.html
“At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other thing to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
I took my copy of Bradford’s The History of Plymouth Colony down off the shelf, and typed in a larger section that you did:
I started at “All this while no supplies were heard of” (about two sentences before your quote stops- page 150 in my edition) and continued until right before the paragraph starting with “But to return” (Page 152 in my edition).
I felt that giving it a larger context was worth the discussion, but I guess that Violet thought it to wordy because it did not clear moderation.
My post included Bradford’s comment that some of the women viewed some of this communal work as being akin to slavery.
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Sis says:
Yes Gaz, it’s hatred against women no matter which woman’s face is on the photoshopped pix. It proves nothing to do that. More to the point are the letters being written from New Agenda members and copied to the media, posts made to Obama’s website, and bloggers talking about it on all the feminists blogs.
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Sis says:
Yanni in the year 2004, over 600.000 women suffered ‘female genital mutilation’ in the form of unnecessary hysterectomy and castration. This is the CDC number for the last enumerating year, 2004. Multiply this by every year, and similar figures for every western country. Include episiotomy, mastectomy, mammoplasty, labiaplasty, cesaerian sections, and obstetrician-centred western birthing practices which are dangerous to mother and baby.
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qaz says:
Well, a response was needed and photoshopping Michelle would make more of an impact than other women. However, I just would have liked to see Obama there instead of Michelle.
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Sis says:
Has there been any cooment or apology from Obama or aides, or in the mainstream media other than on the WaPo blog?
Particularly Obama. What has come from him on this? Deafening silence?
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Yanni Znaio says:
Sis says:
Has there been any cooment or apology from Obama or aides, or in the mainstream media other than on the WaPo blog?
Particularly Obama. What has come from him on this? Deafening silence?
December 8th, 2008 at 3:10 pm EST
Well, it’s really just a continuation of the same behavior that was exhibited during the campaign, just a bit more “graphically”.
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Greenconsciousness says:
The new agenda’s demands for apology are on CNN wolf blitzer right now and james carvelle is being a sexist pig denouncing them as having no sense of humor.
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Cyn says:
Great line at Feminist Law Professors on The Photo:
If this is supposed to be excused as a “youthful indiscretion” because Favreau is “so young” then I think Obama’s judgment in continuing to rely professionally on someone so “young” and irresponsible and offensively sexist can reasonably be questioned.
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Sis says:
Lord yes Cyn. Reflecting on the many horrible sexist remarks in Obama’s speeches, one might say now, well look, it was Favreau who wrote them. I think yes, it was Favreau who wrote those remarks, kitchen sink, etc but unless hw has his hand stuck up the back of Obama’s shirt, it was Obama who spoke them. And probably had a right royal laugh several times at how clever they all were while rehearsing.
I’ve written speeches for politicians. You don’t put something in there they don’t want to say. Even if you trust them implicitly. Which by the way……………WHAT!?
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Sis says:
I should say, even if they trust YOU implicitly.
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Cyn says:
I don’t know if the dog ate my post or what, but I’ll try again.
Exactly, Sis. If Obama doesn’t fire this guy immediately his credibility will go from zero to the minus column in my book.
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Cyn says:
Greenconsciousness - Shoot, I just saw this - too late to watch. Drats.
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Violet says:
I felt that giving it a larger context was worth the discussion, but I guess that Violet thought it to wordy because it did not clear moderation.
I suspect it went into the spam filter.
Look, this right-wing fetishization of the Pilgrims as the Ur capitalists of America is ridiculous. It comes from the Red Scare days of the late 40s, if not before, when someone decided that Bradford’s paragraph about private plots represented the defeat of communism and the birth of glorious American capitalism. It gets re-circulated every year by wingnut clowns who wouldn’t know history if it crawled up their leg and bit ‘em on the ass. To say that this reading of the Plymouth colony is naive is an understatement. Perhaps if we printed the word “naive” in big capital letters with sparkles and animation, that would do it.
Bradford’s self-serving account needs to be read with a ginormous grain of salt. He believed that God’s Providence was working for his colony, he narrated the story of the colony to conform to his mental map of what that providence looked like, and he cast himself as the hero of the tale.
The overwhelming fact of the matter — the reality that peeks through freakishly as we read Bradford’s bizarro God-soaked account — is that the Pilgrims had moved into not a wilderness, but a thriving farm village with corn already in the fields. They were surrounded by the bodies of dead Indians, by the homes of dead Indians, by the fields of dead Indians. They were robbing graves, for chrissake. And all this they saw as God’s providence.
The modern historian reads Bradford and asks, “what is he leaving out? Because obviously he’s leaving out one hell of a lot.”
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Sis says:
Vi can you give us any cites or names to look up to help us debunk Bradford? I think most of us know it is not true, but this is so pervasive. I have tried every year in a specific context to explain how racist this is, and very likely untrue, but my protestations are dismissed with, at the gentlest, “The origin of Thanksgiving in the U.S. was different from Canada.”
But the blankets with smallpox were used here too, in southern Saskatchewan. They were given in trade for fur, and daughters.
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samanthasmom says:
I grew up near Plymouth, and I’m old enough to remember the Mayflower II sailing into the harbor. When I was a kid, the story of the Pilgrims, even when told at Plimouth Plantation, was largely a fairy tale. Over the years, though, the museum has made use of better information to show a much more realistic picture of the lives of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags. I’ve always felt bad when the fairy tale is perpetuated because the real story is so much more interesting. If you get a chance to visit there, skip the rock.
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Alwaysthinking says:
How will we sort all of this out? There is much good in Biblical teaching, much for us to learn to live by if only we would, but it too often is usurped for political purposes by the powers-that-be — and even more often taught without the knowledge and context of overall history and without the knowledge of Constantine’s work, for that matter, and the works that were left out.
Forgive me if I am out of context today — I seem not to be in sync with the blogs I touch upon today!:)
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Sis says:
I’ve been surfing around looking for anything about Favreau, comment from Obama, in mainstream media. It’s a non-event, while they cover a movie star’s post baby abs, and another’s thoughts about her break-up with, I don’t remember who, Jay Leno’s new show. This was A-1, not the entertainment section.
I did find this though. A journalist thanking Hillary for what she’s done for women, and his daughter.
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qaz says:
As nice a letter as that was Sis, his last two paragraphs show exactly how misogyny is alive and well. The last line is sticking it to women.
It is not good enough for women to be told that it’s ok today to lose an job/opportunity because of sexism …just so someone else can have it in the future ( I don’t care if it is another woman). I and many other women deserve the opportunities.
I find the article condesending and frustrating.
If you sometimes have a tinge of envy, you’re entitled. But Jen thinks you provided her and other supporters with one final lesson. It’s one she stresses to her young daughters all the time: When things don’t go as you’d like, you’ve got to pick yourself up and throw yourself into the battle again.
And on Inauguration Day, you might want to think of this: We’ve inched closer to a day when a father will be able to point to a woman who has placed one hand on a Bible and raised the other up high, and say to his daughter: “See, sweetie, there’s nothing boys can do that girls can’t too.”
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Sis says:
No surprise–this is in his home town newspaper. Along with the important entertainment news.
Nothing on this event. Not even in my inbox, filled as it is with old line icon feminists. Read his book one said, then you’ll understand why we support him. Read (White House insider’s book) and learn about the Clinton lies. Then you’ll understand. It seems like you are just looking for things to hang on him, she said.
I’m going out for ice cream.
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Yanni Znaio says:
Bradford used the term “communism” (note the small c” interchangeably with “communalism”
He was not speaking of “Communism” in the Marxist sense, as obviously Marx had not yet been born as of that date.
However, the overall point remains. The colonists damn near starved under the collectivist model, and thrived under the private enterprise model.
Furthermore, the collectivist model appeared, from Bradford’s account, to piss off just about everybody, male and female alike, and from the context of his words, the general consensus was that everybody felt like they were getting the “short end of the stick”, so to speak.
If you wish, I can repost the entire excerpt that I typed, as, when I go to the trouble to do something like that, I save a copy.
I saw interesting things in what he said, [and commented on the fact that he took notice of the opinions of the women regarding the matter], otherwise I would not have gone to the trouble to type by hand two pages or so from the original source.
And anyone who buys into Rousseau’s concept of the “noble savage” living in harmony with nature should go to the banks of the Tennessee River and dig through some Native American garbage dumps (shell mounds) as I have done.
The Native Americans were people with cultural flaws, just as the colonists were. That being said, I don’t buy into the concept that all cultures are equal, either.
Then or now.
As I have said before, to take that stance today is to posit that cultures that oppress women and practice things like slavery and FGM are equally valid with the best that Western civilization has to offer.
It was the British and Americans, after all, who managed to eliminate the slave trade in *most* of the world.
Look at where it’s still practiced.
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Greenconsciousness says:
Carvelle on CNN
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Greenconsciousness says:
I would have the photo shopped version of the cardboard cutout with Michelle Obama’s face made into a postcard with the words “does it offend you now, James?” sent to James Carvelle in care of Wolf Blitzer CNN-News. Thousands of them
I gather Riverdaughter has been shamed by her hypercritical sisters into taking down the pictures with MO instead of Hillary. This is how we stand in a circle and shoot ourselves.
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
Green - I was just over at RD’s place and that photoshopped picture of MO is still there.
If Carville thought that fondling cardboard was funny, I wonder how he felt about a cardboard Obama being hanged in effigy by 2 young men. They were arrested for that. Oh, wait - that was a HATE crime. Sarah Palin effigy was funny. Hillary being molested is funny.
Ignorant ba$tard.
Oh, funny is Gov. Blagojevich being arrested. Hilarious is if he sings about Obama.
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Violet says:
However, the overall point remains. The colonists damn near starved under the collectivist model, and thrived under the private enterprise model.
Yanni, you’re just massively missing the point.
Saying that the first Thanksgiving was a celebration of private enterprise is like saying that Auschwitz was a celebration of German shower fittings.
The wingnut appropriation of Bradford’s account as an endorsement of capitalism is weirdly anachronistic and utterly beside the point, and it relies on massive naivete, ignorance, and narrowness.
It is certainly possible that the colonists worked more enthusiastically when the farming was apportioned by granting each family a plot of their own to tend rather than doing communal field work. Assuming that this is true (and note that this apportionment system is streets away from what economists consider “private enterprise”), what does this prove? Nothing, except that the English colonists were able to more clearly appreciate their self-interest with private plots than with communal fields. To the newspaper columnist back in the 40s who thought this would make a brilliant bit of anti-communist propaganda, this may have been an earthshakingly juicy revelation. But we’re not anti-communist newspaper columnists in the 40s with a painfully naive view of history, nor are we the modern heirs (such as Rush Limbaugh) of such people. We have decades of anthropology and game theory, not to mention centuries of common sense, to know that of course people expend effort where they perceive benefit to themselves, but that the manner in which this effort/benefit is constructed varies across cultures and economic systems.
More to the point, since we’re not living in the McCarthy era and gripped by antipathy towards the Red Menace, nor by a jingoistic fetishization of American capitalism, we have no need to read William Bradford like he’s a 17th century Milton Friedman.
But this is still talking about shower fittings at Auschwitz.
If you wish, I can repost the entire excerpt that I typed, as, when I go to the trouble to do something like that, I save a copy.
Please don’t type by hand; I’m sure Bradford is online and you can simply cut and paste. But don’t do that either.
Longer excerpts don’t equal more truth. You can paste in the whole fricking book, and that won’t change the fact that Bradford needs to be read with a gimlet eye. He’s narrating a providential view of history from the vantage point of 30 years.
Do you also believe that Thanksgiving is a celebration of God’s approval of the Separatists and evidence of His beneficent love and blessing? I mean, that’s what Bradford says. Must be true, right? Bradford gave thanks to God for their harvest, not to the Natives who taught the colonists how to manage and who gave them food to survive.
And anyone who buys into Rousseau’s concept of the “noble savage” living in harmony with nature should go to the banks of the Tennessee River and dig through some Native American garbage dumps (shell mounds) as I have done.
Who here does that? It is you who seems to not grasp the human dimension of the Plymouth situation from the Native point of view. To accept Bradford at face value is to simply erase the Native side of the equation. It is to erase the massive death toll, the human tragedy, the political turmoil, the social upheaval, the motivations and machinations on the Native side of things.
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Sis says:
I deeply resent it when people who are not native, who’ve done a dig, purport to know anything about native culture. You’re posts offend me Yanni. What you are doing is cultural appropriation. However I’m not surprised, because you do that regarding sexism too.
That’s all I have to say.
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Ali says:
I’d like to just add to this conversation how sick I am of seeing pictures of tots with feathered headbands on the mommy blogs. Reminds me of what I will have to prepare for when I send my daughter to school. Perhaps I can ask them to dress her up as a turkey instead? Or how about a deer, some nice woodland creature. Yes, antlers may be the way to go.
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Yanni Znaio says:
Sis says:
I deeply resent it when people who are not native, who’ve done a dig, purport to know anything about native culture. You’re posts offend me Yanni. What you are doing is cultural appropriation. However I’m not surprised, because you do that regarding sexism too.
That’s all I have to say.
December 9th, 2008 at 12:52 pm EST
I’d like to point out that I never said anything about Native American culture, other than the fact that they had garbage dumps.
So did the colonists, to be even-handed.
I started out saying that I did not disagree with what Violet said.
I criticized Rousseau’s theory, but I’d just as equally criticize his theories about children, seeing as how he put them in an orphanage instead of raising them himself.
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Shane says:
I’m not particularly familiar with the Bradford account and its afterlife, but its interesting how desperate historians were in the early Cold War to vindicate capitalism, and find it wherever they looked, all the better to try and render it as natural. Its to the extent that virtually any past attempt to challenge the system is seen by these historians as pathological, or any problems with said system are very explicitly outlined as only belonging to the past, because the present (1940s/50s America) is the best system evah and to question it is to betray it. As a result, its good to be careful when reading these framing accounts, and mindful of the framework/context in which they’re written. Naturally the wingnut folk ignore this, because they still embody the attitude in the first place.
For anybody interested in the process, Peter Novick’s ‘That Noble Dream’: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession has a fascinating section on postwar ‘consensus’ history and its close relation to Cold War politics.
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Yanni Znaio says:
As for Bradford, history is written by the victors and is therefore colored accordingly.
Bradford, and just about any other history book, particularly one written contemporaneously with the events it describes, should always be read with that taken into account.
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Greenconsciousness says:
Say, maybe Violet will fix this link for me because it may be too long for the page.
I wanted to thank SamathasMom for her good info. I found the cite to prove everything she said is true, true, true about where the sun is on the Winter Solstice.
I have this whole Winter Solstice discussion on my blog with a special thank you to Samantha’s Mom at the end.
I looked all over the internet to try to find samanthasmom to thank her but there are a LOT of Samantha’s Moms and none of them were her.
So let me thank her here Violet. I love learning more about these things.
