It’s time for our new religion!

I know, I know. I can hear you out there. “Violet, you lazy freak, it was time for our new religion three months ago.” And you’re right. But things happened, and then more things happened, and then, incredibly, even more things happened!

So I’m late.

But better late than never! It’s looking to be a tough spring and summer, and I think we’ll all be needing an imaginary emotional crutch to prop up our tired souls as we make frantic plans to leave the country. Rest assured: our new religion can fill that gaping hole.

If you need a refresher on what we’re doing here, see this and this.

I poured everyone’s suggestions into my personal Metaphysical Particle Accelerator, added a dash of Montebello Long Island Iced Tea Cocktail™, and voilà:

What better way to introduce our new religion than with some nice garish iconography? Follow along with me now as we unpack the many meanings in this lovely image:

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Posted by Violet under Holidays, Our New Religion on March 22, 2008, 8:17 pm EST

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Other bloggers would use an artsy-fartsy fey kind of glimmering sunray image for this post. But not me.

The solstices, both of them, are two of my favorite holidays. Not holidays in the sense that I observe social rituals involving other people, but holidays in the sense that I mark them, and feel them, each year. They are natural holidays, natural punctuation points in the rhythm of life on earth.

At the summer solstice the girls and I (the girls being my dogs) used to go out to a small glade where lots of fireflies lived, and we would sit in the wet grass as the sun went down and watch the fireflies wink in and out in the twilight. I don’t do that any more, because I no longer live in a place with fireflies. I miss them.

In winter the darkness smothers me like a blanket as the days grow shorter and shorter. Each day the sun peels away and leaves me alone in the void, unable to breathe. More light! said Goethe. And then the solstice comes, and after that the light, and the oxygen, return. Every year I breathe relief as the days grow longer; every year I say to myself — spontaneously, joyously, in the same way I’ve been saying it since I was a child, and as countless humans have said it for a hundred thousand years — sun’s coming back!

The solstice occurred at 1:08 AM Eastern Standard Time today. Sun’s coming back.

Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Holidays on December 22, 2007, 6:22 pm EST

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My family is trying to talk me into coming back to life. They liked having me alive — I guess it’s some kind of love thing — and with the holidays approaching they’ve been pressuring me pretty heavily to climb back into the ol’ meat suit. My mother keeps calling me up in the Smoking Lounge, talking about Thanksgiving dinner and Molly and Christmas trees and the various advantages to being alive as opposed to dead in a tent with an ex-parrot who has a pumpkin for a head.

Last night I got online again and cruised around the blogulofeminewsosphere, trying to reacquaint myself with the world. Having spent the past several weeks in a kind of self-induced psychotic break, it was a bit of a shock to be plunged back into the harsh glare:

• A gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia is sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail because she was out without a male guardian. Her husband protests the ruling yet still claims that Saudi society — in which women have virtually no legal rights and are the wards and chattel of their male relatives — is “very respectful of women.”

• Christian fundamentalists in the U.S., no doubt jealous of the Saudi success story, are brainwashing their daughters from birth to think of themselves as the property of their fathers.

• Some freak in Texas editorializes that the wearing of pants and unveiled hair has “led to the slow whorification of ladyhood.”

• An 11-year-old gang-rape victim in Georgia (U.S.) is accused of being a lying slut.

• Rape victims in Hungary are denied justice by courts and police who maintain that women who are raped are really just prostitutes or (you guessed it) lying sluts.

• Western expatriate sexist creeps in Moscow are thrilled to discover that “women’s lib never happened here.” Indeed: violence against women in Russia is so pervasive that 70% of married women are abused by their husbands. Political will and funding to deal with the problem are virtually non-existent. Moscow, a city of 10 million, does not have a single shelter for battered women.

• At Jets games in New York male fans form gauntlets and demand that any passing woman expose her breasts; the women are spat on and pelted with beer bottles for refusing. (One woman who cooperated was subsequently threatened with arrest for indecent behavior — yes, she was reprimanded, not the hundreds of men surrounding her.)

• The Australian teenagers who gang-raped a girl and then sold the video of it as homemade pornography are released without serving any jail time.

• The rape nightmare in the Congo continues unabated; many hospitalized victims are so badly injured their internal plumbing no longer works.

• A feminist activist in Iran is sentenced to be whipped and imprisoned as punishment for advocating women’s rights.

• Less than 60% of Americans believe unequivocally that women should play an equal role with men in public life.

• Maureen Dowd refers to Hillary Clinton as a dominatrix, Chris Matthews calls her a she-devil, and a McCain barnacle calls her a bitch. (I believe “lying slut” is reserved for rape victims.)

• The U.N. reports that most of the 800 million illiterate adults in the world are women; most of the 100 million children not in school are girls. Women earn three-quarters of what men do and their unpaid labor would, if calculated, equal trillions of dollars. Women hold only 17% of the parliamentary seats in the world, but they constitute 70% of the people living in poverty.

Yep, the world is still a shit pie for women. And that’s by no means a systematic survey; it’s just what caught my eye in the hour or two I spent getting caught up around the tubes. My reaction is twofold:

1. I want to go back into the tent with Raoul.
2. We need more feminism in the world. A lot more.

On the first point I need not elaborate; long-time readers will have observed that I have a tendency to disappear (into a tent, the Smoking Lounge, France, what have you) when The Horror Of It All starts to be too much.

I don’t need to belabor the second point either, but I do have something to add. Look again at that list of news items. That’s why I have no tolerance for anti-feminists. None. Zero. Feminism is the belief that women are human; it is the movement to secure their full human rights. It’s about stopping the rapes and the lashings and the mutilations and the oppression and the abuse. If you think that the best way for you to spend your time in this world is by working against feminism, then I’ve got no time for you.

And that goes for all anti-feminists, whatever the variety. MRAs with miniature dicks? Check. Christian fundamentalists who think Saudi Arabia sounds like Big Rock Candy Mountain? Check. So-called liberal dudes who become annoyed every time they’re asked to consider women’s rights? Check.

And the women, too, alas — though I don’t mean those true believers who have been Stockholmed into accepting their own God-ordained inferiority. No, I mean the women who cynically capitalize on the popularity of anti-feminism for the sake of their own self-aggrandizement. (You know the shtick — from Ann Coulter to Wendy McElroy to Toni Bentley to the trolls who haunt the blogosphere posing as “feminist critics.”) Since they are also women under patriarchy I usually hold my fire, but do I have time for them? That would be no, Bob.

So the next time some anti-feminist goblin shows up here and I promptly zap its tiny ass into a smoldering cinder, you’ll know why. I got no time for those people.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Why We Still Need Feminism, Reclusive Leftist, Recommended, Holidays, Raoul on November 22, 2007, 2:11 pm EST

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I’ve spent what seems like decades of my life with my hands immersed in wet, sloppy pumpkin goo, scraping out the endless insides of orange gourds, shearing away at the rind to get that front wall thin enough for my magnificent carving to come. Pumpkin poo under my finger nails; pumpkin glop in the big bowl next to me; pumpkin rind in my dog’s mouth as she settles down to eat the contraband piece she grabbed off the newspaper when I wasn’t looking, contraband that will disappear into her stomach only to reappear later in another form, all over her dog bed and the carpet and my couch.

But not this year.

This year I’m in a tent in the Himalayas with Raoul, and there are no pumpkins for sale. My bag of Halloween stuff — carving tools, Carve O’Lantern kits, creased paper patterns from years past still with bits of Scotch tape adhering to the corners — is in the closet in my study. Or maybe in the garage. Or possibly in my little storage unit. Wherever it is, it’s not here.

I want to post pictures of my past masterpieces, but I can’t find them. I can’t find anything anymore. You want to know what my life looks like? Picture a mountain — picture Everest, since it’s right outside my tent as I type this: a giant jutting monster rising 12,000 feet above the Tibetan Plateau. Now imagine this mountain is made of paper. Paper, books, journals, books, sketches, books, bills, books, special offers, 0% APR on balance transfers until December 1, accept our gift today, your national forests are at risk, hurry offer ends November 16, dare to compete, pre-approval notice, please respond within 4 weeks, cash back, you’ve been selected, it’s time to renew, free shipping for the holidays. Annual reports. Sierra Club newsletters. Special Notices. And catalogs — Holy Chomolunga, the catalogs. Plow & Hearth Jackson & Perkins Metropolitan Museum Plow & Hearth Smithsonian Fire Mountain Plow & Hearth Land’s End Travel Smith Foster and Smith Plow & Hearth Victorian Trading Co.

Somewhere, deep inside this paper mountain, is my life.

I did find this one picture, and only because it was on my old computer:

I have no idea when that was. Five years ago? Ten? Who the hell knows.

At any rate, this year I’m going to be doing my carving online. No pumpkin poo for me and Raoul, by god. Thanks to the power of the inner tubes, I’m now hipped to the new, poo-free way to carve:

Pumpkin Simulator

Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Holidays, Raoul on October 31, 2007, 2:56 pm EST

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The scene in Dr. Socks’s yard this morning as thousands of revelers gathered to celebrate Mardi Gras.

I’ve been in a vortex the past few days, writing and sleeping at all hours, and when I awoke early this morning I didn’t know what day it was. At first I thought for sure it was Monday, but then I looked outside and realized I was wrong.

Posted by Violet under Holidays on February 20, 2007, 9:52 am EST

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As many of you probably know, the American Taliban, Catholic Division, has launched a Holy War against Amanda of Pandagon, Melissa of Shakespeare’s Sister, and indeed anyone who dares to point out that their idiotic religion is a nothing but a load of white hot sticky jism.

I’ll have more to say on this later, but for now I’m just going to bring back my Valentine’s Day post from last year as my Very Special Gift to Bill Donohue. Enjoy:

Jesus really, really wants you to be his Valentine.

Posted by Violet under Godbags, Various and Sundry, Holidays on February 14, 2007, 4:16 pm EST

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A nearly 350-year old Twelfth Cake, believed to be the same one offered to Samuel Pepys at Sir William Penn’s house.

It’s Three Kings Day, the Feast of the Epiphany, the Twelfth Day of Christmas (unless in your tradition the Twelfth Day was yesterday, which is another story). Time to get down those evergreens so you won’t bring bad luck on your household for the rest of the year. Did you have your Twelfth Night party last night? Did you get the bean (or pea)? Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?

I love ritual, the more ancient the better. Religions all over the world encode the moral values of their societies, but they also answer a more basic need: the compulsion to reduce the vastness of time and space to human dimensions. That’s what liturgical calendars and seasonal rituals do; they mark the year in bite-size chunks, wrap us in a comforting illusion of time repeated, cut infinity down to size. What does it all mean, why are we here, is this just a moment in the infinite slipstream of the time-space continuum? No! It’s Twelfth Day, when the Three Kings visited Baby Jesus, isn’t that better? And it was Twelfth Day on January 6 last year and it will be again next year too, and there’s your nice comforting box, no infinite slipstream here, no sirree bob.

But I’m rambling.

One of the reasons I’ve got a tiny soft spot for the Catholic Church (and I do, actually) is because its liturgical calendar preserved centuries’ worth of pagan ritual, though naturally coated with Christo so the pagan bits wouldn’t be quite so obvious. Christmas is the perfect example. December 25 was the date of the winter solstice in the old Julian calendar, and as such was celebrated as the birthday of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun (along with a bunch of other solar-related gods, including Mithras). It made perfect sense to the early Christian bishops to turn the birthday of the Unconquered Sun into the birthday of the Unconquered Son, since that way people could still have their party. Very good for brand loyalty.

By the way, it’s always funny to me that so many Protestants seem to think that paganism survives only in Catholicism and not in their own pure and reformed faith. This from people who believe in a dying and rising god whose sacrifice somehow ensures the immortality of all. Nope, nothing pagan there. As a student once wrote in a Christian History 101 class, “before Jesus was born, Christianity was just another Hellenistic mystery cult.”

The trouble with Protestants is that they’re always trying to get rid of the fun parts of paganism, like trick-or-treating, while keeping only the serious and basically worthless bits, like believing that being born again into a personal relationship with Dionysus will secure you a nice spot in the afterlife.

Goddammit, I’m rambling again.

Back to Christmas: the Twelve Days are the season of revelry between two major feasts on the Christian calendar, Christmas Day on December 25 and Epiphany on January 6. The liturgical history is complicated, but roughly speaking, Epiphany started out as the day when Eastern churches observed Jesus’s birth and baptism, while the Rome-influenced churches in the West fixed on December 25 as the Nativity. When the greater church tried to organize its calendar and get everybody on the same page, the two feasts were reconciled by making December 25 Jesus’s birthday and January 6 the day of Jesus’s baptism. As the mythology of Baby Jesus and the whole Nativity story developed, January 6 also came to be designated as the day when the Three Kings or Wise Men arrived with their gifts (hence Three Kings Day).

Parallel to all this liturgical evolution, of course, was the fact that throughout pagan Europe it was customary to celebrate an extended season of revelry around the time of the winter solstice — Yule, Saturnalia, what have you. The Christmas season, with its Twelve Days of feasting and games, is simply the Christianized version. Scratch the surface of most Christmas traditions and you’ll find some ancient pagan rite lurking beneath.* Sometimes you hardly have to scratch at all.

Epiphany is no longer much of a holiday in the Anglo-American tradition, but it’s still a big deal in some Catholic cultures. In Latin America and parts of Europe, for example, it’s the day when the Three Kings bring gifts to children. Back when Anglo-Americans were still celebrating Twelfth Day (and Night) the holiday was associated with drinking, feasting, and games. Our modern Christmas fruitcake is descended from Twelfth Cake, which was baked with a bean and a pea hidden inside. When the cake was cut, the man who got the bean was King For A Day and the woman who got the pea was Queen. The cake motif shows up in Three Kings Day celebrations as well; a baby Jesus (plastic, not real) is hidden inside the cake. Whoever gets it is endowed with some special privilege or task, depending on the individual culture.

The days in between Christmas and Epiphany all used to be celebrated with particular rituals too, though most of those have gone by the wayside. Nobody blesses the horses on the Feast of Stephen anymore or makes Childermas pudding with red sauce to look like the blood of the slaughtered Innocents. I’ve heard a rumor that some people in the UK still pour cider on the roots of trees to bless them for the coming year, and I can only hope it’s true.

When I invent my own religion I am definitely going to have wassailing, Yule logs, fortune-telling, mistletoe, and every other pagan thing I can drag in. I’ll even work in some kind of horse-blessing ritual. In the meantime I reckon I’ll go have a fig newton as my Twelfth Cake.

*If you’re interested in this sort of thing, there’s available online a lovely little book from 1912, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, by Clement A. Miles. The section on “Pagan Survivals” describes quite a few European customs associated with Christmas and the Twelve Days.

Posted by Violet under Recommended, Holidays on January 6, 2007, 11:05 pm EST

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My parents’ cat surveys the scene from underneath the Christmas tree.

I’ve been wanting to post on the Ipswich murders and prostitution in Britain, but two things keep getting in my way: 1) Christmas preparations, and 2) the cold that I keep getting re-infected with in some kind of recursive feedback loop from hell. So my withering blast on prostitution will have to wait until next week.

In the meantime, let’s talk about my cold Christmas! And by Christmas I of course mean the entire solstician shebang: Yule, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, winter break from school, the holiday grind at work because everybody but you is on vacation, etc. Me, I’m sewing Christmas stockings this year for my dog and my parents’ cat and blowing my nose a lot. What about you?

Posted by Violet under Holidays on December 21, 2006, 3:32 am EST

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It’s pie week here in the Socks household. The cherry streusel pie I baked the other day is already gone, but fortunately its place has been taken by the apple pie and two pumpkin pies now cooling on the counter.

We have homemade cranberry sauce for the first time this year, and it’s fabulous.

Tomorrow my Dad will roast part of a dead animal and we’ll have the usual accoutrements: dressing, gravy, smashed potatoes, green beans, and whatever else we decide is necessary in order to induce maximum post-prandial sloth.

For those of you outside ‘Murka who have no idea what I’m on about: tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

Posted by Violet under Holidays on November 22, 2006, 6:16 pm EST

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The cease-fire that ended World War One was signed at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. The holiday that commemorates this event is still referred to as Armistice Day in the U.K. but is now known as Veterans Day here in ‘Murka, where with typical American can-do-ism we decided to honor the veterans of all wars (including ones we haven’t started yet) in one fell swoop and get it over with.

In Britain they mark the day by observing a two-minute silence. In the U.S. we buy sheets for half-off at Bed Bath & Beyond. Wonder what they do in Canada? Some kind of hybrid thing, like buying sheets in silence?*

I would say “Happy Veterans Day” but that doesn’t seem to be quite the point, so I’ll just say to all you veterans: “I’m glad you made it out alive.”

*Actually I believe the Canadians observe something called Remembrance Day, a moveable feast that falls on the second Sunday in November and is also observed in Britain, where it appears to have cornered the market on poppy-wearing and wreath-laying. Poppies and wreaths used to be the province of Armistice Day proper, so I imagine there’s a bit of rivalry there and tense moments in the faculty lounge where holidays go to have a smoke.

Needless to say I’m just an American so actually I have no fucking clue about any of this.

Posted by Violet under War, Holidays on November 11, 2006, 7:45 pm EST

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“He’s stuck!”

My friends’ faces are anxious, concerned. “Come help!”

Who’s stuck? I wonder. Suddenly I notice my parents’ old television set, the huge console TV we had in the 1960s. It’s about five feet long, a wooden case, with a turntable on one side and a radio on the other, giant speakers flanking the TV screen. State-of-the-art for 1965.

The console is up against the wall, of course, the way it always was in our house. I step to the side and peer behind it.

There he is.

William Shatner is trapped inside the wall behind the TV set, crouched in a cratered opening that looks like bomb damage. He gazes up at me, flakes of plaster in his toupee.

I remember now that we’re married, or used to be. I reach down to help pull him from the wall.

Then I wake up.

Posted by Violet under Holidays on October 31, 2006, 6:03 am EST

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Easter Bunny:

Easter Dogs:

The bunny cake this year was a devil’s food (!) chocolate cake with cream cheese coconut frosting. All that’s left of Mr. Bunny now is the face. The chocolate eggs in the picture were really little cakes baked in my special egg pan from Germany. The grass was green-tinted coconut and the brightly-colored eggs were dyed hard-boiled eggs. The dogs, as you can see, were unimpressed.

Now I have to finish my taxes.

Posted by Violet under Holidays on April 16, 2006, 6:17 pm EST

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This is all wrong! P.Z. Myers is declaring War on Easter, following Echidne’s suggestion that we non-Christians follow up our smashingly successful War on Christmas with a spring encore. To which I say: no, no, a thousand times, no. Easter is the most gloriously pagan of holidays. It’s a spring fertility festival, for Chrissake! It’s flowers and bunnies and eggs! Look, just unhorse the Christian crap and you’ve got yourself one hell of a fine holiday.

My immediate family is not remotely Christian, but we love Easter. This was our Easter table a couple of years ago, when we went all out for a combined Easter/family birthday party:

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Posted by Violet under Holidays on March 24, 2006, 4:36 am EST

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Did you know that Valentine’s Day® is a wholly owned subsidiary of Russell Stover? It’s true! They bought the rights from Patriarchy, Inc. a few years ago, with the caveat that they’d maintain the brand image; i.e., if you’re single you’re a loser, and if you’re a single woman you’re such a loser you should probably just kill yourself right now.

Seriously, nothing brings out the suicidal fantasies in lonely, unliberated females like Valentine’s Day. They’ve been told their whole lives that unless they’re in a romantic relationship with a guy who’s willing to spring for a gigantic hideously decorated box of cheap chocolate, they’re not fit to breathe. What’s a gal to do?

JESUS!

Yes, Jesus wants to be your Valentine. The internets are full of Valentines to and from Jesus, most of them focusing on how Jesus is so much better than that guy who slept with you and never called again, or your fatass husband who sits in front of the tube and watches the Spice Channel. Jesus would never do those things.

Jesus is also sexy as hell, with piercing blue eyes and that hungry look of a lover:

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Posted by Violet under Recommended, Holidays on February 14, 2006, 2:34 am EST

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