Traveling in Place

Post-Thanksgiving Quiet

Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, our house breathes deeply, swelling like the mitten in the Jan Brett story to make room for the return of all the boys – now young men – who grew up here.  The quiet that Martha and I have only partially adjusted to is replaced with lively banter and laughter.  The bathroom counter is crowded with shaving kits.  Towels hang over the shower curtain rod.  The dishwasher runs every night.   Even all that food we prepare for the big meal gets consumed in just a couple of days.

Thanksgiving is not just a day at our house – it’s a long weekend.  On Thursday, of course, we always enjoy the traditional holiday fare of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, squash, cooked apples, cranberry sauce and dinner rolls.  After the derby and pumpkin pie dessert, conversation continues for hours and ranges from silly to serious.  And, of course, there’s football. 

The day after Thanksgiving can be pretty special as well.  This year, for instance, the final Syracuse University regular season football game was broadcast at 11 a.m. on Friday.  So we all gathered in the downstairs TV room and shouted, groaned, cheered, and laughed on cue.  When the seconds drained out of the clock at halftime, I yelled, “Leftovers!” and we bolted upstairs into the kitchen, where we removed all the half-empty dishes from the frig, and thanks to the microwave, enjoyed full, heated dinners in time to return to the game for the second half.  We cheered our team on to a convincing win.

Commercial Christmas Creep

Last night, during a half hour of television, I saw commercials from three major retail chains announcing they would be open at “8:00 p.m. Thursday!”  This is what I’ve started calling “Commercial Christmas Creep.”  Every year, Black Friday starts a few hours earlier than the year before.  Now, it starts on Thursday night.  Notice these retailers don’t say they are opening on Thanksgiving.  They are, in fact, doing just that – but they know that to say so would be offensive.  Thanksgiving, even as a civic holiday, is a hallowed day of rest for many families.  It’s not a day to shop.  So in order to make these new Black Friday hours palatable, Thanksgiving comes to a stop at 8:00 p.m.  According to these commercials, that’s when the Thanksgiving carriage turns into a Thursday pumpkin.  There’s nothing special about Thursday, so why not shop?

Last Sunday at church, a few people asked me what I thought about stores opening up for Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving night.  I indicated I wasn’t thrilled about it, and then I let them tell me why they didn’t approve.  Most were offended that the Thanksgiving holiday was being violated.  Since we in the United Church of Christ – who descend from the Mayflower pilgrims – regard the famous meal shared between the pilgrims and Native Americans in 1621 as part of our religious heritage, messing with Thanksgiving is not just unpatriotic.  It’s irreverent.  One woman assessed the situation starkly.  “It’s a sin,” she said.  “That’s what I think – a sin!”  She spoke with a sharp tongue, a furrowed brow, and a wagging finger.

Yes, there is something sinful about Sears, Target, Toys R Us and Wal-Mart being

Relishing the Result

“Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come.” (Mark 13:33)

Doomsayers like to quote these urgent words of Christ when warning of the world’s imminent demise.  But for residents of Central New York in the middle of November, they speak to a much more mundane circumstance.  You never know when the Town, Village, or City trucks will pass through your neighborhood to vacuum up the leaves that have been raked to the curb.  So you must be alert!  Don’t let too many leaves fall before you move them!  Otherwise, the Day will come like a thief in the night and your yard will be covered in leaves all winter.

Yesterday afternoon, I spotted those huge orange vacuums on wheels on the other side of our subdivision, so I went home a little early to clean up as much as I could before dark.  Then, as soon as it was light enough to see this morning, I cleared the rest of the yard.  The pile of leaves along the front of my property formed a veritable fortress, or – for the more romantic – a scale model of an Adirondack mountain range.  I went inside to shower and get ready for work.  While I was dressing, I saw out my bedroom window the Town brush cavalry moving methodically down the street, sucking up all the leaf piles.

I let out a cheer of “Yes!” and pumped my fist in the air.  What satisfaction I felt having cleared my yard just before the time came.  I was dutiful.  I was attentive.  I was awake to the coming of the Vacuum, and was rewarded for my diligence.

Now, some environmental purists will protest that I should have simply mulched the leaves and let them enrich the soil rather than rake them to the curb.  I wish. 

This Year, it's Demographics

Over the past year, pundits and pols have been channeling James Carville, Bill Clinton’s political strategist, who coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid!”   Conventional political wisdom has been resolute and nearly unanimous in the assertion that this presidential election was all about the economy and, more specifically, “jobs, jobs, jobs.”

And yet, in the end, this election was not all about the economy.  No sitting president since the Great Depression has been re-elected when the unemployment rate was as high as it is today.  The state with the weakest economy, Nevada, went for Obama.  Exit polls showed that a majority of voters actually believed that a Romney presidency would be better for the economy, yet he lost badly in the Electoral College and came up surprisingly short in the popular vote.

No, it wasn’t just about the economy.  That’s so 1992.  Today, it’s mostly about demographics.  Republican strategists did not believe that Latinos, blacks, and young voters (who are accustomed to diversity and as a whole deplore any form of discrimination) would turn out in the same numbers as they did in 2008 when they propelled Obama to a lopsided victory.  Knowing that their party’s immigration platform was unpopular, and that some of their candidates had adopted extreme positions on a range of social issues, Republicans consoled themselves by insisting that the 2008 “turnout model” was a blip, and that those minority and young voters who did show up at the polls would vote on the economy rather than matters of special concern to them.  In fact, the Latino share of the vote increased, as did the percentage of voters under the age of 30, and black voter turnout was also slightly higher than in 2008.  Romney won 59% of the vote among white people, and only 22% of the votes of everybody else.  When Ronald Reagan won 60% of the white vote in 1984, his victory was a landslide.  But this isn’t 1984.  Or 1992.  It’s not even 2004, the last national election that could be won simply by appealing overwhelmingly to white voters.  Today, blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans make up 30% of the population.  Large majorities of them were motivated to vote Democrat because, right or wrong, they perceived the Republican Party as nostalgic for a more “traditional” America that does not make room for (or even acknowledge) the kind of diversity that increasingly characterizes the U.S. population.  No party can win national elections by ignoring 30% of the public.

This is good for Democrats, but bad for the nation.  The United States government

Election Day at Church

It’s hard to say when our church is the busiest.  The highest worship attendance of the year is on Easter Sunday.  A close second is usually Christmas Eve.  Lots of other services and activities append to these two high holy days.  Then there is a third possibility: Election Day every four years.  On this day when the nation chooses its president, people stream into our building from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m.  The fellowship hall, where voting booths are set up, will be crowded most of that time.  Lots of voters will stop at the Women’s Fellowship bake sale to purchase coffee cake, a piece of pie, cookies, brownies, or other goodies.  Neighbors will stop to catch up with each other.  Lively conversation will fill the main hallways all day.

Today, this church, like thousands of others across the country, will truly be the center of the community.  Our most cherished civic right and responsibility will be exercised here in this place of worship and discipleship.  It’s pure Americana.

The congregational churches of New England, the first truly American churches, were intentionally organized as community centers.  The plain sanctuaries were called “Meeting Houses.”  Town residents gathered there to make decisions, debate local issues, and visit.  The heavy use of local churches as polling places today is a vestige of that old tradition.