e138. Holiday Tradition and Ritual in the Time of COVID

It’s the holiday season. In the United States we just celebrated Thanksgiving, and in the coming weeks that will be followed by Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Years, Pancha Ganapati, Yule, Festivus, Saturnalia, Slackernalia and probably 1000 other winter holidays that get celebrated somewhere around the world. These holidays are often commemorated by coming together with…

Call for Comments: Do we really like holidays anyway?

From Mav: As I finished teaching one of my Friday only classes, one of my students wished me a “Have a Happy Thanksgiving… or whatever” on his way out the door. It struck me that he was not just trying to be nice; as he was finishing the statement he realized the relative futility of…