Commercialized Holidays

Recently I saw a Facebook post lamenting the materialistic nature of the Christmas season nowadays. The holidays focus too much on buying and receiving presents. Advertisers swamp us with messages encouraging greed. Oh, for the old-fashioned, gentle, family-centered Christmases of his youth. Well, this person appears to be around my age (mid-70s), and I remember childhood holiday preparations characterized by frenetic seasonal advertising and feverish anticipation of presents. (Of course, we were ad-bombed by less sophisticated technology, and the store displays probably went up slightly later in the year, but it was the same general kind of atmosphere.)

In A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS, first broadcast in 1965, Charlie famously asks what Christmas is all about, as he despairs over the commercialization of the holiday, with even Snoopy embracing the hype.

In 1957, C. S. Lewis published an essay called "What Christmas Means to Me" (a title I'm almost certain wasn't chosen by Lewis himself, but that's beside the point). He says three things "go by the name of Christmas": First, the Christian religious festival. Second, "a popular holiday, an occasion for merry-making and hospitality." The third is "the commercial racket." Read this short essay in full to note how little that cultural aspect has changed, aside from the technology, since Lewis complained of it in the 1950s:

What Christmas Means to Me

A CHRISTMAS STORY (the BB gun movie), based on episodes in Jean Shepherd's fictionalized memoir IN GOD WE TRUST: ALL OTHERS PAY CASH, takes place in 1940; the real-life incidents underlying it probably occurred in the 1930s. The film shows a department-store Santa in an extravagantly decorated setting, with an assembly line of children waiting to declare their wishes.

According to Stephen Nissenbaum's THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS, an analysis of the shift from the REAL old-fashioned Christmas of drinking, carousing, and house-to-house begging (wassailing) to the domestic, child-centered holiday we think of as a "traditional Christmas," concerns about commercialization sprang up concurrently with the cultural shift. Even before the mid-nineteenth century, merchants aggressively advertised their wares as perfect for seasonal gifting, while troubled moralists warned of Christmas becoming "laden with crass materialism" and producing a "generation of greedy, spoiled children."

In short, every era's nostalgic imagination relegates the traditional, unspoiled Christmas of bygone years to their parents' or grandparents' day, or maybe the generation before that. More accurately, that ideal holiday never existed in the first place.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Special Days

Here's a website that lists all the official, quasi-official, or just plain weird celebratory and commemorative days in the year:

National Day Calendar

Every date has multiple entries, so you should be able to find a special day for just about anything you want to celebrate. The explanatory page for each entry includes the commemoration's origin. Some that aren't official holidays have been established by individuals or organizations, while for others the website says it's still "researching" the source. In other words, they don't know. Since apparently anyone can register and add a day to the calendar, it's possible some of these "special days" are simply things made up by people who thought they would sound cool. They're fun to contemplate, anyway.

Here's a page on the history and possible origins of April Fool's Day:

April Fool's Day

These are just a few of the many "days" listed for this week in 2021, in addition to April Fool's Day and the Christian observances of Holy Week events: March 29 -- National Nevada Day, Lemon Chiffon Cake Day, Mom and Pop Business Owners Day, Vietnam War Veterans Day. (I suspect this last one is real for sure.) March 30 -- Take a Walk in the Park Day, I Am in Control Day, Virtual Vacation Day (probably a new invention for the current situation). March 31 -- Bunsen Burner Day, Clams on the Half Shell Day, Manatee Appreciation Day (founded by an organization dedicated to protecting endangered marine animals). This year April 1, April Fool's Day, is also dedicated to sourdough bread and burritos, as well as the regular annual National Take Down Tobacco Day, whose exact date varies. April 2 -- World Autism Awareness Day and National Reconciliation Day, plus an occasion to appreciate ferrets and peanut-butter-and-jelly (presumably not together). April 3 -- National Chocolate Mousse Day, Find a Rainbow Day, and Love Our Children Day (always the first Saturday in April, according to the website). April 4 -- in addition to being Easter Sunday this year, it celebrates school librarians, newspersons, geologists, and vitamin C, among other entities worthy of recognition. It's also listed as National Walk Around Things Day. Well, that's preferable to Tripping Over Things Day. :)

I can enthusiastically support Chocolate Mousse Day, for one. As for today, it's also designated National One Cent Day. The website doesn't identify its origin, but they offer an interesting overview of the history of the U.S. penny, of which we keep a can-full in a drawer, as many people do:

National One Cent Day

When my husband and I got married, in the mid-1960s, some gumball machines sold candy for one cent, and a retro bargain store near our first apartment carried a few items priced at a penny each. The value of a penny faded to essentially nothing long ago, yet we still understand what's meant by the proverb, "A penny saved is a penny earned."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 22 - Depicting Alien Nostalgia With Symbolism

Depiction
Part 22

Depicting Alien Nostalgia With Symbolism

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts of this series are indexed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

And here is a video ...
https://www.facebook.com/aPeaceBaby/videos/4253710505224/

...which is a grand example of how to integrate all these posts on Depiction with the entire series on SYMBOLISM which will need an index post eventually.  Meanwhile, here are a few of the related posts to symbolism:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Yes, we have been working on theme-symbolism integration since 2009 at least!  Symbolism is most important in connecting a modern human reader to a future alien character or civilization. Symbolism is even more important in casting the spell of Romance over a reader. Here is the series on why we cry at weddings.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/theme-symbolism-integration-part-1-you.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-2-why.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html

And here is one about Theme-Worldbuilding integration:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-16.html

We have studied the individual components of this craft, and now are looking at how to join those components into a seamless and functioning whole -- a whole the reader can not reverse engineer (unless the reader is a writer who understands these craft techniques).

Basically, we study the current world we live in, and we study the humans around us both as individuals and as the trends they respond to in large groups.  Then we build a world the people living in this world WOULD believe if they walked into it through a dimensional gateway.

To build a convincing Alien Civilization, you must include the elements that your readers take for granted in this civilization.  One thing that has arisen in recent decades is the Internet and its ability to carry video.

This video-package editing art form has been around since (to my knowledge) the 1970's when fans took clips of Star Trek episodes and blended them with filk music, showing them via VCR in hotel rooms packed with laughing fans.

The clip-editing art form dates back to the 1940's theatrical shorts, especially the News Reel, short clips edited with narrative to create an impression.

This video clip we're studying here

https://www.facebook.com/aPeaceBaby/videos/4253710505224/

Is a series of still IMAGES which are SYMBOLS of a time past, mostly the late 1940's and 1950's, symbols still extant in the 1960's.  The music is a Dean Martin hit song, Memories Are Made Of This -- popularized by radio disk jockeys (paid of course by the music publishing industry to favor one singer over another.)

Those who did not grow up in the era when those images were common will not respond emotionally to them the same way that someone whose teens were spent surrounded by those items would.

That objectivity is what I'm after here, presenting this video for scrutiny.

"Memories Are Made Of This" -- listen to the words of the song.  Create the SYMBOLS your Aliens would hold as Memories.

Here are the lyrics posted by Google
https://play.google.com/music/preview/Tvuikpfuavmcj32cqjcq66re3d4

Now plot your Romance with an Alien creating as you go along, just the right SYMBOL fabricated out of an integration of the human's symbols (of which the human's memories are "made") and the Alien symbols (which you invented).

Yes, writing Science Fiction Romance is hard work.  But it is worth it, and with practice it gets easier and swifter.

Here is a YouTube play of the song without the Memories video clips.

https://youtu.be/mv9PSkNkUfs

It has had well over a million views, and there's a good reason for that.

Nostalgia sells.  If your Aliens do not have nostalgia triggers, no human reader would believe a human could fall in love with that Alien. (You might want to create some Aliens like that, too, for contrast and conflict.)

Create a bit of nostalgia in your novel for your readers to share with their grandchildren.

Note in this brilliant video the absence of BOOKS as nostalgic triggers.  Readers are always between 5 and maybe max 15% of the total population (which is why writers have a hard time making any money.)  These visual items, common everyday sights, and that song (which was saturating the radio airwaves so it is known even to non-readers), combine to depict nostalgia.

What books should have been included?

Create an Alien story, novel, stage play, fictional event, that DEPICTS the era when your Alien love interest was adolescent (whatever that meant to that species).

Please study this video.  If you have to, then just make yourself a Facebook Account and then delete it when you're done studying.

This Facebook video has had about 300,000 "shares" -- it nails it!  Study how that was done. Disassemble into the components, study the components, invent the Alien equivalents in your universe, reassemble into the Alien art form.  Your Characters and their Romance will seem real to your readers.

That "seem real" is what we call verisimilitude and this exercise is how you achieve that.

The goal of the exercise is not to make you suffer through this tedious exercise every single time you set out to create an alien civilization.  The goal is to train (not teach, train) your subconscious to do this analysis/synthesis process outside your conscious awareness and present you with dynamite imagery for your novel.

To make a living at writing, you have to get fast and efficient because words aren't worth much, and art is worth even less.  You have to get to where it is easy to do this, but you nail it (just like this video does) each time.

You achieve this level of proficiency by plodding through the process one step at a time, and practicing and practicing.  Some people need more practice -- others somewhat less -- but with that goal of proficiency in mind, the practice time and repetitions will be minimized.  The important part is to avoid practicing your mistakes.

That is a goal of these posts -- to minimize the amount of practice necessary to become proficient in writing craft skills.  Fill your mind with the abstract, then practice making that abstract concrete.

The series linked above on Theme-Symbolism integration should help.  Read that series on Weddings, and create a series like it about say, Christmas or New Year's, or whatever winter solstice festivity is your favorite.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com