Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: TREND (12/07/23)
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TITLE: Who Says? | Previous Challenge Entry
By LINDA GERMAIN
12/13/23 -
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Trying to identify the genesis of trends is like attempting to pick up wiggly gelatin from the floor. The who seems to be an anonymous invisible influencer pulling strings behind a mysterious curtain in a pretend green city far away, which probably is not in Kansas.
How do the traditions and beliefs of so many get ripped away and stomped upon to appease so few? Again, where are they who make decisions that desensitize our moral compasses and sensible thinking?
For example, my mother’s generation embraced the dictates of each season’s current hemlines. Slowly, a few enlightened women probably had enough and threw hats, gloves, and girdles in the trash, but then, as if hypnotized, were helpless to resist the next fashion decree.
When did cultural, political, and religious radical ideologies sneak in and take our freedoms hostage? Like the constant but ignored drip of a faulty faucet, if no one notices in time, the overflow will wreak havoc that can’t be fixed.
That brings me to a recent chilly Saturday morning. I had no idea the heartbreaking reality I was about to witness as I settled in the recliner with a cuddly blanket to savor some delicious hot tea.
While waiting to get warm, I flipped on the TV in time to see our local anchors all abuzz about the impending holiday custom many other communities would be involved in this month.
This town is not Hooterville-small nor New York-big. It’s like thousands of places in this country filled with industrious folks trying to make a living and feed their families.
I mused out loud to my naïve self, “At least the Christmas parade has stood the test of time.”
The excited announcers were regaling the viewers with promises of amazing floats and outstanding school bands. The line of eager participants seemed endless.
In rolled the obligatory shiny fire engine, police cars, and Miss Somebody (didn’t-catch-her-title) sitting on the back of a convertible, teeth chattering. She was followed by tons of trucks pulling small trailers filled with cute children wearing little antlers or red hats. Most of the floats were sparsely decorated with small plastic trees and inflatable snowmen and reindeer.
As usual, the intense music-playing marchers and twirlers were delightful, but the rest was a little confusing.
The job of the ones on the floats was to wave and sling candy to kids jumping off the curb to grab as much as possible. No one seemed to be enjoying the efforts the float makers had made to, uh…hmm. Now I wasn’t exactly sure!
Amid all the sugar-coated rain and cartoon-costumed grown-ups leaping down the street, I couldn’t see one thing that even hinted at the REASON for the season!
Oh, for a float with a choir or some carolers or a manger scene. Well into the next hour, yet another fire engine appeared with Santa on top. He too showered the kiddos with candy, but he didn’t look so happy. Probably ho-ho-hoed himself hoarse.
Other parades I had seen on the news showed belligerent-acting people screaming about First Amendment rights. Most of those displays were not anything a child should see, yet to deny the participants an in-your-face celebration of this or that political or cultural expression was considered any word that ends in -phobic.
My disappointment that Saturday at the unexpected tepid display of empty gift boxes and so many sugar-coated treats, though not necessarily wrong, still made me a little angry.
I wanted to yell at every church in town, “Don’t you people remember that Christmas is about JESUS? At least bring your bus to the parade filled with CHRISTIANS singing carols. Where were you?”
My mother, who passed away last year, couldn’t understand why so many embrace the gore and ghostly glorification of Halloween.
She often asked, nearly in tears, “But why are we expected to keep quiet about that foolishness and have to tread so carefully when celebrating the birth of Jesus?”
Like the distracted frog blissfully lounging in a pot of cool water that becomes boiling hot before he can escape, maybe we need to jump out of our dangerous simmering mess while there’s still time and hop away!
We do not have to do what “they” command. My history book can prove it.
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Congratulations on your win and a well written piece.