December Days 2020 #17: j0, 54turn41!4!
Dec. 17th, 2020 11:07 pm[O hai. It's December Days time, and this year, I'm taking requests, since it's been a while and I have new people on the list and it's 2020, the year where everyone is both closer to and more distant from their friends and family. So if you have a thought you'd like me to talk about on one of these days, let me know and I'll work it into the schedule. That includes things like further asks about anything in a previous December Days tag, if you have any questions on that regard.]
Because it is the prescribed day for the festival, I'm putting in the other of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic's prompts for this month:
( So why is this so important? )
So, in the spirit of Saturnalia, a non-exhaustive list of things that are true but can only apparently be said when the social order has been uprooted, upheaved, and the people who are slaves and the downtrodden are able to speak freely (even if they don't have and never really had the attendant freedom to make their vision of the world a reality, because Saturnalia never lasts long enough.):
There are a lot more of those statements, of course, so many that even a supercomputer would have to take processing time to iterate over the array of them and display them for all to see and understand. And the biggest worry many of the people who are downtrodden and struggling in these times is that when this period of disruption ends, when the vaccines have gone through and the businesses have reopened and people are busily trying to re-create the life that happened before, that when this long Saturnalia ends, people will collectively pretend it didn't happen, that there isn't any reason to change or to take lessons learned from inside the disruption and continue to apply them when outside of the disruption. That, much like there is already pressure to forgive, forget, and put the murderous administration that will end on 21 January 2021 behind us as a fever dream of the last four years, that everything that's been done to make life work during the pandemic will disappear as "too expensive," "too difficult," or "no longer necessary," despite how effective it is and how many people who have otherwise been shut out were able to participate, sometimes for the first time in their lives.
So, perhaps, if there is one thing to take from this year, from the last several years, it's the rallying cry of the festival, "Io Saturnalia!", which can be both the invocation of a triumph and the punctuation of a joke. Choose wisely and well who to cheer…and who to mock, for there is and will be ample opportunity for both.
Because it is the prescribed day for the festival, I'm putting in the other of
azurelunatic's prompts for this month: Saturnalia!The first thing that comes to mind when hearing about this particular midwinter festival is a webcomic that would be lost to the world, were it not for the Internet Archive, fittingly named Saturnalia, which is NSFW for nudity, cartoon sex, Jack Chick type fundamentalists (as this is a parody of a Chick Tract), 1995 attitudes regarding paganism (from non-pagans and pagans alike), and also contains menstruation and the involvement of children in adult ritual practices, which I suspect is, again, meant to be a parody of the nativity play and the attitude of the fundamentalist Christians to get more converts by appealing to "family values" and wanting the children to come to church for various things, like a nativity play.
( So why is this so important? )
So, in the spirit of Saturnalia, a non-exhaustive list of things that are true but can only apparently be said when the social order has been uprooted, upheaved, and the people who are slaves and the downtrodden are able to speak freely (even if they don't have and never really had the attendant freedom to make their vision of the world a reality, because Saturnalia never lasts long enough.):
- Black Lives Matter.
- Defund The Police.
- Libraries Have Never Been Neutral.
- WEAR. A. GODSDAMNED. MASK.
- Eat The Rich. Barring that, Tax The Rich To Their Last Million (At Least).
- Correct Pronoun Usage Is Not Optional.
- Accessibility Benefits Those Who Need It And Those Who Find It Convenient.
- Charity Is Not A Substitute For A Social Safety Net.
There are a lot more of those statements, of course, so many that even a supercomputer would have to take processing time to iterate over the array of them and display them for all to see and understand. And the biggest worry many of the people who are downtrodden and struggling in these times is that when this period of disruption ends, when the vaccines have gone through and the businesses have reopened and people are busily trying to re-create the life that happened before, that when this long Saturnalia ends, people will collectively pretend it didn't happen, that there isn't any reason to change or to take lessons learned from inside the disruption and continue to apply them when outside of the disruption. That, much like there is already pressure to forgive, forget, and put the murderous administration that will end on 21 January 2021 behind us as a fever dream of the last four years, that everything that's been done to make life work during the pandemic will disappear as "too expensive," "too difficult," or "no longer necessary," despite how effective it is and how many people who have otherwise been shut out were able to participate, sometimes for the first time in their lives.
So, perhaps, if there is one thing to take from this year, from the last several years, it's the rallying cry of the festival, "Io Saturnalia!", which can be both the invocation of a triumph and the punctuation of a joke. Choose wisely and well who to cheer…and who to mock, for there is and will be ample opportunity for both.
