From Guy Fawkes to Black Friday: Reconciling November’s holidays

Only Charcoal to Defend: Expensive journal subscriptions must pave way towards open access information

In order to do some research for this article, I went to JSTOR and searched, ‘‘the high cost of scholarly journals.” On the side of the page was written, “Your access to JSTOR provided by Bowdoin College.”
“Awesome,” I thought to myself. And that is about all that I thought about when I saw it, because, as with all privilege, it meant that I didn’t have to think about what that disclaimer meant.
It meant that if Bowdoin College did not pay for my access, I would have to find some other way to read journals featuring top-tier academic and scientific research.

Only Charcoal to Defend: Toeing the line between criticism, hypocrisy

Why is it that we Opinion columnists find it necessary to share our thoughts with you every so often? I don’t remember anyone asking me to do it, except for my editor of course, who has to remind me every two weeks.
In the process of writing columns, I’ve given advice, suggested changes at Bowdoin and, in my first article, accused the members of the Judicial Board of breaching the honor and social codes.Was this presumptuous? To think that my opinions were worth the paper that they were printed on, or to think that writing about them would even do anything? I don’t know.
We columnists have a tendency to criticize things. To my knowledge, almost every one of my past articles has included a critique of something or other.

Only Charcoal to Defend

From Guy Fawkes to Black Friday: Reconciling November’s holidays

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Chris Wedeman

Columnist

November 15, 2013

November is the month when we descend into winter. Each holiday takes us a little deeper. The sun shone when the month was young, and Halloween parties peppered the campus. I got giddy when I saw a couple Guy Fawkes masks—a symbol of the internet hacktivist group Anonymous, of Occupy Wall Street, and of other anti-government and anti-establishment movements around the world. “We are legion!” yelled one masked Halloweener at one point, echoing the mantra of Anonymous.

I managed to remember the Fifth of November when it came. It received very little news coverage, but Twitter was full of pictures of protestors with Guy Fawkes masks in front of Buckingham Palace, the White House, and other symbols of power around the world. In 1605, Londoners lit bonfires all over the city to celebrate the foiling of Guy Fawkes’ gunpowder plot to blow up the House of Lords. To more and more people now, November 5 is a revolutionary day waiting for Fawkes’ reckoning.

But before I can romanticize a gunpowder plot, with November comes a day that is beautiful for many reasons, and would not tolerate more destruction. Kurt Vonnegut described how on November 11, 1918, “millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another” and the First World War ended. The day was named Armistice Day, and never again were we supposed to have another war like the one that cease fire ended. The day is now known as Veterans Day—and we have had many wars since. Had Vonnegut and I been friends, we would have celebrated our birthdays together on this day, and maybe we would have talked about how we were never supposed to have such wars again.

Then Thanksgiving comes. After being my favorite holiday for years, I had to come to terms with many internal contradictions when it became clear to me what it commemorates. The “First Thanksgiving” refers to a meal that European settlers arriving in North America supposedly had with indigenous Americans before the settlers (ancestors of many of us) slaughtered and replaced the land’s inhabitants. The settler-colonial nature of the holiday meal sometimes makes it difficult for me to swallow, let alone gorge myself.

At the same time, Thanksgiving is about being thankful and showing gratitude. I’m all for that. I think we should try to show our gratitude and love more often, and there is nothing like a large meal with loved ones for reaffirming community and affection toward one another.

We found ourselves with this history. We are not responsible for the sins of the pilgrims or any historical oppressor. But we have inherited a world that they created—while it is wonderful to have a fall feast where we give thanks for the food and for each other, we should take the chance to remember the crimes of the past and be sure we don’t hopelessly repeat them. One day we will be responsible for someone else’s past.

But the seeds of blunder are sown before the day’s end. On the TV screens of thousands of people, huge balloons and displays from Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float down the streets of New York; foreplay for all the wonderful stores you can shop at the next day.

Midnight strikes and it is Black Friday. Employees, oft overworked and underpaid, advertise endless discounts and bargains. Images of people fighting tooth and nail for gifts circulate the web and Bowdoin students can gape at the videos of these barbarians online. Luckily we don’t have to go to any shopping malls and fight over things. They are much more civilized when you have a computer to shop on from the comfort of your house.

But you are fooling yourself if you don’t see that this is all the same poison in the end. It is all about consumption. Shopping is important sometimes, but this horror show of human greed and materialism makes it our purpose. In 2008, University of Oregon’s Daily Emerald highlighted absurd examples of rampant consumerism on the Friday after Thanksgiving and noted that, “If capitalism were a religion, Black Friday would be one of its most sacred celebrations.” All society demands of you on this day is: Buy! Buy! Buy!

And now I’m thinking, “What happened to November?” The month began with traditions of high hopes, change, and memory of the promise of peace. How can we forget that so fast it comes to embrace and perpetuate this vicious system of material capitalism?

In recent Novembers, the anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters has called upon its readers to #occupyxmas and not buy presents for Christmas. Black Friday has another name: Buy Nothing Day. In previous years, disaffected people voiced their refusal of the season’s consumerism with actions such as free non-commercial street parties, sit-ins, public credit card cut-ups, and zombie walks (when people amble around shops dressed as zombies, giving blank stares, and spreading the word to surrounding customers).

The struggle against capitalism and imperialism is healthy and strong, if you look for it. The onus is on you. The months after this one may bring a powerful transformation in you, if you feel the magic of radical empowerment and remember what real living is like.
But mostly, I hope that you don’t end up comatose on a couch, post-Thanksgiving dinner, with not a thought to spare for the Fifth of November.

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