About the Book
Fertility Goddesses, Groundhog Bellies and the Coca-Cola Company was written thanks to a mixture of curiosity, frustration, and anger. Curiosity is the easiest emotion to describe, but curiosity on its own would not have given me the will to start, never mind finish, a book. Yes, it is a great emotion to get you thinking and it may even be energetic enough to get you asking a few questions here and there. But by itself, curiosity is rather lazy and without anything else to give it a good boot in the butt, it will quickly end up back on the couch, watching The Simpsons. That is where frustration and anger come in. I would have to agree that frustration and anger will never be the life of the party that curiosity is, but there is no denying they are better equipped to handle the long haul.
My initial fascination for holidays started when I was reading Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. He touched on the origins of Easter, Valentine’s Day, Lent, and Carnival and mentioned things I’ve never heard before. It got me wondering why it would never occur to me to wonder what I was celebrating. How many other things are there that I do every day simply because it is a “tradition”?
Thinking about this reminded me of an anecdote my mom told me about a little girl who was watching her mother cook a Christmas pot roast. After seasoning the meat, the girl’s mother cut off an inch from each end of the roast and placed it in a pan and into the oven. The little girl asked her mother why she cut the ends off before putting it in the oven and the mother replied, “Oh, that is just tradition, it is how my mother used to do it.”
The daughter, understandably not satisfied with such a lame answer, went to her grandmother, brought her into the kitchen, and asked her why she cut an inch off each end of the pot roast before placing it in the oven. The grandmother replied, “Well, that is just the way I was taught to do it from watching my mother.” The daughter, getting a little frustrated at this point, decided not to settle with another lame rationale; thankfully her greatgrandmother was still alive and sitting in her wheelchair in the living room. The little girl snorts out an exasperated sigh, goes into the living room, and wheels her great-grandmother into the kitchen. With four generations in one room, the daughter gives it one more try. “Great-Nanna, why did you always cut an inch off each end of the pot roast before putting it in the oven?” Great Nanna looks at her great-granddaughter and says, “Oh, I did that because my one and only oven pan was never big enough to fit a whole pot roast.”
I don’t use this anecdote to try to belittle traditions, but rather to question why after a certain age many of us stop asking the simple and often very justifiable why? We did not have a problem asking why when we were kids. So why do we stop asking why? Maybe we stopped because we kept getting unsatisfactory answers, or maybe because our parents chewed us out by yelling “enough already!” Maybe we realized that society and people do not look up to those who don’t appear to have all the answers. So in our attempt to look competent and intelligent we did not want to let on that we were clueless as to why we do many of the things we do.
So that deals with the curiosity, but what about frustration and anger? What do they have to do with the story of holidays? This is where religion comes in. The origin of the word holiday comes from holy day and there is no denying that the holidays of most cultures are hooked up with their religions. Holidays and religions evolved as a human response to the mysteries of nature and life. During the course of human existence, people faced with the uncertainty of life have found it important, perhaps even essential, to gather together and pay homage to the cycles of the year and the cycles of life.
We often think of holidays as belonging to one religion or culture, but the celebration of holidays is a phenomenon shared by all people. Each religion and culture has its own rituals to mark the times of the year it considers significant and while the names and dates of the holidays may vary, their meaning and symbolism share remarkable resemblances. Despite all the similarities, few religions are built on acknowledging the consistency between the stories, histories, myths, customs, beliefs, and celebrations of all humans.
Personally, I have experienced much anger and frustration with the way we spend 95% of our energy and time on the 5% that are unique and 5% of our energy and time on the 95% we have in common. To add further frustration, the overwhelming time and energy we put into discussions of our cultural differences is not invested with curiosity or with a feeling of “oh, isn’t that neat (or interesting)” but rather spent pointing out how one is superior to the other.
Fertility Goddesses, Groundhog Bellies and the Coca Cola Company answers many of the “whys” regarding the legends, customs, and symbols of the holiday legacy left to us by our ancestors. The story starts long, long ago in a land very far off, with people who lived under very different circumstances than we do today, but, who, when you really come down to it, weren’t all that different from you or me. It doesn’t start a mere few generations ago, or even a few centuries. In fact, it is even older than the advent of
Judaism and Christianity and predates even the Greeks. Instead, many of our holiday traditions and customs have been in existence for at least the last 5,000 to 10,000 years and for possibly far longer.
Having to go so far back in time means the elusive sources of our holiday traditions have long been dead and buried and are therefore unavailable to answer our “whys.” On the other hand, the complexity and universality of our present-day customs have left us with enough relics and fossils buried in the dirt to at least help us get an idea of what the mysterious holiday puzzle is supposed to look like. If we are patient and open enough to allow ourselves to get a bit dirty and dig through the dirt, the history of our holidays is still available to us. While this version of the story of holidays may be more complex than the so called explanations we were provided in grade school, religious school, high school, and even university and adulthood, I think you will find it makes infinitely more sense and provides us with a much deeper understanding of the world, human nature, and ourselves.