red fish winging into the sky

The 26th is kind of a let-down day all around for me. Holiday day, the 25th, is all about the family and the giving and the staying at home and eating too much, and the 26th, for me at least, as a little kid I wasn't sure what to do with it--am I still supposed to stay in "family" mode? Is it alright to abandon them immediately? I always feel badly about that. And what about the presents we just opened? My mother is something of a consumer queen--she never knows when to quit, and I always feel embarrassed by the sheer amount of crap I am left with on the 26th. This is the first year that she has kept tags on things and told us all that she is okay with our returning things we do not want. In years past it has been viewed as something only an ungrateful child would do: if you love her you will keep the things she gives you. And she is always trying to top what she did last year, a continuous escalation of stuff: more packages or bigger packages or whatever. Every year is going to be different, bigger, better, best.
This year my father and I talked a little about trying to do things differently next year: limiting the number of gifts any one person can buy, trying to keep things small and simple. Its too early to tell right now, but I hope at least some of what we're planning comes to pass.
I've been thinking a lot about the necessity of contrast: feast and famine, holiday and workday good day and bad. You have to have one to define the other, right?
The general idea of contrast.
Only it would seem that in this day and age, in this particular country we don't want to have both. We want to have a holiday every day, every year to be a "boom" year, a growth year a good year. But it can't work like that, can it? I mean, we need some contrast. We need to have days "on" to have days "off". We need to fast before the feast--in order to enjoy it at all. Otherwise how will we recognize the feast at all?
I am concerned that we don't--that our quest for the "good life" our "pursuit of happiness" has led us into a spiral--continuously having to top what has come before, searching for the next "good" and after that the next "great". Without looking for the sacrifice that should come before or after, the day of fasting before the feast; for contrast, for reflection, for perspective. Instead of taking a day out, taking some time to reflect, regroup, recommit, we just make the next one bigger--that seems to be the only contrast or comparison we want to make. Last year was big, but this year will be bigger. Always bigger.
We can't go on like this, can we? We need some simplicity. Some down time. Some contrast. Some perspective. Some rest.
Instead, yesterday we (as a society and also, specifically, my family) unwrapped our gifts, and today we (all of us) will go out and return them for new things and tomorrow we (the great unending "we") will start planning how next year will be bigger, better, best. I am hoping that we (my family) can get out of this consumer spiral, can set our sights on what really matters about the day and the holiday and that we (as a society) can some how, in a larger way, shake the urge to go bigger always as well.