MERRY   MYTHMAS

"THE YULE OF THE TURKEYS

The followers of Jesus of Nazareth celebrate it,
usually two weeks early to suit the lovers of saturnalia.
Countries ruled by Jesus' followers celebrate it,
officially, as may be expected from the total state.

Those who disbelieve in the one god or demon join in at it,
because they have not yet been slain before Him,
being an abomination unto the devilish divine Lord.
Those who are not wholly hetero are gay at it,
which in this season will be holily for the same reason.
Those who lack the virtue of being male keep house at it,
because they have not been conscientized so far,
ignorant of the course of the weaker vessel on Biblical waters.

Not yet taken vengeance on in flaming fire,
and still unaware of the snares in the Silent Night,
the turkeys celebrate a Christianist Yule.
Their cheers and carols drown out the cries for
a democracy not ruled by ghostly writings,
a public school open and impartial to every persuasion,
a government respecting the equality of all persons,
not imposing religious symbolism on an entire nation.

While the Northern Yule is awaiting a new normative content,
the gobblers and their families blithely collaborate with
the exponents of the old denominational paradigm,
rejoicing with them at their own oppression or discrimination.
For the turkeys, male and female,
want to be merry, here and now,
irrespective of relevant justice and true peace,
irrespective of reliable happiness in times to come.

Not knowing their limitations,
they send countless Christianist cards to non-Christianists,
using 'Christian names' to address them (and to swear).
Preoccupied with their X-mas cards and X-mas presents,
they are blind to the birth of a new civilization,
or to the need of such a birth.
Engrossed in their X-mas dishes,
they never think of celebrating a Yule without turkeys.

Meanwhile, they keep on gobbling faithfully,
while a thicker and thicker coat of social normality covers
the heavy unnaturalness of the supernatural stuffing.
How much longer will the poor forked animal carol this lot?"

With a questioning glance Cathleen looks up. What will the others at the table think of it? But she has hardly finished reading out Sophy's Christmas reply card, when a heavy burst of reactions follows.
    "A load of crap! I've never heard such rubbish in my whole life", or something to that effect her father exclaims. Angrily he takes a bone and starts tearing the meat from it with his teeth. Reminded of the cards the family have received from people they have forgotten to send one to themselves, and of the cards they have sent to people from whom they have not received one in return, he is the more angry.
"That's really outrageous!" says her mother, thinking of the gorgeous plump, trussed and skewered turkey that she had the pleasure of cooking; and of the man who had prodded it several times at the breastbone to show how good it was.
"What a nasty nonsense", Dominick, her boyfriend, remarks after having been served lavishly to large pieces of fowl and splashes of sauce. "Christianist -- ever heard a more awkward word than that? How unpoetic you can get!"
The two other people present, her grandmother and her brother, remain silent. They appear to be mesmerized by the food heaped up on their plates and the warm mouth-watering odor emanating from it. In actual fact, however, Theodore, her brother, is too much baffled by a few lines which arouse his curiosity but seem to require some arcane knowledge he does not have. And Granny somehow cannot find the right words to describe what she senses: a distasteful combination of confusion and revulsion.
    "Does anyone of you want to keep this card and add it to our collection?" Cathleen asks.
Lifting his head from the bone and pointing at the open fireplace in the room, her father answers:
"Throw it into the fire -- that's where it belongs".
The others agree or fail to disagree.
    Cathleen gets up, tears the card into dozens of shreds, and drops them above the fire. The little pieces of paper whirl down like snowflakes. When reaching the hot flames underneath they do not turn into water and steam tho; into tiny black bits of ash they turn. Cathleen smiles. "Still, I think the little drawings of turkeys on it were rather cute", she muses. While walking back to the dinner table she has one more look at the family's marvelous collection of Christmas cards. It seems that every one of them tries to outshine its neighbor. Its thoughts are the warmest, its wishes the best, its wintry fairyland the snowiest. No detergent could compete with these whiter-than-white pictures of human blessedness.
    The radio, which is left on so soft that it does not interfere with the talking and so loud that the music need not be missed, plays Silent Night:
"Silent night, holy night,
 All is calm, all is bright
 Round yon Virgin and her Child,
 Holy Infant, so tender and mild ..."
Not a word about turkeys.
    Outside a chill rain, violently driven forward by a storm, taps on the windows, drowning out the dogs that have been barking and howling for hours. It is one of several foul days in a row: windy, dark and dank, with temperatures just above freezing, so that it feels bitter cold. Even in this part of the world so much closer to the abode of Father Christmas than where the Child was born, the odds against snow on the 25th of December are 20 to 1; the odds against snow on the ground and a clear blue sky, perhaps, 50 to 1.
    Yet, there are some very pleasant things which make up for the bad weather, besides all the beautiful cards, and the fairy lights, and the tree baubles. At no other time of the year are the shops so well provided with goods and goodies. At no other time of the year do you receive so many presents; from every friend and relative, from people at work, and also from casual acquaintances. It is a custom for adults to jolly one another into telling little children that the toys in their stockings or pillow cases --lead soldiers for the boy, a plastic doll for the girl, among other things-- were put there by Father Christmas, described as a genial old man with a long white beard. Every child is made to believe that this saint of saints by the name of Claus lives at the North Pole; that he travels all the way to its home in red-and-white regalia on a sleigh drawn by reindeer before coming down the chimney. (According to Sophy the warlocks' betrayal of truth starts at an extremely early age, not seldom at a child's birth.)
    Where so many presents are received, there no fewer presents have to be bought, granting that a self-made present is regarded as an insult, even more so than a self-made card. Joseph, Cathleen's father, does not really relish the shop till you drop business. He would rather give presents at a time he feels like it or on a personal occasion. However, in order to gild the pill his wife had proposed that they go to London for a change. This had turned out to be a good suggestion, for the displays in the shopwindows certainly were more fantastic than they had ever seen in the largest city of their own country. The enormous bookshops in particular had drawn Joseph's attention, as he is very interested in books. Of course, there were the typically UK books about the One Family with fancy titles such as Royal Ceremonies of State and even fancier ones such as Queen So-And-So, The Queen Mother. They do not turn him on, but what magnificent colors! (Apart from the people in the limelight, who seemed glad to be snow-white.) Knowing that the tinsel of high office does make his wife Mary swoon he had secretly bought the Royal Ceremonies for her.
    There was a window, too, chock-full of engrossing books about the Great War, like World War I, Echos of Terror, The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Military Vehicles, each one of them of excellent quality. It was only equaled in splendor by the next window with books like World War II, Modern Military Aircraft and The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Fire Arms. Joseph would have loved to buy the whole lot of them, save that in the days before the Festival of Peace one is expected to buy presents for others, not for oneself. The worst thing about this obligatory show of goodwill is that he usually has no idea of what his wife and mother need, what Cathleen and Theodore want, and what his friends have got already.
    "And, do you like the book?" Mary asks Joseph, referring to the Illustrated Encyclopaedia she bought for him in London while each of them had gone shopping on their own in the afternoon. Her purchase had worked like a surefire charm, tho. She does not need to ask him, for Joseph is an Aries with the traits of a ram: energetic, forceful and fiery. Perhaps, also a little bit militaristic, if the One Whose birthday they are now celebrating had not said it Himself: "Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth. I came not to send peace but a sword". In that respect, too, he is in Good Company.
    Being the oldest surviving source of the typology of human nature, the signs of the zodiac are for Mary still basic to any real understanding of a person's character. Altho 'born of fornication' --speaking in the wry terms of the Judeo-Christian Writ-- the day of her own nativity is the 7th of September, at the very height of Virgo. That is why she has the distinctive traits of a virgin: forward-looking, disciplined and frugal, perhaps, sometimes too parsimonious. (Christmas presents do not count, because they have to be given, whether one wishes or not.) In her planet, Mercury, astrology and myth, divine or demonical, are interrelated; so closely that she appears a trickster figure hovering on the border of officially sanctioned religion and frowned-upon superstition.
    To her satisfaction Mary has read in the newspaper under ARIES that 'holiday gatherings delight you --that is, Joseph-- especially with a guest from the past'. (But there was also an advice to be 'diplomatic on the social scene'.) Well, Granny is a guest from the past, and in a way she herself is. Under VIRGO it said in the stars that she should 'make an effort to improve communication with romantic partners'. No doubt, this should be partner, and with what could she have fostered her husband's love more than with her dainty dress and the bewitching accessories that so perfectly match it? She has done everything in her power to please him, from the expensive presents she has given to the Christmas dinner she has prepared, with a massive turkey, roast potatoes, vegetables, cranberries, chestnut, figgy pudding, mince pies and soup for starters. Fortunately, it was not a meatless Friday, for that would have spoiled the whole feast.
    "Cathy," she says to make sure that her daughter is content as well, "you never told me whether you enjoyed your broth". "I did", Cathleen answers, "What did you put in it?" "What a silly question, dear: turkey, rice, fresh mushrooms and herbs. Didn't you taste it?"
While Cathleen puts her hand on the right shoulder of Dominick, who is sitting to the left of her, she laughs and says gleefully:
"Yes, Mum, but there is one broth I like even better."
Mary laughs too and replies: "Yes, dear, he's a broth of a boy". She is glad that Dominick is one of her regular guests, and not such a specimen as Sophy, who her daughter met in October during a course at the university. The mere thought of it gives Mary the shivers.
    Hungrier than ever, Dominick does not mind the attention he gets from the ladies, the cream of society. And Cathleen's father is also a decent fellow. But, then, Dominick himself is always ready to compliment the pretty girl he has been dating for several years now; that is, to compliment her on her appearance. She is a buxom beauty, with lustrous eyes in a bronze face, capped by golden hair. Moreover, her family are better-off than his. He is tolerant enough to accept that they are not exactly of the same religion. Despite Cathy's pedantry now and then, and a couple of ideas no man could stomach, he is certain she will make a good wife and mother of his children. With some useless BA in philosophy she will not have a snowball's chance in hell of finding a decent job anyhow. So much the better! Because as far as he is concerned Cathy should stop mooning about with books and papers, and get down to the basics of family life one of these days: cooking, cleaning, caring, cooperating and whatever other c-ing might be necessary or desirable for her and his consummate happiness. The Christmas carols on the wireless in the background are getting him in the right mood.
    There hears Dominick the solemmn words already:
"Dear beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God ... to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony. Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife to live together after God's ordinance ... ?"
"I will", says the young gentleman wearing a dark blue costume and light blue necktie over a white shirt.
"Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him ... in sickness and in health ... ?"
"I will", says the young lady wearing a long, immaculately white dress.
    Less solemnly Dominick thinks to himself: "To obey and serve her man, that's what she'll have to promise me, and that's not what I'll have to promise my woman!" All is quite clear to him --Cathy will also wear a white bridal veil, virgin or no virgin-- and should be made equally clear to her. Backbone, that is what he has! It is not for nothing that he is in the army at the moment, defending God the Male Father, God the Male Son and that wholesomely spiritual land where good soldiers are fed like gamecocks.
    Unwittingly Dominick is also defending the belief that the One Whose birthday the family is now celebrating will eventually reign over the universe together with 144,000 male virgins. They will be men who, so unlike himself, have never been 'defiled with women' -- again in the wry terms of the same Writ-- and who, so unlike himself, were born into one of twelve chosen tribes. It might be quite a revelation to Dominick if someone told him that the irrelevance of sexual and ethnic distinctions in contexts like these may one day turn against him, and very badly at that.
    Granny's husband Basil was in the army too, albeit in a different one. On Christmas Eve, and today, she misses him more than ever. One would not notice it tho, for she does not act the mournful widow. Dressing as well as she always did, she wears a satin gown in rich folds, with a fall of white lace encircling her shoulders. Mona --that is her Christian name-- adores white lace. (The strips of lace-work on the table-cloth were a gift from her and Basil.)
    Mona remembers that one day about nine years ago ... But her daughter-in-law interrupts her: "Mother, you hardly eat at all. What's the matter? Father and you used to devour turkey when we spent our Christmases at your home. Isn't it tender enough?"
"Oh, Mary, the meat is excellent. My appetite just isn't anymore what it used to be."
"Well, do take some more sauce", and she passes her the sauceboat.
    Her daughter-in-law is a gem. If it were not for her and Joe, she would have pined away from loneliness a long time ago. Never will she forget that day when someone she did not know called at the door and asked to be let in so that he could speak to her without the neighbors watching.
"There's something the matter with your husband, Madam".
    Killed by his own countrymen he was. Thirteen men died on the spot, attacked without warning, not in a heroic war of the Island of Justice against the Empire of Evil; no, in a civil war between children of God and children of God. Why? Because supernatural belief breeds unnatural trouble, as in the Holy Land itself? Or because supernatural rules of morality underlie unnatural rights of property, as in El Salvador, The Savior Himself? In Mona's eyes the reason is simply that those who murdered Basil were monsters, not fit to be called "Christians". And yet, all of them were. And yet, all of them are.
    As in so many families some members have names and some have nicknames. Joseph is 'Joe' for his mother and his wife, Cathleen is 'Cathy', and Theodore is 'Theo' for everyone. Altho Theo is not as attractive as his sister, he looks even bronzier than she. He is dressed in a coppery brown suit, like Joe, but whereas the latter's necktie is a festive yellowish color, Theo has thought it more appropriate to wear a black one today. You never can tell, however: next Christmas his tie may be brown again, or gray, perhaps.
    By nature a sensitive young man, Theo is rather undecided and equivocal at times, even if on the positive side a jovial person willing to sacrifice himself. He is often overcome by ambivalent feelings. At such moments he seems to be split between his real self and his shadow, between his mind and his body, between spirit and flesh, between men and women (or the other way around). Then it is as if two fishes in his body, two Greek ichthyses, swim in opposite directions, the one telling him that a service is going to be held somewhere to the right, the other that there is one going to be held somewhere to the left. It is no wonder that he has always veered towards the congregation of girls and women when the one ichthys crossed his mind, and towards that of boys and men when the other did. Such waters may run deep and be still nevertheless. But Theo's dual water is troubled, for which one is the genuine Jesus-Christ-Son-of-God-Savior, or are both Jesus-Christ-Son-of-God-Saviors genuine?
    For a few months now Theodore has been in love with an associate at work. This in itself is not a sin in any exegesis, so far as he knows. The problem is that his is no straight XY-XX case, the material prerequisite for the church's estate of matrimony. Theodore is, perhaps, not as emotionally stable as Dominick, but he is religious enough --considerably more so than Cathleen-- and takes divine ordinances seriously, however misogynic, misanthropic or miserotic. He sure does not want to spend his afterlife with a hot pitchfork in his gut. (And apart from that: it is against the law.)
    Since he fell in love Theodore has been praying in the closet at least once a day. No, he is not a hypocrite who prays in church, or on the corner of the street, or openly at home, so that he may be seen by others. Yes, in this respect he strictly abides by the Word: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret". That none of the others now notice his long, daily prayers is a reward to him, for they would certainly inquire what inspired or --worse-- possessed him. This is precisely the one thing he cannot tell them, with the possible exception of his sister (whose sunlamp now helps him conceal his pallor). The more he prays tho, the more he thinks of his work. Is not he in the soup!
    "It says in the paper, Theo, that Pisces should 'let go the past, especially your frustrations. Start the new year with a different attitude. A sunny disposition attracts associates who enjoy your company. You can make giant strides at work if you put your ideas into action'."
Theodore smiles, his face still bent towards his plate. There almost seems to be a biting odor of witch about his mother, but in this season of good cheer it is everyone's duty to show joy, whether felt or unfelt. Vainly does he try to find a funny reply when his napkin-ring falls off the table.
Joseph friendly chips in:
"Please, don't bother him with your stars, Mary".
    "What does it say about Capricorn, Mother?" Cathleen asks.
"Let me see. 'CAPRICORN. December 22-January 19. The new moon in your sign, along with your four other planets, brings out your cautious attitude toward finances and romance. Make needed revisions and cut business costs'."
"Good gracious! Jesus had better not be listening".
Cathleen's mother does not realize this was meant to be a joke; her father, who does, because there is actually no Capricorn present at the table, thinks it is a rude one. Her grandmother innocently remarks: "Some people think that Jesus was not born on the 25th of December but in the first half of January".
"Then he would still be a Capricorn".
    It is just like Cathleen to say such a thing. She has never been very devout and merely plays the game. While she does get some people's goat now and then, she would not relish social ostracism, the prospect of those in her community openly dissociating themselves from all forms of supernaturalist faith and the rituals and symbols expressive of it.
    Intellectually Cathleen has little in common with her friend Dominick. One must be a very loyal dialectician to be convinced that Cathleen's burgeoning love of natural wisdom and Dominick's solid hatred of it will in the end, on some more comprehensive level, culminate in a synthesis of the two. Nonetheless, Cathleen appears to worship the ground Dominick walks on as he is so masculine and handsome. Her parents have no inkling of the intimacy of the relationship between their daughter and her boyfriend. It is better that way. With abortion being unconstitutional, and the possession of contraceptives a greater crime than that of hard drugs --all because of the Church-- they would be scared out of their wits. (Only recently the family had been shocked to hear that Virgin's was being charged with having sold a condom to an unknown person.)
    Cathleen is already excited by the thought of her, her boyfriend and another couple going to Greece together this summer. Then they will finally see the Akropolis with the Parthenon, the House of the Virgin, which used to be a church for the Queen of Heaven before being converted into a mosque for the King Himself. Sophy would put it thus: the very place where the Virgin Athena, goddess of wisdom, was deflowered forever by the iconoclasts of the Boy Jesus, while the Supreme Sky God silently looked on, not lifting a finger; the very place from which the Girl Pallas, that favorite Daughter, was mercilessly expelled in order to be replaced with that foreign Mother, the Lady Mary who had borne His Son by parthenogenesis. (Altho, she might add, it was also this Son that was to preserve the heathenish child-of-a-god mythology from extinction.)
    Cathleen is at least as excited by the thought of her boyfriend making love to her later that night, when the two of them go for a ride in his father's car. She never thinks of the obeying and the serving, and of her being handed over by her father to this man at a white wedding, like a chattel; nor of what the clergy join together and no-one, not even she herself, is supposed to put asunder afterwards. She thinks of how Dominick calls her "a tasty bit" and enjoys eating her.
    Their affair reminds her of Kant, a distinguished Christian philosopher, who used to compare extramarital sex to cannibalism. But, then, that lifeless theoretician had several other hilarious and heinous ideas, according to Sophy, who likes to look up what the teachers hush up (and who considers him a law- and duty-mad warlock of purely religious reason). Sophy does not mince her words and had told her that Kant, while staring at his church steeple, virtually ejaculated that 'carnal self-defilement' surpasses suicide in viciousness. Carnally defiling someone else must have surpassed murder in viciousness.
    "Do you know", she suddenly continues aloud, "that in Kant a child born out of wedlock does not have any moral status at all, and may be killed by its mother as she pleases, regardless of its health? Jesus was born on the wrong side of the blanket, wasn't he? Miraculously begotten of a male being that was not his mother's husband ... But to grasp his point you ought to know that killing a man, in Kant, is not as immoral as masturbating him."
Her boyfriend turns crimson, her brother shuffles nervously on his chair, her mother's cheeks are flushed, and her father quivers with rage. None of them have the presence of mind to calmly point out to Cathleen that even if Jesus of Nazareth were a natural child, it still would not be his fault.
Cathleen's grandmother, who has understood least of what has just been said, makes most of the situation:
"Kant? Isn't that the Flemish word for lace? Oh, I saw so much of it in Bruges when I went there once with Basil; beautiful, beautiful lace, all handmade. And ...".
"No, Granny, Kant was a German, and definitely not that beautiful; in his system only a woman was. Since he was a man he didn't go further than the modest claim that he was sublime, like the night and the sea. Don't ask me why. Why do men have marble, and women waxen, minds in Shakespeare?"
    She should not treat her grandmother this gruffly, Cathleen then realizes, for many a philosopher drones on about Kant (and many a literary man about Shakespeare) a lot more than Granny does about lace.
"Do you know what he said about citizenship? That only people with property should be considered citizens, and that wage earners have no right to vote".
"Cathy, please, don't flaunt your Kant", Dominick interrupts, getting more and more irritated. "You annoy the others with such heavy stuff".
"I always told you", Joseph says, while throwing his knife and fork on his plate, "if you desperately want to go to university, take English or something. Then you wouldn't have run into a character as otherworldly as Sophy either". Unmistakably recognizing Sophy's souring influence on Cathleen, her father is intent on not having his family's Christmas board sullied by her any longer --the Yuletide tyranny is bad enough as it is.
    Like Joseph, Mary wonders how many more of their daughter's less agreeable idiosyncracies they will have to digest. Not even for one day in the year can Cathleen guard her speech. Sometimes Mary feels sorry for Dominick. She is certain that he will probably always blame her and her husband for not having kept Cathleen on a short rein. He does not even seem to appreciate her studying at the university. But, then, Mary's own father refused to let her go to college or university.
    He was cock of the walk, Mary's father, and a real tyrant at that. As a child Mary suffered a fate worse than death. Her mother did not know about the thing she never dared mention to anyone.
    What her mother did know was that she suffered from celiac disease. Being allergic to baked foods made from wheat or rye, Mary was on a diet without bread. At any rate, at home, because in the service of Holy Communion she was forced to eat a wafer, like the other children. When her mother once suggested that the priest use a different host for her, her father had beaten her mother up and sent Mary herself to bed without any food at all for more than a day. The consecrated wafer was not composed of grain products whatsoever he pontificated. The bread had already been transformed into His body before she took it: it was Jesus Christ she ate. Her palate once more coated with a scum of disgust she vividly remembers. How she detested it!
    To get away from home Mary married young, eleven years younger than Joseph (who has meanwhile taken up his knife and fork again). No longer a child herself, she gave birth to one: Cathleen was born within a year. And, of course, Joseph considered it her task to look after Cathleen, and later Theodore. He would never have allowed her to take a job somewhere, or to follow a course. Subconsciously, she herself feels, too, that a woman's place, because of her receptive nature and vulnerability, is at home with her children. And yet, she is terribly bored with staying home while everyone else is away to work or school, and with being financially dependent on her husband. What makes things worse is that she has never been really in love with him, and often feels like just walking out -- if she could. Their marriage has always been a matter of form and convenience; even their engagement was. After the beginning of her first pregnancy she has had no intimate contact with Joseph anymore. Since then one of the seven joys of Mary has been total chastity. All her love is now projected onto her two children; her three children, Dominick included. What a happy sight it is to see them all enjoying their meal against a serene background of green ivy and red holly.
    Little does Mary realize that Dominick's thoughts have meanwhile wandered from her table, first to an area not far away, where he sees whole regiments of turkeys gobbling thru the farmyards; then to the turkey shooting clubs of America, where fellows like him revel in firing at wild turkeys to test their stalking skill and marksmanship. And where, he has been told, they feed all but the breast to the dogs. How lucky those dogs are, compared to the specially large number of them normally abandoned elsewhere at this time of the year.
    Also Joseph's thoughts have wandered away from Mary's table. On the inside the paterfamilias of the Christmas-celebrating household is not as averse to sexual pleasure as his wife. He goes to church on Christmas Eve, puts in awfully long hours and is very good to her and the children, but he loves women, not one woman. It follows naturally from his taste for arms and warfare, when a man spends days and nights with the boys, that his preference is plain, fleshly, more or less aggressive fun. And when there are no ladies to be had? He has read what some men do to turkeys: they stuff them! He finds it hard to imagine the scene in his mind. However, the plate before him soon carries him back to his own, more palatable reality in which the Word is made meat, not flesh.
    For the umpteenth time Joseph fills Dominick's, Theodore's and his own empty glasses with beer again. If only the family could have gone to the mountains for a white Christmas as they had originally intended. Joseph has today, Monday, off and tomorrow, Tuesday. So has everyone else, tho. Then he has taken Wednesday to Friday off. Therefore he is free from Saturday the 23rd to Monday the 1st of January. So is everyone else, tho; if they were not forced to, because the factory, the office or the school is closed for that period. Friday afternoon the wonderful season began: traffic jams on every major road; endless lines queuing up for buses, trains and ferries; people waiting for seven hours at the airport before their plane would take off; hotels fully booked up everywhere; children crying from fatigue; and so forth and so on -- the most sophisticated witches' cauldron ever brewed up.
    There are 365 days in a year, and then the whole country, half the world, has to take six weekdays (sometimes almost half the number of days they have) at precisely the same moment, with maximum congestion in its wake, at the beaches, on the ski slopes, in the parks and woods. The pressure on the environment and the strain on people (those who have to cater to these hordes in particular) could not be worse for that. But who is he, Joseph, a simple wage earner, to be dissatisfied with this situation, or to suggest that it is not the best of health and happiness he can envisage for humanity? They would just brush him off with a turkey wing.
    The radio starts playing Cahn's Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! and Theodore turns, at Joseph's request, the volume up:
"Oh, the weather outside is frightful,
 But the fire is so delightful.
 And since we've no place to go ..."
Everyone in the room merrily joins in:
"Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!"
    When the song is finished, Mary takes the metal cover from the big dish in the middle of the table and judges that at least four of them can have another helping. With such a generous meal she certainly did not take the Scrooge view of Yuletide. How lucky they are, compared to the millions, the billions of poor souls who do not celebrate Christmas, who do not even know it is Christmas time.
    Mary's face beams radiantly when she holds a lovely piece of fowl up on the prong of the carving-fork. In a voice loud enough to make herself heard above the mirth she calls out:
"Now then, who's for more turkey?"