Guest Opinion: The Holidays on Orcas & the Zen of the Three Stooges

By S. Jaen Black

They’re over again.  How did you fare??  What IS it about the holidays, ultimately, that transforms people into holly jolly this, that’s or the other??  Why not pretend Santa’s real??

All these questions have been in the forefront of my mind for a few weeks now, and after having watched MANY hours of a Three Stooges marathon last night, I’m ready to write. I can feel you cringe out there, but, compared to America’s antics over the holidays, the Stooges almost seemed like zen…

Look, we give ourselves permission endlessly throughout the year to mount fantasy campaigns in our heads about virus’ and bad beef, what’s wrong with dumbing down to go for bright and shiny objects for a few weeks? I mean, wouldn’t you really love it if ONE reindeer on earth HAD a bright and shiny nose??  Like our appaloosa deer here…That legendary ‘white stag’ that swam over from Lummi, was it??  Don’t you love the thought of it?

Not as many people decorated here as in the past, it seemed.  Saving on the power bill maybe, depression, apathy, moving…That was me. I have been moving during the holidays.  You might have thought that would be hell, but actually, it was novel distraction from it all. It was like being sick, exempting you from all obligatory holiday gestures. You’re moving??  Oh, well, of course you didn’t decorate…

I think that out here on Orcas there are holiday rules of good cheer most of the time, and so, the holidays aren’t as much of a ‘relief’ to us as they are to mainlanders who suffer high intensities of the toxicity of American culture.  Don’t you love seeing how grateful some tourists are to be here?  Do you remember how, upon first landing on Orcas, you were in wonder of the beauty and the magic in the eye and air here?  From what I can tell, most of us who live here, still are.