The Attack on Families

I think the entire business of opening retail stores on holidays is a competitiveness which attacks the rituals of family life.

I have written about rituals before, in particular the posts about rituals considered as a bonsai willow:
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2009/04/meaning-of-ritual.html
and
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2011/02/willow-bonsai-original-post.html

Thanksgiving Dinner is a Ritual; just look at the Norman Rockwell icon of it:

 

The sunlight covers the elders with haloes, the food and life giving elders.

The rituals shared by families are the physical expression of the underlying emotions. The rituals shared by families are an expression of their deepest religious feelings. If we are irritated by stores forcing their employees to work on Thanksgiving and, thus, to miss the ritual of the dinner, we are angered at the attack on the religious feeling underlying it.
If we are not even the least bit angered, if we smile and congratulate our competitive society, then we are spiritually empty and we will applaud the attack on any value that suits us politically or economically.

To attack the rituals of families is an effort which erodes and destroys the complex matrix of being-together, sharing, speaking...

Without rituals, family members will wander the world aimlessly, and even though they will eventually gather by the River, they will not be able to see that it is Beautiful.
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