Superstitions, New Year's and red underwear

In parts of Spain, there is a custom where people (this is a gender-free tradition in tune with modern precepts) wear red underpants on New Year’s Eve and then burn them on New Year’s Day for good luck in the year to come.



In other parts of Spain, they eat a dozen grapes as soon the clock strikes twelve. A well-placed joke immediately afterwards produces amusing results. A similar custom comes from Colombia. Burning "Mr. Old Year" is a New Year's tradition. The whole family takes part. Here, the celebration is more chauvinistic. The doll is a male and it’s stuffed with different things, sometimes with fireworks to heighten the excitement. Also, they put in objects representing sadness and failure (love letters to to an estranged lover, notices of employment termination, etc), objects that can bring sadness or bad memories. These things burn with the old year. The effigy is dressed in unwanted clothes from each member of the family. At midnight, the doll is lit. It becomes a symbol of burning the past and starting the new year on a new slate.

In some US states the new year is celebrated by eating black-eyed peas, often together with hog jowls or ham. The hog is considered lucky because it symbolizes prosperity. Cabbage is another "good luck" vegetable that is consumed on New Year's Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper currency. In some countries, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on New Year's. In Sweden, pork and cabbage is a traditional Christmas repast, thus jumping the gun by a week.


New Year’s resolutions seem to be a world wide tradition. And breaking them the day after, too. But it’s not the resolution that’s important, but rather the making of it. It makes us feel good. We feel in control of our lives and our future. We have the power to direct our ambitions, our lusts, our desires, our cravings, our weaknesses and our prior failures.

The rest of the year

Superstition is something that seems to completely inundate our daily lives in the Western world. Playing on the state lottery, knocking on wood, crossing our fingers, feeling eerie during a late evening’s walk near a churchyard, throwing salt over our left shoulder (or is it the right?), visiting a ghost’s sumptuous residence in the local castle, checking out the latest horrorscope in this week’s women’s mag and of course our new year's resolutions. Why do we do it?

In tune with an increasing de-Christanisation (i.e. de-Catholisation) of our post-modern society, we are forced to replace the symbols, signs and rites of our spiritual heritage with shallow substitutes containing little real association with the living of our daily lives. And in concert with the various superstitions we surround ourselves with, we try to put them in some sort of semblance. According to a Harris Poll© in 2001, 89% believe in miracles, 68% in the devil, 69% in hell, 51% in ghosts, 31% in astrology and 27% in reincarnation. What we see is that about two-thirds of all adults believe in hell and the devil, but hardly anybody expects that they will go to hell themselves.

Well-educated and intellectually sharp and cutting-edge academicians see no rational risks in perusing the weekly – or for that matter, daily - horoscopes in their local tabloid or women’s magazine. Why it is mainly women who lend themselves to this transcendental gobbledygook is one of the great mysteries of our gender-free oriented society.




Historical background

Belief in spirits was (and is) a natural result of a politically-oriented Church organisation. Ghosts were the visually disembodied souls of a dead person, i.e. former mortals in Purgatory, striving for a last chance for Paradise. With the coming of the Reformation, spirits, ghosts and saints, able to intervene in our daily and mundane lives, were discouraged. Even folklore, with its elves, pixies and gremlins were banned, officially relegated to the quagmire of pontifical ostentation.

But with the advent of Romanticism in literature, music and art, ghosts became – once again – up to standard, and the Church had to adapt. Gothic cathedrals were built, folklore was tolerated and areligious ghosts entered the realm of high culture. People had a need for quasi-spiritual answers to the deeply and genuinely spiritual questions of life.

With the modern era, and the decline of institutionalized religion, the need for pseudo-spirituality has grown and become satisfied by more innovative and anti-intellectual solutions: New Age, holistic medicine, astrology, scientology, magnetic healing and suicidal sects where Jim Jones’ People’s Temple is perhaps the foremost example.



What it boils down to is this: man has always had a need for spirituality, for answers to the unsolved questions of our existence. At times, this need is channeled via an established religious organisation, denomination or institution and thusly (ad)ministered therewithal. In other situations and times, this need is met by means of self-administered panaceas such as the weekly horoscopes in the popular press.

But why do we need this, century after century? And how did a fully dressed effigy get relegated to a simple pair of crimson thongs? It will have to be a subject for a later blog entry, I suppose.

Swedish exoticism - stable style

One of the Swedish festival days that you can't miss, no matter where you are in Sweden is Lucia Day. The festival of Lucia begins early in the morning on the thirteenth of December and marks the first celebration at Christmastide. Everywhere you go, there will be some sort of Lucia celebration - at home, at workplaces, in schools, in churches, in hospitals, in day care centers, on Swedish excursion boats, on SAS flights and probably even in prisons. Lucia is the feminine holiday par excellence - no holds barred.




Early in the morning, before daylight, young girls will get up, put on a white robe, (you can buy them everywhere ahead of time) don a crown of lit candles and in procession with other females in the household, sing the Lucia song as they wake up the man of the house with song and special buns of the day, called Lucia cats.



The tradition of Lucia goes back to the fourth century and the legend of Saint Lucia, a devout Christian. A heathen prince fell in love with her and to prove the strength of her faith she put out her eyes. Her prince was so moved, that he too became a Christian, and Lucia miraculously regained her sight. Saint Lucia became the patron saint of the blind and is depicted carrying light.

Prior to the Nobel Prize festivities in Stockholm, all recipients are awakened in their hotel rooms by a procession of young maidens, Lucia with a crown of candles and her attendants. In large processions, young boys play a subservient role as "star boys", they too dressed in effiminate robes and high, dunce-like looking caps, adorned with golden stars. They usually live through it.

As for all important festivals, there are appropriate songs that are sung. Most of them hail the virtues of Lucia, but one of them, markedly departing from the genderized tones of the festival day, relates the story of Staffan, a stableboy and his five horses under the glistening light of the Christmas sky. This is when the boys to the rear of the procession can sing a few lines by themselves, often with a certain degree of pubertal discomfiture.

Mounted Lucias (don't laugh)



Every stable or riding school in Sweden worth its salt has some sort of Lucia celebration. Some only decorate their stalls with tinsel and lights, others go the whole hog. Like we did. About a hundred people attended our Lucia day at the stable and it was a great success. The Lucia procession itself was on horseback. Since I'm the wrong gender for this kind of thing, Castor and I were starboys. I tried to put a cone-cap on his head, but being a sensible horse and proud of his manlihood, he blatantly refused, sticking his nose high in the air. So I had to wear it instead, until it fell off and my red stocking cap had to do.

We were about 16 horses in the procession. First came Lucia, of course, with battery powered candles in her crown (can't be burning down the manège, you know) We followed after her, and I and Castor were to the rear, being the least dainty equipage of us all. If you've been reading this blog you know that Castor is an impressive horse, not the kind to steal the show from a petite, white-clad maiden bearing light and good tidings to all.

We followed her all in procession and I must say that Castor behaved himself admirably, especially seeing that his nose was stuck right behind his stallmate's tail which was adorned in loads of bright, glistening glitter, entwined there for the occasion.

We rode in, dispersed ourselves in a V-formation and stood completely (well almost) still while we all sang the Lucia hymn. Then we proceeded out, much to the relief of Castor and his friends.



There was a great show: horse-borne angels, Christmas duet sung from the balcony, fancy tricks and galloping Shetland ponies, dressed to the hilt.

All in all, a successful Lucia celebration, in a proper Swedish tradition.

You foreigners don't know what you're missing.

White man's burden ?

Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight...

As we all grew up, most of us, in some way or other, wanted to make the world better. As young children, all we could do with our limited resources was to sing songs (Jesus Loves the Little Children) or contribute a portion of our allowance to some church fund or school charity or maybe save it for a later moral deposit. Don't know what it's like today, but back in the fifties and sixties, we had a cardboard box and we put in a nickel or dime or a few pennies now and then. Over the course of a year or two, the box got heavier and soon it had enough in it to leave back with a clear conscience.

If you grew up in a middle class, protestant neighborhood, making the world better was a matter of saving forlorn or lost souls, teaching people not as fortunate as you or I that there was a better way to happiness than to eke out a living by toiling on a plot of barren land the size of a normal American backyard. Living in the reasonably comfortable surroundings of a neighborhood with little crime and mothers who stayed at home to take care of the kids, there wasn't much an individual could do on his own. But then there were missionaries. They did it for us - vicariously. The missionaries were usually young couples in their thirties who stayed until they reached their fifties and sixties, had a baby or two in the meantime and got paid for teaching Christ to tribes of natives in darkest Africa. Every five years of so, they came back to the local community and told us heart-wrenching or praiseworthy stories of their experiences in teaching God's word to the heathen. After that, our little boxes got heavier much faster.

The missionary mentality is the same today, but it's not limited to Presbyterian propaganda or Episcopalian ecumenism. It has grown and expanded and become politically correct in a secular atmosphere. For purposes of money and power.




Lately, the thousandth American life was lost in the "freeing" of Iraq since the beginning of the American invasion/liberation (flip a coin for the correct choice). A large majority of Americans have been suckered into much the same kind of belief that I and my sisters and my friends back in the Midwest in the fifties were conned into.

Where is the agenda?

What they didn't tell us when we were children, was that there are other forces to be dealt with in life like money in the bank, nepotism, tribalism, greed, foreign investments, political influence, patterns of culture, lack of education and religious fanaticism. They didn't tell us that you could teach a tribe of lost souls in the heart of the Congo about Jesus but you couldn't teach them not to slaughter one another when they encroached on each other's privileges and cultural values.

The reason for this is simple. A pre-condition for making the world a better (democracy, freedom of choice, human values...) place to live in is dependent on knowing what you're doing in the first place. And to complicate the picture: if you've got a hidden agenda - and this includes self-delusions of religion, culture or democracy - you are doomed to fail.

I am thoroughly convinced that there are millions of Americans who honestly believe that we are engaged in a righteous war in Iraq, just as there were -and still are today - millions of Americans who continue to think that missionizing will make the world a better place for the needy peoples of the Third World. Preaching Christ and preaching Democracy are very much alike. But it you don't know who you are preaching to, your sermon will fall on deaf ears.

Now, I am still not convinced that purveying the message of democracy in both a theoretical and operative fashion is the one and only agenda for the powers to be in the United States. There is a lot at stake here. Political influence in the Middle East is vital to the economic interests of the Western World. But the fact remains. There are still many, many people who honestly believe that the most important item on the political agenda is a fostering of democratic values in a war-torn and devastated country. And this is, of course, an honorable stance to take.

But in order to effect a change in any culture - a Midwest farming community, an urban West Coast district, an Appalachian coal mining town, a Parisian or for that matter Swedish middle class set of attitudes or an extremely complicated and historically entrenched clash of subcultures in a country like Iraq that was formed with artificial boundaries, created at the whims of European colonialism, there must be a deep understanding of who you are dealing with. And this is not happening in Iraq, or for that matter in the pockets of cultural turbulence in the antiseptically architected slums of our cities and urban areas.

To be able to change the attitudes of anybody or anyone, you have to have done your homework. You have to know who you are speaking to and you have to respect their views and attitudes that are just as meaningful to them as yours are to you. If you can't do that then you will never be able to meet on even terms.

This is why we will fail in Iraq. One: our agenda is politically and economically dubious and Two: we are disrespectful of our counterpart. We are behaving like missionaries who teach small villages of thirsty and starving misfortunates to sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" by rote to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar, when they cannot count or spell or make personal decisions in life based on a knowledge of the world around them. And giving them medicine to help them survive in a world of poverty is not enough.

What is the best course of action for Iraq?
	Take our troops home and do our homework.
	Keep doing what we are doing now.
	Send over more troops and spend more money.
	Become like ostriches and let our president make our moral and political decisions for us.
	I have no idea.

The zombification of downtown Minneapolis

I go back to Minneapolis about once a year. When I grew up there it was a town of about two hundred thousand people. Now there are about four. There were no slums, but the poorer people lived to the immediate north and south of downtown, mostly north. Minneapolis was a vibrant city of grain mills and small to medium size industries - with a lot of textile manufacturing. It sported two big train stations, just like other large cities in America - the Great Northern and the Milwaukee lines.

They're gone now. One is demolished and the other is an art gallery, I think. Most people lived in houses back then. As a young child I thought apartment buildings were strange. How can you live in a little cubicle next to total strangers and people running past your door day and night?

My sisters and I grew up in a middle class neighborhood. Not fancy, but clean. There was Miehl's grocery store on the corner of Bloomington and 47th Ave. Old man Miehl was proud of having employed Robert Oppenheimer as a grocery clerk once for a summer. Down the street was Max Sadoff's pharmacy where I got caught stealing a Playboy magazine when I was twelve and my hormones got the better of me. Across the street was Ted's barbershop where my dad got his hair cut every other week.

But downtown was alive! When the streetcars got pensioned off and replaced by buses, my mother and I used to wait across from Miehl's for the ride downtown. It took about twenty minutes and we got off outside Dayton's, a big, seven-story department store on Nicollet Avenue.

Right down the street was a giant Woolworths and Kresge's - two five and dimes that could thrive, despite the fact that they were only a block from each other. And there were at least three other big department stores nearby. The sidewalks were full of workers, shoppers and even a few asssorted bums here and there.




It was a big deal going downtown. I had to put on "proper" clothes. No jeans or sneakers. Downtown was where other people saw you with your mother.

How to zombify a city

When you make a zombie you dig up a fresh body and do a lot of wierd things to it. People think there's nothing wrong in the beginning, but then strange things start happening. The town was just fading away a little. Kresge's goes, because Woolworth's is making more money. Then Woolworth's re-opens in smaller quarters. The big banks that used to be on every other corner consolidate and the people who own the magnificient buildings that never, never can be replaced again think they're not making enough money anymore.

So over the space of about twenty years, Minneapolis got dug up and people did peculiar things to her. High steel structures with huge expanses of mirrors that reflect the clouds were erected and the banks moved back.




Dayton's became Marshall Field's and suburbia moved in.

Who knows which councilman came up with the bright idea? These were the zombie potions and needles that did the trick - skyways.

Skyways are sort of cool. You don't have to go outside in the rain or snow or sleet or wind. You just walk in your shirtsleeves from one building to another. This can be a good thing - in measure, but the the idea sort of caught on in the city council or maybe it was in the Minneapolis Downtown Businessmen's Association or maybe they were the same bunch of people. Over the next ten years the whole of downtown Minneapolis slowly lost its soul to a vast array of bridges above the streets.

Visit some of the suburbs of Minneapolis today and you'll see a thriving city. Visit downtown and you'll see a lot less. The bustling pedestrians, the cars, the buses, the taxis, the sounds of people talking and yelling and smell of fresh food when you open the door of the Forum - what used to be the largest automated cafeteria in the Midwest. It's all gone. Everything is cooped up, antiseptic like - and expensive.

People are there, but they're all sorted away in the innards of the buildings. You can see them from below as they walk above you, but you won't hear anything, either from them or from the absence of them on the streets.

And if you look really hard at the reflection of the clouds in the facade of the IDS Tower, you can see Mr Clean in the heavens, smiling down on his urban creation.

Can skyways be detrimental to social interaction?

Yes, definitely! No, they improve it! Well, sort of. This is horseshit.

Straight from the horse's mouth...