Holidays 

Opening reading:

Holidays are in no sense an alternative to the congestion and bustle of
cities and work. Quite the contrary. People look to escape into an
intensification of the conditions of ordinary life, into a deliberate
aggravation of those conditions: further from nature, nearer to artifice,
to abstraction, to total pollution, to well above average levels of stress,
pressure, concentration and monotony-this is the ideal of popular
entertainment. No one is interested in overcoming alienation; the point is
to plunge into it to the point of ecstasy. That is what holidays are for.
-- Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929), French semiologist. Cool Memories, ch. 2
(1987, trans. 1990).

Go around the room once answering this question:
How do the holidays affect your relationships with the important people in
your life?

Let's do a Scrooge... think back to your childhood; how were your
relationships affected by the holidays back then?  In your youth?  Any big
changes since then?

Followup ... what do we mean by "the holidays"?  Do other holidays have the
same effect on us?  Why/why not?  The holidays we celebrate help to define
which community we belong to.  Thanksgiving marks us as Americans, as does
the Fourth of July, Labor Day, etc.  Kwanzaa marks us as African-American,
Chanukah marks us as Jewish, Christmas marks us as ... hmmm... Christian?
Maybe, maybe not.

Now let's turn the question around... how do the relationships in your life
affect the holidays?

Check-out.  Go around the room again.
"How are you right now?  What do you carry with you from this time
together?  Is there anything else you'd like to share with the group?"

Closing readings:

To everything there is a season?
-- Ecclesiastes


I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up-they have no holidays.
-- Henny Youngman