ZAPPADAN!

Aristocrats reminds us of the reason for the season...


"Yes, we're calling out to you - you over there with the hair on your head - step on up here and tell us what you can do to contribute to The Festival of Zappadan. What? You're not sure why you should give us presents? Well, I suppose it has been a whole year, and as American children you can't be expected to retain information that's not key to survival or plot continuity. So sit on back as Uncle Paul reminds you of the reason for the season.

Zappadan, like all good traditional winter festivals including Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, and Christmas (and even the more recent ones like Kwanzaa and Festivals of The Lights), are a celebration of death and rebirth. The winter solstice, the day with the shortest period of daylight for the unlucky bastards living in the northern hemisphere, is what gave the ancients their first clue that something important was happening around them. It got cold. Their gardens quit growing, the trees shed their leaves, and 'indoors' was invented. Every day, things got a little worse, colder and darker, really dismal, and a lot of the young ‘uns would be ready to give up hope entirely except some of the old farts who’d been around a while had been through it all before. They went off and got drunk and bribed their kids with presents to keep them quiet and everybody weathered the whole ordeal'.

Zappadan, unlike some of the other festivals, does not start the day Wal-Mart puts out the decorations. It starts on December 4, in honor of the sad day in 1993 when the modern day composer, Frank Zappa, refused to die for the last time. It ends on December 21, in honor of the day he was born. There is no messy Advent, no Lent, no Passover, or any of those complicated events that entangle the Christian calendar for the whole fucking year. Its end is closer to the Winter Solstice than Christmas and you can forget about it after that. No ashes on your forehead, speaking in tongues, or silly rituals involving not enough wine to get you ripped and silly dry wafers that stick to the roof of your mouth.

And, during each day of Zappadan, a miracle will happen..."