tradition
Original: tradition on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
A bearded man in a crowd addresses the group.
Bearded man: Christmas has gone astray! We need to go back to its roots!
Crowd member (offscreen): You mean the early 19th century, when Christmas became a reserved, spiritual holiday oriented around family and childhood?
Bearded man: NO.
Panel 2:
Crowd member (offscreen): You mean the 17th and 18th century Puritan view that Christmas isn't a biblical holiday and shouldn't be celebrated at all?
Bearded man: NO.
Another crowd member (offscreen): You mean the medieval tradition founded in harvest time, wassailing, and loud, drunken, alcohol-and-food-fueled merriment?
Bearded man: NO.
Panel 3:
Bearded man: I mean specifically the early 19th century period, IN WHICH THE BONDS OF FEUDALISM WERE LONG GONE BUT the tradition of yearly social inversions still lingered, so people of no organized period of revelry, you wandered up your neighbor's, demanding good cheer, threatening violence, gathering into wild wandering bands, gambling, getting wasted, cross-dressing, fighting, fornicating, and breaking into people's windows for 12 days straight!
Various crowd members (in unison): ...AND SO...
Panel 4:
A woman in the crowd, smiling.
Woman: Finally, the TRUE spirit of Christmas!
Votey:
The bearded man, eyes closed, speaks again.
Bearded man: I think Jesus would've wanted us to steal more liquor on this day which we pretend was his birthday.
A bearded man in a crowd addresses the group.
Bearded man: Christmas has gone astray! We need to go back to its roots!
Crowd member (offscreen): You mean the early 19th century, when Christmas became a reserved, spiritual holiday oriented around family and childhood?
Bearded man: NO.
Panel 2:
Crowd member (offscreen): You mean the 17th and 18th century Puritan view that Christmas isn't a biblical holiday and shouldn't be celebrated at all?
Bearded man: NO.
Another crowd member (offscreen): You mean the medieval tradition founded in harvest time, wassailing, and loud, drunken, alcohol-and-food-fueled merriment?
Bearded man: NO.
Panel 3:
Bearded man: I mean specifically the early 19th century period, IN WHICH THE BONDS OF FEUDALISM WERE LONG GONE BUT the tradition of yearly social inversions still lingered, so people of no organized period of revelry, you wandered up your neighbor's, demanding good cheer, threatening violence, gathering into wild wandering bands, gambling, getting wasted, cross-dressing, fighting, fornicating, and breaking into people's windows for 12 days straight!
Various crowd members (in unison): ...AND SO...
Panel 4:
A woman in the crowd, smiling.
Woman: Finally, the TRUE spirit of Christmas!
Votey:
The bearded man, eyes closed, speaks again.
Bearded man: I think Jesus would've wanted us to steal more liquor on this day which we pretend was his birthday.
Alt text
A four-panel comic set in a crowd. A bearded man declares that Christmas has gone astray and they need to return to its roots. Unseen crowd members keep guessing which era he means: the reserved, family-and-childhood-focused early 19th century holiday (he says NO), the Puritan view that Christmas shouldn't be celebrated at all (NO), and the rowdy medieval harvest-time wassailing tradition of drunken food-and-alcohol merriment (NO). In a dense, text-heavy panel he clarifies he means specifically the early 19th century period when feudalism was gone but yearly social inversions lingered, so people roamed in wild bands demanding good cheer, threatening violence, gambling, getting wasted, cross-dressing, fighting, fornicating, and breaking into people's windows for 12 days straight. The crowd responds in unison '...AND SO...' and in the final panel a smiling woman exclaims, 'Finally, the TRUE spirit of Christmas!' Votey: The bearded man, eyes closed, adds, 'I think Jesus would've wanted us to steal more liquor on this day which we pretend was his birthday.'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.