* Dick Cavett's Christmas Humbug

The Hopes and Fears of All the Years  

. . .

Dick Cavett's Christmas piece in today's New York Times about his step-grandmother's repressed anger exploding one Christmas morning at her husband's gift (bribe) of a diamond ring after years of raising the six  children produced by the man's unwanted, forcible attentions, seems sour reading for Christmas Day.


I am prepared to be educated and enraged about the sexism in the world and the repressed anger of women imprisoned in marriage, any other of the 365 days a year, EXCEPT Christmas Day.


It is not that I am particularly pious, or even a professing  Christer.  


It is simply that I see the Day of December 25th as a 24-hour truce on the madness of the chase, the debauchery of materialism and sensuality which so much of the adult world encompasses.


Time out.  
One day for fantasy.
Enough rubbing our noses in reality, Mr. Cavett. 
We know that smell by heart.

Enough.