We’ve tried very hard to mine the grievance vein. It yeilded some rich ore for a while. But then the vein went away. Our hunger for grievance was harder to sate. Even Trump is proving to be a suboptimal source of angst. So . . . why not try a little tenderness? Why not gratitude?
But! but! Trump! And MAGA! And all those poor brown people plowed over by WHITE MEN! What about THEM! Trump got coronated and ever since, like, FOREVER, the country has been a NAZI dictatorship HELL! Am I right?
Bae, slow down. An early Festivus celebration is much older than 1997. More like at least 416 years as of this post.
Nothing New Here
My ancestors threw a tantrum so severe it survived emigration to Holland and a voyage across the Atlantic to the New World. Then bitched about what a stupid idea it was to leave home and start life in this godforsaken place. Starvation, illness, death . . . SO AWESOME!
I can trace my geneology back through Jamestown. The Rolfe’s have never been the quiet ones who make sure the harvest is brought in on time. We remain trouble. This space is consistent with our character. Those AntiFa young ones riotting in Blue cities? Pikers. Festivus for my kin, is a 416 year old tradition.
Every generation thinks it invented the art of turning pie into protest. Turns out the kids aren’t discovering grievance; they’re just wearing its latest seasonal fashion.
- 1690s kid: “Ugh, another thanksgiving sermon about how we’re all going to hell because we wear ribbons now.”
- 1790s kid: “Dad says the Federalists made Thanksgiving a pro-bank holiday, pass the corn or I swear I’ll move to France.”
- 1890s kid: “Grandpa won’t stop ranting about how the robber barons ruined a perfectly good harvest festival.”
- 1970s kid: “Mom, do we have to say grace when the Wampanoag got screwed?”
- 2025 kid: “Can we do a land acknowledgment before the TikTok cranberry challenge?”
Same song, new remix. The grievance is eternal; only the aesthetics change.
Semper Eadem
Annus Novus, Ossa Vetera
1619–1669 Twenty Africans step off a Dutch ship and the accounting begins. Virginia decides Christian baptism does not cancel a bill of sale. Massachusetts legalizes slavery the same decade Rhode Island bans it—our first bipartisan tradition. Pequots burn, Puritans give thanks for the empty land, and the word “providence” gets its permanent double meaning.
1670–1719 Bacon’s Rebellion terrifies the gentry: poor whites and poor blacks almost rewrote the rules together. The solution is elegant and permanent—new laws invent “white” as a salary. Witchcraft hysteria peaks; floating is proof, sinking is proof, breathing is suspicious. By 1719 South Carolina’s enslaved population outnumbers the free. The colony throws better parties anyway.
18th Century Grievances
1720–1769 Revival tents promise heaven while plantations promise cotton. Stono Rebellion: sixty whites dead, heads on pikes for the holidays. The Great Awakening preaches predestination to people who already believe some infants deserve hell. Meanwhile French and Indian War teaches colonists they can conquer continents when properly motivated. Grievance level: simmering.
1770–1819 Revolutionaries write “all men are created equal” in a room full of human collateral. Constitution compromises at three-fifths. Cotton gin turns sin into GDP. Louisiana Purchase and Indian Removal Act follow like clockwork. Trail of Tears is just Manifest Destiny with better branding. The grievance now has its own national anthem.
19th Century Resentment
1820–1869 Missouri Compromise, Fugitive Slave Act, Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott—every attempt to postpone the bill just adds interest. By 1860 the country chooses war over bookkeeping. Six hundred twenty thousand corpses later, the ledger is balanced in red ink. Reconstruction is born, staggers three steps, and is quietly smothered in 1877. Sharecropping: slavery with worse dental.
1870–1919 Jim Crow writes the new etiquette. Chinese Exclusion, Plessy v. Ferguson, Wounded Knee, Tulsa Race Massacre—each decade perfects a different flavor of erasure. The frontier closes with a body count. The Great Migration moves the grievance north; the North discovers it travels light. World War I promises to make the world safe for democracy. Democracy stays home.
20th Century Gripes
1920–1969 Dust Bowl, Japanese internment, redlining, McCarthyism, COINTELPRO. Separate but equal, massive resistance, fire hoses, church bombs. The grievance now has television coverage and still no one changes the channel. Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act pass; the backlash is immediate and bipartisan. By century’s end the bones are wearing bell-bottoms.
1970–2019 Vietnam, Watergate, AIDS, crack epidemic, mass incarceration, Iraq, financial collapse, opioid deaths, forever wars, forever culture wars. The grievance learns PowerPoint. Phones arrive so the next generation can watch the ritual in real time instead of just hearing about it from drunk uncles.
Modern Times
2020–present Pandemic, insurrection, supply-chain crucifixion, culture-war trench warfare in 4K. The turkey is still in the middle of the table, but now half the family is live-streaming the argument and the other half is doom-scrolling the comments.
The Apocalypse We Feared
Then . . . the most horrible, dystopian, nightmare ever in history. Hitler resurrected. Vlad the Impaler reborn. An existential death to everything that is good and holy. MAGA. Enter MAGA, stage right, with the subtlety of a Black Friday doorbuster riot. It’s the kind of language that turns family dinners into Festivus feats of strength, where Uncle Bob’s red hat becomes the aluminum pole we all wrestle over.
Let’s unpack this beast, because if we’re tallying four centuries of sins, we might as well give this one its due. MAGA is the latest remix of America’s oldest playlist: nostalgia as narcotic, grievance as gospel. Born in the aftershock of 2008’s financial gut-punch, it hit play in 2015 like a rally cry from a gold-plated escalator. “Make America Great Again”—a phrase Reagan borrowed from the attic, dusted off, and handed to Trump like a family heirloom. The implication? There was a “great” once, and we’ve lost it to… well, pick your villain: elites, immigrants, globalists, the media, the deep state, or that one barista who spelled your name wrong.
In the dystopian telling, MAGA is the Fourth Reich reborn: walls instead of camps, tweets instead of speeches, rallies that echo Nuremberg but with more flags and fewer uniforms. Hitler comparisons flow like cranberry sauce—charismatic strongman, cult of personality, scapegoating minorities, erosion of norms. Add Vlad the Impaler for flavor: the gleeful skewering of opponents, the bloodlust in the arena (or on X, same difference). It’s an existential threat because it doesn’t just win elections; it rewrites reality. January 6 becomes “tourists hugging police,” COVID a hoax until it’s not, elections rigged unless you win. The holy dies not in fire but in a thousand small profanations: truth bent into alternative facts, institutions hollowed out like a post-dinner turkey carcass.
Clapped Back
Yet here’s the non-partisan pivot, because history doesn’t do simple villains. MAGA didn’t spawn in a vacuum; it’s the backlash to backlashes, the equal-and-opposite reaction to decades of perceived overreach. The left’s cultural revolutions—identity politics, cancel culture, endless wars on abstractions—left a void that populism filled with pitchforks. For every Hitler analogy, there’s a counter: it’s not fascism; it’s Jacksonian democracy on steroids, the forgotten man rising against the coastal elite. Vlad reborn? More like Andrew Jackson with a smartphone, channeling the rage of those who watched factories shutter, opioids flood, and dignity evaporate while the GDP soared for someone else.
The nightmare is real for half the table: democracy teetering, alliances frayed, norms shattered like grandma’s china after too much wine. Women’s rights rolled back, minorities demonized, climate denial as policy. But for the other half, it’s salvation: borders secured, jobs clawed back, a middle finger to the global order that shipped their futures overseas. The death of the holy? Depends on your scripture. To some, it’s the end of Judeo-Christian values; to others, it’s the reclamation of them from secular overreach.
In the end, MAGA is just the latest entry in the ledger—our 416-year tradition of turning abundance into argument. It’s not the apocalypse; it’s the same old bones in a new red hat. The kids will inherit it, rewrite it, and probably air it out at their own tables. Pass the yams, pass the blame. TRADITION!
Every fifty years we update the slides, rename the sin, and carve the bird exactly the same way. The bones stay warm.
But It’s Never Been Done Properly
416 years and counting, of trying the same tactic and expecting different results. We’ve been rinse/repeating Festivus for over four hundred years. What has it gotten us? Every time the grievance at the top of the list is resolved we pop up the next outrage as the worst sin ever. Yet . . . wisdom literature, the Bible included, says what? It says compassion and gratutide are the move.
The Addiction
We’re junkies for the next unforgivable sin. Slavery dies → segregation is Satan. Segregation dies → redlining is the new devil. Redlining dies → it’s pronouns, then hats, then whatever. Kill one dragon, another egg hatches labeled “WORSE THAN HITLER.”
MAGA’s just the newest baby dragon. Tomorrow it’ll be some fresh monster in the opposite color shirt. We’ll scream it’s literally the Apocalypse and burn every damn bridge on the way out. Turkey’s ice-cold while we fight over who gets to be history’s biggest victim.
The Loop
Resentment breeds resentment like debt breeds debt. Four hundred years of the same shit, new graphics. Same table, same fight, same cold bird.
The Cure
Old heads been saying the same two lines forever: Listen fast, talk slow, stay cool. Say thanks. For anything. For everything. Not after you win. Right now. Even when the asshole in the Costco lot steals your spot.
That’s the whole cheat code. Kindness and gratitude ain’t the prize you get after justice. They’re the only thing that ever shuts the cycle up.
The Hand-off
We keep waiting for a villain clean enough to murder so gratitude finally feels safe. History laughs and hands us a dirtier one. Kids watch us pass the poison plate and memorize the recipe. One year they might just flip the table, put the phones down, look around and go, “Thanks for the food, the heat, the weird cousin, and the fact we’re all still breathing.”
That’s the real succession. Not leaving them a perfect country. Leaving them sick of our bullshit and ready to try something that actually works. Till then the Festivus pole stays up, the turkey’s a hockey puck, and the bones stay warm. Pick your season, fam. 🦃💀 Why Not Gratitude?