Group Read

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Made me think of Tim Burton. Perhaps this is of interest:

"In European tradition, the Christmas holidays were a 
topsy-turvy time of social inversion, where the lower 
classes were temporarily allowed to reign supreme, much 
like the carnival in The Hunchback of Notre Dame where 
Quasimodo is crowned King of Fools.  The idea was actually 
to “contain” the discontent of the lower classes by 
allowing them a week or so of special privileges, after 
which the upper classes would reassert their position and 
things would return to the status quo, thoughts of 
revolution 
 purged for another year.

However, as Stephen Nissenbaum recounts in his book, The 
Battle for Christmas, all the rowdy hijinks and social 
chaos didn’t play well in the more Puritanical United 
States.[1] As a result, traditional Christmas celebrations 
were banned in many American communities.  Then in the 
early 19th Century, a number of wealthy New Englanders 
(including Clement C. Moore) began a newer, Americanized 
version of Christmas that was safe, quiet, child-centered, 
and very materialistic.  It was an “invented tradition,” 
designed by and for the comfortable."

http://sequart.org/magazine/53334/tim-burton-christmas-trilogy/

This is the first time that I see Christmas compared to 
carnival.

As regards Pynchon: Nothing safe, quiet and child-centered 
about Christmas Eve on Old East Main. This seems to have 
changed by the time of M&D. But has it really?
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l