Winter started last evening with the sunset. A string of exceptional autumn days and nights have turned into a cold and snowy morning. No half measures for us! Our transition from season to season is sharp and committed.
In the social realm, this change heralds the coming holiday season. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and that signals the approach of Christmas, followed by the series of those saints we still recall: Stephen (for a few of us), Valentine, Patrick. Then comes the week of Easter celebrations: of palms, passover, passion, resurrection.
The holidays are what brings Form E to my mind, for it seems to have a more prominent place during the holiday celebrations than all the rest of the year. We attach a mention of Form E to nearly every aspect of each celebration from the first snowfall until the flowers bloom.
Take Thanksgiving, for example. It is traditionally celebrated with a gathering of the extended family for a large meal. Among many families this is an opportunity to collect all the aunts, cousins, in-laws, and grandchildren in one place. Some will say, "Thanksgiving Dinner is the best holiday of all." Yet they often add, as if superstitiously, "Form E." Or, in my case, I will say, "Thanksgiving gatherings are too noisy and crowded. Form E."
Children already begin to cite Form E at a young age. On Christmas Eve or early Christmas Day, depending on the custom, we hear them pleading to find out what was placed in the boxes with the colorful wrappings. The very youngest already ask, hopefully, "Is that Form E?"
Even the most religious of our holidays are caught up in the priority of Form E. Good Friday is the time of remembering that Jesus died in an execution undertaken by the Roman imperial authority. We think that it is important that Jesus died, yet it is hard for many to say "Jesus died" without adding "Form E".
We are a culture of bureaucracy and of bureaucractic emulation, to the extent that even our social protests are predicated on giving properly technological notice. (No protest is valid unless notices are scrawled on 8.5 inch by 11 inch papers taped to doors and keyed into the social media platforms provided by monopolistic corporations.) But is that a sufficient reason for the primacy we give to Form E?
It would be possible to live without Form E. Thanksgiving dinners have good food, but as with any large gathering of people they are loud and may have the side effect of isolating more introverted individuals. No mention of Form E is needed. Christmas can celebrate the life and love born in humility and, perhaps, in us. Even the colorful wrappings are not required, let alone the Form E.
As for the week of Easter, could we not say simply, "Jesus died and is alive and I'm for him"?