Happy Snakesgiving!

Some years ago, I tired of the seemingly vacuous sentiment of Thanksgiving -- a holiday celebrated in much of the United States by demonstrations of excess. Excessive gorging, drinking, feasting on fattening foods and then, when the coma wears off, stampeding the malls to spend what little you don't have.

So I started to celebrate "Snakesgiving," a more irreverent holiday, and to greet people with a cheery "Happy Snakesgiving" and, if possible, a snake of some sort: rubber, wood, flesh....

HAPPY SNAKESGIVING!

This got me in a little hot water at airport security a couple Snakesgivings ago. I often travel with a thumb piano. It's an anti-stress device that helps melt away airport delays. Inside luggage, however, the metal tines look like Freddy Kruger fingerwraps, resulting in baggage examination. Fortunately, many security clerks are African Americans who recognize the cultural significance of this musical instrument and let me bypass the body cavity search.

So, anyway, it was Thanksgiving day and the thumb piano resulted in a search. When the officer opened my luggage, there was a three foot serpent on top. Wooden, of course -- I would never treat a live animal like that -- but realistic. The officer took a quick step back, looked up at me, and I smiled and said, "Happy Snakesgiving!"

Fortunately, this year I was traveling by fuel-efficient Ford Econoline van, and not generating any of those dropping-polar-bear-size carbon bombs like all you airplane travelers, or slowing down our nation's economic recovery, like those who walked this Snakesgiving and missed opportunities for productive work. The snakes were loaded in the back of the van.

SNAKES A LOT!

The snake is an interesting, egg-laying, skin-shedding, cold-blooded vertebrate with spooky eyes and a forked tongue. In religious lore, the snake is associated with temptation. He's right there with Adam and Eve at the beginning of everything and is pretty much associated with the end of all good things, the bliss of Eden, the joy of ignorance.

Bam, just like that, humanity is now doomed to suffer because a snake whispered in someone's ear, "You know, you could do better." The snake is associated with truth, with opening your spooky eyes to the difference between good and evil, waking up to reality.

The snake says, "take a cold, hard look around." The snake is one chill dude -- cooler than cool -- loose, slippery, hard to pin down: he speaks with forked tongue. He is associated with transformation because he sheds his old skin and gets a new suit any time he needs one.

Voodous worship the loa Damballah, the snake god, who is associated with the creation of the universe (the egg) and whose cycles can be used to divine fortune. When the Africans who originated voodou were forced to hide their religion in the new world, they used likenesses of St. Patrick for altars to the snake god, Damballah.

St. Patrick was the Catholic slave-turned-priest who is patron of Ireland. He is credited with driving the snakes out of Ireland. Therefore, it was not sacrilegious to Catholics to place snakes around icons of St. Patrick. In fact, the snakes are often built-into statues of St. Patrick and many other religious deities.

The shimmy of the snake is the definition of duality -- yin and yang, back and forth, side to side, rock and roll. The instrument of the snake is the rattle. The rattle is the egg. The egg has the seeds. The seeds are the origin of all life. Simple theosophy.

BACK TO SNAKESGIVING

So I'm driving this van full of snakes across America headed for my brother's house in Frederick, Maryland, via my daughter's house in Nashville, Tennessee.

Along the way, I notice that about half the cars have a glowing blue device on the dash somewhere. This is strange. I've been driving these roads twice a year forever and this is the year of dashboard navigation.

In fact, once I got hip to the trend, I found a way to prop my iPhone onto my dash for stylish no-hands GPS updates. It's like watching the airplane tracking channel when they first put screens in seats. For the most part, though, I steered clear of any bluescreen drivers.

The other thing I noticed was about one fourth of all passenger vehicles had a rack of clothes in the back seat. I don't know if more Americans are living out of their cars or not, but they certainly are prepared to do so at a moment's notice.

By the time I got to my brother's house, I forgot I had a snake tucked inside my hoodie, and it just sort of popped out when I hit the front door. "Ooops. Happy Snakesgiving!" He was startled because I was startled because I'd forgotten about the snake. But the snake was plastic and my brother has hosted Snakesgiving before and is wise to my foolishness. He didn't even smack me.

TWO FOX

The next morning I did what I've done every Snakesgiving for a very long time. I went for a walk in the woods and picked enough "flowers" to make a respectable wildflower arrangement. This is easier at my brother's place; a brisk 20-minute walk through the neighborhood park and you are in farmland a.k.a. condos-in-waiting, where you are not likely to be arrested for snipping some solidago or liatrice or oak leaves.

My brother's dog, Alice, adores me. She's a border collie and a bit dainty but can be coaxed to investigate the manhole-sized boroughs we find dotting the creek. One of these years, we will run into Mr. Skunk and I will no longer be allowed to take Alice for walks at Snakesgiving. We rarely run into snakes.

This year, my oversize Bed, Bath, and Beyond Bag was stuffed with autumnal foliage and we were about ready to turn back for home when there was a great rustling in the woods along the creek.

The crashing and snapping was too heavy for squirrels. I thought deer maybe and realized Alice was off leash. Just then, a red-and-white fox jumped out of the brush and after him, another. Then then both stopped and looked us over and I laughed and said, "Happy Snakesgiving!"

Just then the two fox ran toward us, getting just a few feet away before darting on a rampage across plowed-over corn. Alice was tempted to follow (me, too) but she held her ground and we watched them zig and zag for acres as a vulture flew above.

My brother, Kelly, often tests me about how animal spirits can be used to divine advice. He only made fun of me once this Snakesgiving, when he accused me of "talking to animals" and I reminded him I also talk to trees. He wisely didn't take the bait.

FOX ONE

My brother, Barry, who hosts Thanksgiving with his wife, Donna, stays out of these discussions. His job is to talk to plants, more or less, for the National Cancer Institute. His recent work with red algae has led to promising results for sufferers of HIV, ebola, and other illnesses.

Barry's Ph.D. is in "psychopharmacognacy." That sounds exactly like what I studied in college, but it's completely different. It involves isolating medicinal uses from natural compounds, as opposed to synthetically manufacturing drugs in a lab. He does the sort of far-reaching research that sometimes hits gold, as opposed to what the drug companies specialize in, which is narrow modifications that steadily sell and steadily improve.

Barry teases secrets out of plants and his wife, Donna, is a plain, old-fashioned pharmacist who works at the hospital monitoring patient drug regimens. They are both scientists, but there is a crucifix in the entranceway and beneath it are the folded leaves of palms brought home, one suspects, from church the Sunday before Easter.

The origins of Voudoo are also in pharmacy. Voudou priests and priestesses were first and foremost root doctors. They understood, through apprenticeship, the medicinal uses of plants as handed down through generations. First came the healing, then came the religion.

Plants were described as being invested with spirits. In some ways, these ghost stories are shorthand formularies for treating illnesses, along with legends of their use. When you hear cooks speak lovingly of the way ginger dances with garlic, you are on the slippery slope of Voodou.

My brother, Barry, is a bit of a gourmand. One Snakesgiving, from which I was absent, turned into an Iron Chef competition. He will appreciate the analogy between cooking and gene splicing and backwoods catholicism.

FOX TWO

My brother, Kelly, is, in fact, red and white and has a good, bushy head of hair. He looks volpine in his publicity shots (that means "foxlike," Kelly). And he has a reputation for cleverness.

Kelly and his foxy wife, Cristy, trumped all the other gossip at Snakesgiving with news of their purchase of "a big spread with a creek in it." Fox habitat. At squirrel prices. In the outback of Virginia. A place we can all use, with notice, to rest our weary bones.

I've tried to explain to Kelly several times how to talk to animals. The secret is in listening, not talking. He doesn't have the patience to hear the animals, let alone talk to them. But he is a bird lover, so there is hope.

The day after Snakesgiving, Alice and I went even further in the early morning chill until we scared up a family of deer that were sheltered in a stand of woods between two cornfields. We watched them leap off, half with white tails raised high, the others smaller or immature. About a dozen in all. I hoped we didn't send them in the direction of hunters.

So this is how it works, Kelly. Animals represent archetypes, some of which is a result of collective knowledge about their behavior. A robin is often a harbinger of spring. Robin's egg blue is a shade that is widely understood and requested. The word "robin" itself is a collective archetype of color, sound, and behavior. What is interesting is not so much what I think seeing a robin "means" as the fact that you think the smudge that just passed you by is a robin. The fact that I saw a fox and not a field of corn means something.

And the fact that I saw two foxes playing on Snakesgiving Day means this: I can feel free to enjoy my time with my brothers without fearing the wolf or the vulture. As long as I am with my brother, neither are likely to strike.

And the herd of deer, the fragile food staple of the wild, said much the same: Your family protects you. Stay together as much as possible. And the fact that I "divine" this wisdom from these animal friends says something about me. And that's voodoo.

Happy Snakesgiving!