Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson        Red Bluff Daily News 11/25/2025

        The quandary of the holidays

Thanksgiving has evolved into our favorite holiday, over Christmas, New Years, and Halloween. The “reason for the season” counts, but there are the more practical aspects. In reverse order, New Years hasn’t, for decades, been anything other than a grand celebration of indulgence and excessive, nearly-mindless “whoopy-ism.”

What is it beyond the turning of a calendar page, the artificially designated day that begins a numerically different year, with the same woes, sorrows, divisions, animosities and pointless posturing marching into another 12-month exercise in futility? Cynical? Undoubtedly, but the parties and televised bacchanalia—for which we simply raise a glass, or a can—make us glad to “celebrate,” at home, the East Coast or maybe the Central Time Zone midnight.

Christmas represents our devotion to the Birth of Our Savior; gift-giving serves no practical purpose at a stage of life when we have all we need. We’ve long since discontinued exchanging letters and lists of gifts with extended families with children that are too distant to even call, let alone visit.

If we’re skiing, the day after both New Years and Christmas are lightly visited; folks are either “sleeping it off,” or recovering from the mess left over from the kids’ joyous gift-opening. Many adults are celebrating the end of the nearly-mind-numbing, superficially obsessive parties and gift exchanges.

Halloween has all the manufactured excess of New Years and Christmas, without any redeeming spiritual uplift, unlike Christmas. It has evolved from, and regrettably perverted, the “All Hallows Eve” devoted to saints and holy figures. Clever guy, that Satan, to twist that one around to his purposes.

Thanksgiving, on the other hand, celebrates a rather simple historical event: The shared meal of Pilgrims and their Native American neighbors to celebrate the abundance derived from the agricultural lessons from the Indians that saved the Pilgrims from starvation. Food being the “staff of life,” the sustenance and daily source of gratitude, it is a simple thing to eat to one’s satisfaction.

If over-indulged calorie-wise, economies and restrictions can be subsequently applied. Scales being merciless reminders, along with the shrinking nature of clothes, maybe the list of resolutions can be started, if only in one’s mind and desires. Health is, after all, something nobody is going to “gift” to any of us. However, the Thanksgiving repast is still a rather innocent pleasure.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

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The issue of wolves that migrated south was the subject of another news article, “Wolf Updates—New livestock death reporting format from state,” (11/21). I recommend going to donpolson.blogspot.com to read the part of last week’s column deemed not suitable to print. I’ll prudently sum it up by pointing out that the literal hundreds of dead livestock cited in last Friday’s piece amount to, at about a $10,000 loss per animal, millions dollars of economic hit to the ranchers.

I didn’t read where there is any compensation involved; so ranchers, whose budgets are a close-run thing to stay solvent, are apparently just supposed to “eat the loss” with no help from government. A million dollars is less than a rounding error for the $200 billion+ bloated state budget. If wolves are to be a nearly-sacrosanct species, it shouldn’t take lengthy investigations to allow the killing of such predators, and the remuneration to said ranchers.

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Another recent article contained unintended comment on the “affordability” crisis in housing: “Developers found a way to bypass Berkeley’s standards” (11/21, Berkeleyside/AP). Readers’ eyes may have glazed over at the mention of Berkeley, but it bears noting that labor union and “consumer” opponents of a 23-story housing project worry that the side-stepping of “worker protections” and bird-friendly exterior glass materials, may loosen the grip they have on housing construction statewide.

While such issues are unlikely to impact our Northern California communities, it is instructive to note that the most economical housing—high rise “stacked and packed” vs. single family or even duplex units—still must conform to basic economic laws: If it costs too much and rents cannot be correspondingly, profitably set, it won’t get built. Such is the reality of a free-market economy. Those resorting to “knee-jerk” cries for socialist housing construction are not exempt from that reality.

“Requirements to provide health insurance and apprenticeships, and another ordinance mandating large buildings use glass designed to prevent bird collisions” become mandates from the worker/enviro/animal rights crowd. Oblivious to such economic realities, housing affordability becomes just another casualty.

Such special interest-driven government interference goes a long way in explaining why California’s housing is twice the cost in nearby states, and why “the rent is too damn high.” Just keep voting for Democrats, California; they are doing such a bang-up job on “affordability,” right? Those moving vans and trucks still cost over twice as much to leave, as to come to, California.