Welcome back to the new Thinkery on Duke Bar, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, David. Merry Christmas. Yeah.
Merry Christmas, everyone. I guess we're happy holidays. We can do that. How are you all at a palace?
I'm doing well. Merry Christmas, guys. What are you, what's the use of it? Sorry.
I feel like Christmas. Okay. Not, okay. That's fine.
Good. What do you, what did you get? Your lovely bride for Christmas, Alex? I got some boots.
You want boots? So it's like the fur? Yeah, boots are the fur actually. I should get boots for her.
I mentioned, actually. What about the furry young thing? My wife got a bunch of gifts. That's for ages three and up.
So I'm getting a little ahead of myself. I'm hoping she'll be some sort of brilliant musician. And then I got her a stuffed animal, but the animal is a taco. I'm telling you that she'll all go dated.
Yeah, kids, get along onto the most interesting thing. Sometimes it's just a cardboard box that the presents came in. What do you get your kids to? I don't know.
I haven't gotten them anything yet. Fair enough. Since we were recording this a few weeks before. And what are you getting here at Chihuahuas, Greg?
You know, probably some treats, new sweaters, can be bed and sort of thing. Yeah. It is Christmas. I'm excited.
We chose to do, we're going to do stuff that really fun, right? Really festive. It's something Mary. It's not Mary.
Yeah, this is a full length episode. It's a stocking stuffer. It's Greg stocking stuffer. I think that's an answer.
So it's we're reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's Christmas banquet, which is, that sounds fun. Yeah, it's full of holiday cheer. Festive. Delicious meals, right?
Yeah. Tea sire wine. Decrepitude. What?
That doesn't sound. Mary? No, no, yeah. It's, you won't find this in Ashland, Ohio, the home of the World Headquarters of Nice People.
That's right. Yeah, you won't find this here. So this is kind of an anti-Christmas story or it's a bizarre kind of story. It takes place every Christmas.
This is for our listeners who've been bad. They're getting a lump of coal in their stocking. That would happen. Okay.
So it's happening. Go ahead. Yeah. So I'll, I'll read you, let me give a very brief overview on that and I'll read one of the earlier paragraphs.
So man, there's an old man. This is a conversation that takes place between three people, the narrator, his wife, Rosina, and unnamed sculptor. They don't back down to the story, but that's how the story kicks off. The narrator talks about a famous wealthy old man who passed away and his last will in the Testament.
He asks that every Christmas, a group of the most miserable people in the city are to be gathered together at his house for a feast where he sits at the head of the table as a skeleton with a shroud of horses. So here's, here's a brief passage from Hoffer. In a certain old gentleman's last will in Testament, there appeared a request to which as his final thought indeed was singularly in keeping with a long life of melancholy eccentricity. He devised a considerable sum for establishing a fund, the interest of which was to be expended annually forever and preparing a Christmas banquet for 10 of the most miserable people that could be found.
It seemed not to be in the testator's purpose to make these half a score of sad hearts merry, but to provide that the stern or fierce expression of human discontent should not be drowned, even for that one holy and joyful day amid the acclimations of bestial gratitude which all Christendom sends up. And he desired likewise to perpetuate his own remonstance against the earthly course of providence and his sad and sour descent from those systems of religion or philosophy which either finds sunshine in the world or draw it down from heaven. So he has a deeper philosophical topic purpose it seems for his project. Yeah, it seems like the whole idea is to show that in the one day of the year, when he was in the world, it seems like everything is guided by the creator to be happy, to create a kind of testament to a lack of providence in the world.
Right. And so again, I mentioned this as a short story, it was unpublished in author and life time. And so after this paragraph, we hear about three different dinners, all in quick succession. And there's a certain gentleman named Gervais who's a wealthy, good-looking, upstanding member of the community who's also invited to the dinner in addition to the 10.
And we hear about three dinners and then it kind of time elongates. And this happens for a number of years and then there's an ending where we learn about Gervais who is out of all the miserable people in the land, the most miserable, according to him, according to him. And to the people organizing, right? It's a little organizing of people who are present.
The people organizing it. That's right now. You point something out. So the wealthy man that endowed this banquet of misery hired two overseers.
Or humorous, you go. Yeah, to lay out the banquet in their present. And I suppose they also select the souls. So we can talk about some of the people who are present at the three dinners that we at least received.
We got lists for each of the people. There's one man in particular, Alex, I mentioned talking with you about first. He was a university professor and in his early 40s, a number of Ivy League presses, recording him for a translation of Xenophon's Melanica. But he just decided to wake up every day at 4.30 AM and exercise and walk his dogs and attend church.
And he never finished it and then he died. How does that publish his log of workouts as his life's product? Yeah. He's not working in death.
Oh, it sounds like that one guy. Yeah, it's a sad story. He doesn't work out how he's supposed to finish the book. He's got to take care of his life.
It'll live long to care himself. He's healthy. Work out. So, so, just like who are some of the people?
We can see one step back and just talk about the frame, which I think for sure. The frame is this guy, Roderick, speaking to a sculptor, a company by his wife, Rosina, and saying I'm going to tell you. Is he the wife of Roderick or the wife of the soldier? I think Rosina is the wife of Roderick.
That's what I have. So, yeah. So, the idea is they want the sculptor to sculpt this man who outwardly looks fine even above average in many ways in his happiness. And yet he's profoundly interesting and it turns out it's going to be very difficult to sculpt him.
So, the story is meant to convey who this guy is, the guy being in your face has things, the guy we're going to talk about in just a moment. Even in comparison to all the other miserable people who have some sort of more outwardly obvious aspect. The only thing about your face has things, you should just sort of connect this, the interior to the exterior. The only thing about your face has things that's really remarkable is that he's cold.
Like marble. Yet every sculpture is cold, like marble. So, it's very hard therefore to convey it. It seems like he'll just be like a nice looking statue of like a noble man.
Yeah, there's still something missing. Sorry, Greg, you want to jump in. Oh, just a small point then. So, this the our our our our narrator is talking about Roderick.
So the interior story that the Christmas banquet is written by this fictional Roderick, right? But he says as you point out that he's going to carve a character out of marble. And he says this to his wife and to the sculptor. And so I don't really know what to make it is accepted as he is this meant to show that he's superior to the sculptor in sculpting an image of something.
Is that is that what's the poetry is, is it sculpting or something like this? Yeah, because you can you can somehow you can show that we should probably just put this as like a sort of placeholder from when we get to it. But I think with prose, he's able to show something about the interior of Jervais has things that the sculptor never could, right? In a way, it's a kind of challenge to the sculptor.
Can you can you paint that? Can you portray this misery? So, just real quick, then he says something right. I wonder if this is aimed at the sculptor.
There's still lacks the last inestimable touch of a divine creator. So that somehow poetry can bring human beings to life in a way that's holding Canada. I don't press this beyond the text of this too much. But what's that Italian sculptor?
I mean, for me, some of that I forget his name. But some of his sculptors. I'm sorry? So Freddie?
No, no, no. Some of his sculptures are, I mean, really see like a skin pulling and you see like the muscles in the sinus. But that's not my way. At any event that you guys are, if you're adolescent jokes aside, I'm quite serious about this.
He's the guy that did the rape of Bernini. Yeah, sorry. Really quick point about poetry being somehow superior. Even if that's the case, Gervais is described as quote, the most unfortunate person in the human race.
And his misery is, I'll read it later on, is just described in one paragraph. But it's described in terms that aren't very specific. So it's described almost in outline. So there are limits even to what the poetry of the story can convey.
Yeah, he can in a way convey it only negatively as is put at the end against the misery. Let's go into some of the miseries because I think one of the things that comes out here is all like, is this fair? They're mostly all psychological. I mean, like many of them are.
Yeah, I think most of them, not all of them. I mean, some of them are bodily. I suppose the word ever lost his voice, but most of it's like, it's people who are past their prime. Yeah.
Like, there's a very old woman with a messed up eye. Okay. All right. Even there, I think there's actually have been beautiful.
Yeah, there's a kind of tension. Even the order who loses his voice, he has this pride, right? That's operative there that now has no outlet, right? My favorite, maybe this is from the second list.
My favorite is the Mirthfield fellow, who if he laughs, he'll die. He looks like this cheery guy. Let me do it. Let me all red face and everything like this.
Right. The subscription is really funny. While you're doing that, then I'll just point out, like, and David mentioned this, there is this is an annual tradition where they get together and have Christmas banquets. But for some reason, we get a more detailed account of three of the banquets, which there's no indication given, you know, the first one is year one, and then the second one is year 10 or 20, and the third one is just no more special.
Right. Right. There's no, yeah, these are typical. Eight typical, they're just sort of three seemingly chosen at random, although in chronological order, like this one and this one and this one and that.
So my sense of that is that the first, the first one seems to be the first one where Jervay's has to be. That's what I thought. Yeah. The last one seems to be he dies at the end.
That's my guess. All right. The middle one, I think, is noted where the specifically because of this guy I'm going to bring up. The Mirthy fellow.
Yeah. Yes. Let me read this. This is the fourth person in the second list.
Some surprise was expressed as that at the presence of a bluff red face gentleman, a certain Mr. Barr who would evidently the fat of many a rich feast within him, an habitual twinkle of whose eye betrayed a disposition to break forth into a glorious laughter. For little cause or not. Sounds like a great guy.
Right. What was his name again? Mr. Bar.
Bar? No, but this Mr. Bar differs from armistrobar as regards to the next detail. Oh, okay.
It turned out, however, that with the best possible flow of spheres, our core friend was afflicted with a physical disease of the heart, which threatened instant death on the slightest catenitori indulgence, a word I learned just upon reading this book, meaning if he laughs, or even that titillation of the bodily frame produced by Mary Thoughts in this dilemma, he had sought admittance to the banquet on the ostensible plea of his irksome and miserable state, but in reality, with the hope of emboding a life-preserving melancholy. So he'll die if he laughs, so he goes among the miserable. Now, I think it's interesting. The reason I draw attention to this guy is he ends up dying, and that ends the second feast.
And there's only one other person who dies, Hastings. In addition, his death, I think, comes in reaction to a very serious question, and it turned prompt Hastings to reveal something about himself. And so that's why I think the second one is here of all the, he's gone invariably to all of them, his whole life of the of the intermediary ones. This is the one that seems noteworthy.
I think it has to do with this red-faced and worthy corpulent barfellow. My ears are burning. One thing for listeners to understand is that Grace does attend all the banquets. The banqueters have a negative reaction toward him.
They don't like it. None of them like him. His two pantsoms seems to have it going on. He isn't the other, he's obvious, right?
One's good. But he doesn't speak until the very end. So you have this good looking guy with the trappings of wealth, seemingly happy, or those kids got nice kids, got three beautiful kids, right? And I just mentioned with everything, he doesn't suffer on a weekly podcast on the kind of barfellow so it's so-called friends.
Right. And so yeah, things are going up in the world. And the banqueters hate him. And these questions to the interrogatory storkin, which he doesn't use.
I guess in that respect, he's quite similar to the Murthy fellow, right? Because he, at first appearance, looks like a jovial guy, right? But he has this medical condition, I think, is impossible. Who are some of the other ones out?
Well, there's a one I like is the theorist who's foiled by the incredulity of man. Okay. This great plan. He's like, if we just enact my plan, everything's going to be okay.
And everybody is just like, no, I don't believe that. And so he's just miserable. And it's just stifled by us. That's the third dinner.
Yeah. The first three guys in the first dinner, right? There's the clergymen who's distraught, the theorist who's foiled by the incredulity of man. And then an old clergyman impatiently awaiting the rapture.
I mean, those, they all seem like people whose hopes are dashed because they have unrealistic expectations of the world. Yeah, absolutely. Unreal expectations. Well, there's a couple, there's a couple people where, and this is maybe a more persistent theme that just connects to the psychology aspect.
Yeah. There's a kind of sense that people have invested themselves in a certain sense of what would make them happy or a good life. And they've come to see that it's not the case. There was another guy who's like, he described as a gay gallant of yesterday, who spent his years just partying and everything.
And then he kind of ends up old and he's not really into it anymore. And he doesn't have a clear sense of purpose. And he says this guy could become wise if he's receptive to it. He could actually understand something or he could issue.
But. And then there's some people whose afflictions aren't on account of their minds. And you have an old lady with a tremor. In our notes here, it says, parentheses, Gare.
You have an old whose child died during a pleasure party, which is left in mind. You have to live with a ledger party. I don't know. Okay.
A homeless dog. I don't know if we're counting the dog. I like that you counted the dog and not the skeleton in your lists. I will say just as a small point, but I did see it seemed to me that the third banquet, the groups of the third banquet, the group of the third banquet struck me as having something in common among them.
Like it seems like the three parties, I don't know if this fits perfectly, but it did seem like they were grouped according to they all came together in a certain way. Like the first one, I don't know, is this fair to say the first ones, mostly people who were past their prime. The third group is people who all have these weird expectations of the world. The second one, I didn't quite figure out if there was something that maybe it's all.
Maybe those were all, no, I don't know. That's the second one. One idea that I'll pleasure, I'll pleasure a related to the second one. People sort of, you know, someone who even related with it, I don't know.
Yeah. One thing I'll throw at the group, maybe, do you think that the, because these are selected progressively over many decades. Right. He's getting better at figuring out who the real miserable people are.
Yeah. I'm thinking that the people might learn that if these really existential, like, political philosophical investments don't pay off, they really matter. So let me go back to the Mirthfield dog, because I want to sort of, now that we have a sense of who's there. At one point in the second dinner, the following happens.
Speaking about Jervais, the obnoxious guest, the authorance says, the obnoxious guest made no more attempt to intrude his conversation on those about him, but appeared to listen to the tabletop with peculiar suduity, as if some inestimable secret, otherwise beyond his reach, might be conveyed in a casual word. And in truth, to those who could understand and evaluate, there was rich matter in the umpgushing and outpouring of these initiated souls. To whom sorrow had been a talisman, admitting them into spiritual depths, which no other star can open. Sometimes out of the midst of the densest gloom, there flushed a momentary radiance, pure as crystal, bright as the flame of stars, and shedding such a glow upon the mystery of life that the guests were ready to exclaim, surely the riddles on the point of being solved, and such illuminated intervals, the saddest mourners felt it to be revealed that mortal griefs are but shadowy and external, no more than the sable robes of illuminously shrouding a certain divine reality, and thus indicating what might otherwise be altogether invisible to mortal eye.
So as he's watching them, they see them trying to redeem their suffering. This idea of sable rose, there was an early reference to sable reds. And this is what he's witnessing, is people trying to be relieved of their mortal griefs. Now the red face guy, Mr.
Barr, goes into a fit of laughter at how ridiculous it is, these miserable people trying to redeem their lives, and he dies. This leads the woman with the trembling heart to turn to Gervais' housings and say, why are you so calm? This guy just keeled over right in front of us, fell backwards. And Gervais says the following, would that he could teach me somewhat?
Men pass the form like shadows on the wall, their actions, passions, feelings, are flickerings of the light, and then they vanish. Neither the corpse nor yonder skeleton, nor this old woman's everlasting tremor, can give me what I see. So he looks at this man dying, this happy man dying, laughing and keeling over, and he says this is nothing to teach me. He's described when he falls over as a corpse with a broad green upon his fate.
So maybe one of the things that has things reveals here is that for him, all, Mirth, all joy, is just a grin on a corpse's face. It's a kind of nihilistic lesson that I think he already understands that what he's just witnessed confirms for him. And maybe this guy laughing at the attempt to overcome that nihilism among these miserable people is a laugh that, or an insight that Gervais himself shares. We wish you America's miss, we wish you America's miss, we wish you America's miss, we wish you America's miss, and die with a smile on your gray corpse.
I have a theory that Gervais is the son of the philanthropist that endowed the dinner, and that these dinners are meant to educate him. He sees what's inflicting his son. That's really interesting. This explains why he is invited to every banquet.
But would that education be successful? I mean, doesn't Gervais end? I think his father doesn't know what to do. And so that this is meant to help his son understand his suffering, to get to the nature of suffering, by witnessing suffering, all the varieties of suffering, to understand himself.
Gervais's family, we don't learn anything about it other than he's very wealthy. And he has no kids, we don't hear about his parents, and we don't hear about the philanthropist family either. And so it's just a fun, curious. And he repeats that, I know you won't be following me, but he repeats that, shadows up flickering on the wall business again later in the third bank with its reported.
Why don't you read that? Because I think that's actually where I wanted to look at it. David was going to read that. I had it handy if he doesn't.
Yeah, but I was going to read, it's not in the, oh yes I do. Okay, so this passage here is they ask Hastings about his suffering, and he replies, you will not understand it. Replied Gervais Hastings feebly and with a singular inefficiency of pronunciation, and sometimes putting one word for another. None have understood it, not even those who experienced the light.
It is the chillness, the one of earnestness, a feeling as if what should be my heart worthing a vapor, a haunting perception unreality. Thus seeming to possess all that other men have, all that men aim at, I really possess nothing, neither joy nor griefs. All things, all persons, as was truly said to me at the stable long and long ago, have been like shadows flickering on the wall. It was so with my wife and children, with those who have seemed my friends, it is so with yourself who I now see before me, neither have I myself any real existence, but in my shadow like the rest.
I was wrong about him having a family, sorry. I don't want to get too meta, but he really has a shadow. Like he's a fictional character, sorry. Here's the lesson.
Also, I might as well read this so we can, because that's okay with you guys. This is the narrator, who seems to have gained some sort of insight. If Gervais Hastings could have imbibed one human grief at the gloomy banquet, the task of describing him would have been infinitely easier. Of such persons, and we do meet with these moral monsters now and then, it is difficult to conceive how they came to exist here, or what there is in them capable of existence here after.
They seem to be on the outside of everything, and nothing we reach the soul more than an attempt to comprehend them within its grasp. He's described as a moral monster just to highlight again what you said there. And so Gervais Hastings is a moral monster. So how would you describe Gervais then, about belief in nothing?
Nothing animates his soul? Nothing. But I mean, it's yeah, what brings him back to these banquets that lead to an interesting question, and why is he coming? I think he's trying to see if this, because he says just before we learn initially read, he says, I know about one, but one misfortune, and that is my own.
And I think one of the things that's revealed in that earlier passage is that all these miserable people, they have hopes, right? They want to escape their griefs, and they seem to be with maybe the exception of this guy. He doesn't want to as well. Like, doesn't he think that if he finds some other misery, he can escape his own?
Yes, he's trying to see. He would be preferable to his state. And he makes it clear that these people are not really that unhappy, because they do have these hopes and these longings, right? And yet he's learned nothing, he says from that, but he didn't already know.
Right? Because he's kind of nihilist then? Seems like it. But I think that's what he means by more monster, by the way, is that I agree.
Other people might be like miserable people, but like the fear is still has hopes to save the world. Like the clergyman still has hope for the rapture, you know, like the beautiful woman might have a mess about I, but she's at least beautiful and in other respects. It's where a patch. So this for Hawthorne, at least in this story is the worst kind of misery that can befall human beings.
So it sounds like this, this, either Jaws, we do Jaws. There's nothing this. You guys know people like that? You can seriously have every permit somebody like this who's not afflicted mentally with anything that would go.
Every day when I look at the mirror. I meant that seriously. So did he. This nihilist, this nihilistic?
I mean, I find a list of all the miserable people way more relatable as far as people have met the world. Right? Yeah, because it seems kind of hard to exist in the position of gravace for too long. Yeah, I mean, he's chilly to the touch.
The melancholy idiot is another one of my favorite guys. He's this moron who's just barely aware that he's stupid and like, and he's so he's depressed because he's like, oh, I'm so dumb. Yeah, he understands. He goes up and touches him.
He's like, what's going on? And he touches the guy's like, he's gold. He's gold and he recoils. It's almost like, at first when I was reading this, I was like, does he just lack a soul or something?
Which I think is in a way, right? Because he's just like a statue, right? There's nothing driving him or motivating anymore. I mean, bar, if you're right, and this is he's the son of the guy who endowed this feast, like maybe he shouldn't have had such a melancholy dad.
It's true. But maybe his dad, like I'm sure will experience later on in life as parents, Alex. Now you can get excited. I thought it was not a digger, Greg.
So that we that we you can be exasperated trying to help your kids, right? He's out of ideas. Yeah, absolutely. What do you guys make of the frame now as we go back to it?
Because like, what I find sort of amusing is that his wife, Roderick's wife, this doesn't I mean, am I wrong? She doesn't think it's a good story. Right. So this is at the end.
He says, what do you think of my book? And she says, frankly, you're a success is by no means complete. I mean, so she had to and she goes on to say we should add a lot through an imagination to sort of try and sort of flesh these characters out. But I thought he was I thought the sculptor who responds, observes something goes, yeah, but you can avoid that.
The characteristics all negative. As a sculptor, he understands, I think now that limits of his art, if he was doing that beautiful woman with the messed up eye, we would see a miss the misery right there, because he's beautiful. And then there's this weird thing going on with their eye. But with this guy, it's entirely internal.
It's his relationship to his own relationships with others in the world, right? It's not that there's something wrong with his wife, his kids with it's just that he has everything and none of it is good. And so whereas everybody else is trying to skate the griefs, it seems like his fundamental sense of thing is that it's not our griefs that are the problem. It's our goods.
None of the goods are real. They're all spurious goods. And so how do you how do you convey in stone that entirely inward relationship towards your own, your own relations, right? Things that would ordinarily make a man happy, you would just see a very prosperous, happy man on the stone, yeah, no sense.
Yeah, I guess I didn't pick up on the fact that was the sculptor who comes to his defense. And then therefore seems to lament that he can't quite capture in sculpture. What Roger was able to capture with the story. I mean, I was trying to think about that, like, but think about famous sculptures.
They seem to be able to convey well a moment for your terror surprise and also like maybe impressive types. But can they can just could a sculpture depict well a miserable human being? That's an interesting question. Yeah, or utter interiority, right?
Yeah, right, right. Can you take a sort of corollary? Can you actually portray thought, right, or something like that? Right.
That doesn't have that word. Of course, I'm reminded that Plato or Socrates and Plato would call even writings. He likens into sculptures, right? So this, because they're in flexible, they don't move.
So Hawthorne's words are here set in stone in a matter of speaking, right? They're fixed. We all have working with three different translations, this is a name, but working with three different editions and like the words are the same across them or something like this. That's not the only Plato I detected.
It has a temporal aspect, right? How's that? Well, you said sculptures are like a moment in time. Oh, oh, oh.
So, yeah, let's point. Obviously about the David right, particular moment in time. But that's not the only Plato that I thought of, of course, as I read this stuff. And I think we talked about this over text, right?
The shadows, the persistent shadow imagery, and are these sort of sculptures? Yeah. So are these guys sort of, are these sort of people who live highly conventional lives and they're sort of, does he see them as cave dwellers, struggle diets, or something like this? I mean, I don't know if it's all played okay.
No, no, no, no, no. When I was thinking, when we tried to reconcile, because in Plato, right, in the cave, you noticed that there are shadows on the wall and those opinions are spurious. These are the opinions by which you guide your life and so to some extent, the life in the cave, which is the more political life is limited, at least on intellectual level. So he seems to be somebody who's noticed this.
Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't. There's no ascent anywhere else. Yeah.
And he seems, by the way, interestingly enough, like so in the gallery, the cave, it's the opinions that are the shadows, but he's sort of seeing that insofar as individual human beings are attached to particular shadows, they themselves are sort of shadowing, because right there, like they are all, they're attached to different shadows. So the one guy's attached to the shadow of money making politics, oration, right, beauty, partying, pleasure. And so they become that shadowy type. And even all those people for their flaws and for their miseries are somehow preferable than to vases like meow.
Now that's right. To return to that point, though, in a way, Greg, I'll read what you just said is that he does say, my misfortune is the single misfortune, which he's either these people aren't as miserable as they think they are, or properly understood. Their suffering is myself. And he does say that he says, none of them understood it, not even those who experience the life.
So they might all experience the same thing. The jaded theorist, who I don't know why I keep returning to that one, the jaded theorist who has these ambitions that people won't follow him in, that should tell him that his opinions are shadows, right? That he thought that men would follow him is a shadow, and therefore his whole life is essentially just like a hollow sculpture, right? What'd you guys think of this story?
I gotta say honestly, I think typhoon was more of a Christmas story than this. If you guys remember when we did typhoon, we should- It's a hint of profit. Yeah, right. I mean, this is- I really don't understand what this has to do with Christmas at all.
I mean, help me out guys. I mean, I even read my decisions as- I'm sorry? It takes place on Christmas. Yeah, okay, but my addition said that originally Hawthorne had this person I can see to have as a Thanksgiving banquet, actually.
So not Christmas at all. In other words, let me try the following. If you change it and moved it to Thanksgiving, or even just an annual- the birth of the founder, that would be added to or subtracted from the story if we take our ad Christmas to it. Well, I think Christmas is more- even Thanksgiving, which is an American holiday, Christmas-term.
Universal in its scope, which is across the west, that it's a day for- it's a time for reflection- giving things and introspection for many people. I mean, the only thing that I had in mind- I mean, the only thing that I had in mind- I mean, you can move it as nicely, but I see it. But I mean, there's no mention of Jesus. I mean, there's the- there's the pastor who's wanting the second coming to happen or the rapture, I suppose.
There were a couple of other small points, I guess. One is that the banquet's of course reminded me of the- the last suburb, and then- I don't know. Oh, yeah, one of the things- sorry. The other thing that came to mind was the parable of the banquet, where Jesus is telling the story about the king that compels people to come to the banquet.
And the third- so third related, so you have the last suburb, you have the parable of the banquet, and then I suppose lastly, one thing you'd say is that Jesus himself, consorted mostly with the miserable, right? And you go back to the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who wail. So these- the miserable, I mean, his- I think it's as far as Christianity is sort of rethinking of what it means to live a flourishing human life, right? The first beatitudes are all the best human lives are those who wail, the best human lives are those who are meek and miserable and the wretched of the earth.
And here you have the wretched of the earth, for sure. Assembling Burbank. And the best they don't seem happy. I mean, like- No, they do not.
No. And the banquet that they're promised, I think they're eating things like vipers and there's like something depressing about the wine even. But I mean, the most obvious difference between Christmas and these other holidays, I mean, this is just your basic level is, you know, this is a religious holiday, right? And it has to do directly with God, right?
And God is supposed to save you. And what is the- Is there the concession here that's not possible? Is it Hawthorne saying that that is one of these other like actually all human life is suffering here? Well, I mean, so the sensible reasons for start again was to- for the founder to perpetuate his own remonstrance against the Earthly Chorus of Province, right?
So he's trying to say, look at these destitute, look at they have nowhere to go. They come and they eat this foul food and they have foul company and they they're completely left uncared for by God. Even though on Christmas, you walk around and there's decorations and people are happy and people are like, yes, and there's all this wonderful stuff at bottom. There are these forgotten and I'm going to create this.
So in that sense, I think over and against Thanksgiving or something else, it does seem like it's trying to prove a point about whether God actually provides him. There's one there's one guest at the banquet so that we didn't really talk about a lot. At every banquet, there are also sits a skeleton. That's right.
What the heck is going on? With that rich guy? Apparently, yeah. That's him.
In his will, he has to be seated at the head of the table. So he's been picked clean to the bone for the first dinner. I don't know. That's a good question, but yes, I suppose.
Is it ever explicitly said that it's that it's him? I think somebody fancies that it's him. Okay. Yeah, I didn't.
He's holding up a wreath that is the most miserable person. Right, right, right. Then on the last dinner when Hastings dies, his arm falls, right? That dinner said that Hastings could if he had wanted to take in the skeleton's place.
Yeah, so maybe he'll be the maybe he'll be the new skeleton for the next battle. Right. Why not Hastings, by the way? You keep saying Hastings?
Am I wrong? Do you think it's that way? No, no, Alex's. We don't know.
It's not what I don't know. Well, I feel like my stuff and God stuffs. Ah, it's typical for you. What is this supposed to mean?
Are we done? That's a big, a lot of cool. Let me go to the mailbag, go back because we tweeted out it. There's not a single question.
I think everybody who went to read it immediately killed themselves. Well, thank you, Jake. Happy birthday, Jesus. Thank you, Jake.
We're grateful. Thank you for all of our listeners. Yeah, thank you. We're grateful.
Very grateful. Merry Christmas, guys.