I read an article today on the "orgy of commercialism" surrounding Christmas and how Harriet Beecher Stowe had written a simialr pice 150 years ago. The fact that this madness we call the Christmas Season has been going on for, according to the article, 250 years, is not news to me. We are NOT a unique generation, nor was the one that preceeded us, nor will the one that follows us be. We tend to think that everything that is bad about any subject in our time, be it Christmas or dissention over the war, is unique to THIS time in history because we(well, not me!)belive THIS is the dicisive battle, or biggest holiday rush, that has ever been. The fact it that the problems and actions of our time here are simple, garden variety events in the scheme of history. Who are we to think that a oacked Wal-Mart or Christmas travellers stranded in Denver are unique to OUR generation. The travel problems will be solved in afew days by better weather and massive amounts of infrastucure and technology being untilized to get people where they want to be. You think the families in the 19th century didn't get their wagons buried while trying to get to Grammas place for Christmas, even if it WAD only ten miles away? And you can bet that there were no agencies of any sort to see to it that the mess was cleaned up by Christmas EVE! You theink the split in how people feel about the War in Iraq is something new? If so, I suggest you read the history of ever war this nation has ever fought. We nearly went into a Civil War over the Wat of 1812. States threatened to ceceded from the Union over it!

This generation seems to think it is smarter, stronger, better prepared, etc, than the last generation, who thought the same about themsleves over THEIR preceeding generation. We are average. We are no different than any American generation before us, and we will be no different than any who follow us. They will have cramped Super stores, overbooked A-380s(the new mega airliner), spaceports full of stranded moongoers..you get the picture! Individually, we always think our problems are unique, but they aren't. It just seems like it because it is happening to US, RIGHT NOW! We don't care what Harriet had to say about the condition of her world at Christmas, or what James Madison and his detractors thought about the War of 1812, but we should. It would help to temper the way problems are approached and solutions decided, but we as Americans(not me)have no interest, it seems, in learning anything from the past because we are so sure we are right, right now.

Like George Patton said, "The answers to the present are always found in the lessons of the past". I agree, we just need to dust off the old books and pay attention to what they say, and not try and interpret it to fit the way we feel right now. You may revise a history book, but you can't revise history. I say let's learn and move on!