The Bah, Humbug Brigade
Dec. 6th, 2023 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerLately you might have noticed me posting with the tag Bah Humbug. It's a tag I've been using for many years on my posts about the Christmas season.
A quick bit of backstory: when I was in graduate school the preeminent technical conference in my field had its annual submissions deadline in early January. Late December was crunch time to finish up our research and writing. One year I was working on not one, nor two, but three papers for the conference. It was mega crunch time. I recall I went to the lab sometime around 1pm on December 24th, worked straight through the night, and left to go home at 7am. It was one of many all-nighters I pulled back then. (And not the only one with a memorable vignette to it. See also: my girlfriend sleeping on the floor of my office and smashing a window to get into my own apartment.)
As I settled down to sleep at 8 on Christmas morning I chuckled, "I'm part of the Bah-Humbug Brigade!"
Of course, "Bah, humbug!" connotes more than just, "Oops, I skipped Christmas revelry that one time because I was in a deadline crunch trying to launch my career." As the memorable refrain of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol it conveys a certain disdain for such revelry. Am I disdainful of such revelry? Well, okay, yes... but not like Scrooge. 😅
Unlike Scrooge I get the idea of the holiday. It's one of the most important celebrations in Christianity, a religion practiced by an estimated 2.5 billion people around the world. If I were a boss I wouldn't begrudge my workers wanting to take the day off. Heck, take a few days off and spend them with family at this joyous time of year, I'd say. And BTW I'd pay those workers enough to afford a turkey dinner every week of the year, too; not just as some self-important act of largesse.
A quick bit of backstory: when I was in graduate school the preeminent technical conference in my field had its annual submissions deadline in early January. Late December was crunch time to finish up our research and writing. One year I was working on not one, nor two, but three papers for the conference. It was mega crunch time. I recall I went to the lab sometime around 1pm on December 24th, worked straight through the night, and left to go home at 7am. It was one of many all-nighters I pulled back then. (And not the only one with a memorable vignette to it. See also: my girlfriend sleeping on the floor of my office and smashing a window to get into my own apartment.)
As I settled down to sleep at 8 on Christmas morning I chuckled, "I'm part of the Bah-Humbug Brigade!"Of course, "Bah, humbug!" connotes more than just, "Oops, I skipped Christmas revelry that one time because I was in a deadline crunch trying to launch my career." As the memorable refrain of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol it conveys a certain disdain for such revelry. Am I disdainful of such revelry? Well, okay, yes... but not like Scrooge. 😅
Unlike Scrooge I get the idea of the holiday. It's one of the most important celebrations in Christianity, a religion practiced by an estimated 2.5 billion people around the world. If I were a boss I wouldn't begrudge my workers wanting to take the day off. Heck, take a few days off and spend them with family at this joyous time of year, I'd say. And BTW I'd pay those workers enough to afford a turkey dinner every week of the year, too; not just as some self-important act of largesse.
