Mack Hall, HSG
Within the Octave
of the Superbowl
In ye olden Puritan colonies ye olden local police were
charged by the magistrates and the clergy to verify church attendance on Sundays,
even to checking the houses and businesses of absentees to make sure they
really were sick, and not simply avoiding sermons of such transcendental length
that even Methuselah might yawn and check the ol’ sun dial.
In our times the powerful purveyors of beer, fizzy-water,
and cardboard calories might be tempted to petition the several states to
ensure that every householder in the land is in prayerful, purchasing-power (a
widow’s mite won’t cut it anymore) devotion before the Orwellian telescreen on
Super-Bowl Sunday unless there is a valid excuse, such as being dead.
Yes, the Octave of the Superbowl is here, and all
unnecessary work is suspended for a week in observance of this Great Liturgy of
the Republic. Long before the Game
Itself, children and adults alike dream of the merry violence of unionized
millionaires bashing each other in taxpayer-funded stadia for the profit of a
small oligarchy of owners. Attended by a
praetorian guard, airships, amazonian vestals, liturgical directors, referees, commentators,
line judges, hired musicians, dancing bears, dispensers of comestibles, lights,
colors, sounds, smokes, and tiers of worshippers in their made-in-China
vestments, the Superbowl is a display of excess and distraction that would make
even the giddiest Babylonian king envious.
All over This Great Land millions of fowl are sacrificed
to the gods, and their smoking body parts rendered up on the Altar of
Consumption under the transfiguring name of buffalo wings. Yes, no matter what anyone says, Americans
are a people of great faith – in spite of all evidence they believe that on
Superbowl Sunday buffalos have wings just as in Ordinary Time they believe that
paint stripes on a pavement will keep two cars from crashing into each other
Superbowl Sunday is such an essential liturgy of
Americanism that those few who recuse themselves from this Holy Day of
Obligation can be subject to questions about their morals. Not to have a favorite team is to shame one’s
family, especially Grammaw in her made-in-China Green Bay ensemble, and not to
know the names of the competing gods in the Super Bowl is to invite
McCarthy-ite suspicion about one’s religious fidelity and national loyalty.
At the end of the game – or Game – the faithful of the
losing gods are in such despair that they feel the only way they can restore their
faith is by the ritual burning of other people’s cars. Curiously, the faithful devotees of the
winning gods also burn other people’s cars, but in celebration of the increased
strength of their gods. Understanding
the anthropology of primitive peoples is always a challenge.
After The Game, the human sacrifices begin, when the
Chosen Stadium itself is as bare as a Christian Altar on Good Friday: dark,
empty, forlorn, devoid of hope. The gods
themselves, when they are or are broken in body, are abandoned. Some have been known to die alone and
homeless, with none of the millions who once cheered them in attendance. For there are always new gods and new places
of worship in the cycle of diversions.
For now there is Mardy Graw, and the burning question of
whether the made-in-China beads were deflated, and whether The Plastic King may
or may not be righteously baked into the cake.
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