Saturday, December 06, 2003

fighting off the christmas spirit with a stick

or Bjork, as the case may be. My mom is currently listening to Amy Grant's Christmas Album, which is the cheesiest of the cheesy. At least the cycled Christmas music they play at JCP contains a few gems by Ella Fitzgerald or the Canadian Brass. I can handle that, mostly because I feel like I haven't heard any good brass chamber music in a while...Brass Bash! This is the first time in four years I will not be participating in BB. I am now depressed. Blah.

Where do you stand on Christmas spirit? Do you hold on steadfastly to the joy of the season and look forward to buying and wrapping (and ultimately, getting) presents for the overall feeling of warmth it gives you to give of yourself? Or perhaps you associate Christmas with family and family with comfort and home. Perhaps you ignore the hustle and bustle and commercialism and celebrate Jesus' birth (although it was more likely in July-hey, the real Jesus and I could have the same birthday!) and what it means for your soul. [Editor's note: This incidentally is a recent topic on We Have Brains, so I'm revising this entry to answer some of the questions posed there]

Or, if you are like me, you could care less, or feel weird about celebrating something you no longer believe in. Personally I like to get presents, but I feel cheap using Christmas as an excuse.

Let's explore the many ways I've come to this fallout on Christmas. For one, it's been a long time since I worshipped Jesus. Sometime in high school I got really into the God thing, prayed, went to church a lot, volunteered, was a moral person (To be fair, most of my prayers went like this: Oh dear Lord, please take away my bad acne problem and let that cute boy in history ask me out, because I am very lonely and do not have self-worth as a girl without a boyfriend. Oh, and I hope I do well on my Spanish test. Amen). I was also a Republican and made terrible jokes about Mexican immigrants. In other words, I was spoonfed most opinions and spiritual stuff by my parents. As much as I love my mom, she did give me a copy of that piece of trash The Rules and insisted I read Dr. Laura's books. I read The Rules, by the time she suggested Dr Laura I was thinking enough on my own to refuse. My dad's choice criticism of Asian peoples was "DWO-Driving While Oriental" (many of you have perhaps your own personal favorite Ed Husting Racist Statement-that's mine).

That's a little taste of my high school years. Religious, Republican, and Racist. Dubya would have loved me. Thankfully I escaped, in two stages. Firstly in the form of apathy-that charming stage of teenagerhood where your parents are unbelievably uncool and anything they're interested in is old and stodgy, and boring. I declared politics and religion beneath me. God never really did address that acne problem, although granted I did get a boyfriend and usually did well on my Spanish tests. Secondly, I went to college. I went to liberal feminist atheist activist Mecca! Hurray! I took interested classes (I do believe that almost all of my classes choices were criticized by my father- "What are we sending you to school for?") like Russian lit and Buddhism, and Women's Studies. My friends were opinionated, just getting their debating wings and testing them out every chance they got, like me. Major Current Events happened. Lots of discussion. I began to be interested in what the world was really like.

I fell in love with Buddhism, and Christianity was spoiled for me. Spoiled in the form of the religious right, in the name of genocide and classism, racism and sexism. My esteemed and well-read friend Dan told me that many of Jesus' teachings were corrupted by the powerful, and we heard similar things in Women's Studies. The differences between Buddhism and Christianity struck me very strongly. I love the way Buddhism is not really a religion, or a following. The Buddha is not to be worshipped, he is to be emulated. He is the model, the proof that in every human being is ultimate attainment. There is no subjugation, no lessening of any being like in Christianity. Be humble, but not to a god, for your own enlightenment. It makes so much more sense to me. It rejoices so much more in the spirit, in the individual. I think Christianity could have been that way, but after Jesus left, things went back to the way they always were, but with a new justification. A new way of creating master and servant.

And of course, feminism. Feminism goes hand in hand with other ways of thinking; because it questions the necessity of class, sex, and race division inherent in patriarchy. Therefore it also questions capitalism, greed, globalization, nationalism, imperialism, consumerism, materialism (I am reminded of the wisdom of a certain Ferris Bueller: "'Isms', in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an 'ism'. He should believe in himself.").

Okay, back to Christmas. Exploring all these facets of education has left me with little feeling about the season. I'm happy to be alive all the time. Christmas doesn't fill me with any previously lacking feelings of warmth and joy. I don't except to see a lot of family. As long as I can remember, my family holidays have consisted of my mom, my dad, Chipper, and me. No long lost relatives or huge family gatherings. So Christmas doesn't inspire me that way (before you go feeling sorry for me, consider that this doesn't really affect me all that much. If you've never had something, you don't miss it), nor do I celebrate for religious reasons. And I love to give people things, but I resent being forced. The spirit of giving moves me at odd times, and I usually act on it. If I see something neat in a store that reminds me of Jerry, I will probably get it. Or if I find something I no longer need, but someone else would appreciate, like the book I gave Davis for her birthday. I found that weeks before her actual birthday. If I hadn't found it, I probably wouldn't have sent her anything (no offense, dear, I still would have thought of you). I think gifts should have meaning and/or usefulness, not something you feel obligated to give.

Add to this the fact that this is seller's paradise. Here's where they can unload all those fancy expensive knick-knacks on someone desperate to find a gift for their second cousin's fiance. Such gift will be immediately stored and forgotten, or given away perhaps. The average person has little artistic skill to make something like a scarf or vase, so it's off to the stores, shopping the bargains, to buy one. I'm not totally knocking shopping; I appreciate gifts of music, books, clothes, or even gift certificates, because they are 1)useful and 2)thoughtful (unless the book is Chicken Soup for the Recently Graduated Classical Trombonist's Soul-that's not thoughtful, that's lazy). Tell you what. If you don't know what to get me for Christmas, don't get me anything. Or take me out to dinner. I'd rather have the gift of your presence, and I will do the same for you. In fact, you can do that any old day of the year. Celebrate friends and family whenever you damn well feel like it, because why wait? Christmas comes but once a year and everyone, Jewish, atheist, and Buddhist alike, likes to get presents.