Making Peace With Christmas & Solstice

In which I address steps that have helped to make this holiday season the best in years.

Since leaving Christianity I have struggled with how and whether to celebrate Christmas.  It felt false to cherry-pick parts of a Christian holiday while rejecting Christianity itself.  On the other hand, I did not want to cause further division in my family by refusing to participate, nor did I want to force my kids to be those weird kids whose mom won’t let them do Christmas.  I like Christmas and I wanted to keep it, but I always felt a little inauthentic about it.

As a humanist science nerd and a dabbler in paganism, I love the Winter Solstice.   The trouble is no one in my family celebrates the Solstice or has the slightest interest in changing the date of our winter celebration.  Every year when December 21 passed, mostly unobserved, it felt like I was neglecting something important, or missing out.

All of the pieces of this change have been in my head for years, but this year they clicked in way that is meaningful for me.  Christmas is the way my culture celebrates the Winter Solstice.  For me, that is it. It may be a few days late, due to a calendar clash, but that is far from the strangest thing about western euro-american culture.  This may be a big "duh" to you, but sometimes it takes a while between when you know something is true and when you feel its truth. When you look at the history of winter festivals, you can come away with a feeling that Christmas is somewhat false, but this year something has turned and it feels more universal.  I am not going to begrudge literalist Christians their refusal to see how much of their sacred day is borrowed from older traditions, but I won't let them interfere with my understanding of its history either.  Instead I will just view Christmas as one aspect in a web of winter holidays.  I will celebrate the Solstice on December 25 and call it Christmas.  The actual story of Christ's birth is not spiritually significant for me, but the long darkness and the reborn sun are. If I focus on joy and peace and warmth and beauty in winter, who cares if it is a few days late? This is Christmas and Solstice on my terms, and I don't feel like I am fighting either one of them anymore.

The second change I have made this year is in my expectation for my own performance on Christmas.  Our kids are getting older and understand why financially this will be a smaller Christmas than normal. Knowing that I will not be able to provide everything I want to freed me from feeling like I have to make the BEST. CHRISTMAS. EVER! every year. I am focusing on spending time instead of money.  This means watching Dr. Who Christmas specials with Tall Daughter E and cutting paper snowflakes with Tiny Daughter M.  It is hot cider with Husband S late on Christmas Eve and learning to knit gifts.  It means very little time spent Christmas shopping.

This Christmas is important.  It is the last Christmas when all my kids will be children.  It is the last one where I know for sure that the whole family will live together and race together down the hallway Christmas morning.  I hope Tall E is with us next Christmas, but she will be an adult then, and it is possible she will be living somewhere else.  I want to wrap my arms around this Christmas and hug it.

Yesterday I had a very frustrating afternoon and what should have been a vexing evening.  But as I killed time running errands and walking in the beautiful falling snow, I stared pondering this post and found myself so in love with the world, so happy not to be a neurotic mess.   I am not totally sure why I find myself calmer and less frantic this holiday season, but I am.  I find myself honoring the stillness of the season more than the joyous frenzy. I want to rest and dwell in this Christmas.  To everyone reading this, I sincerely wish a wonderful joyous and peaceful holiday, on whatever terms you choose to celebrate it.

Knitting & Neurosis

I am not a craftsy person.  I generally find most crafts to be sources of frustration rather than fun because I can't make things look like I want them to. I can picture or see how cool something could be, but my fingers are too stupid to make it work. I like to be good at things so I hate having lofty goals and amateurish results. So it is with real trepidation that I am committing to making all of my Christmas gifts for adults this year. I am committing here so that I will actually do it, and you can all hold me accountable. My kids will still get indulgent and wasteful stuff. If there is something I hate more than doing crafts, it is the stress and expense of Christmas shopping.

I had solved the holiday shopping problem by using Amazon. Sit down, click around, get a bunch of presents - no muss, no fuss, no traffic. Except that I am trying to reduce the commercialism & waste in my life, and I do my best to buy local, so a Christmas sponsored by Amazon.com doesn't really fit in with those goals.

More than anything else, I dread the idea of giving people cheesy, tacky, hideous, handmade things that they would never want or buy, even in their wildest dreams.  We've all gotten those gifts from well-meaning relatives and the thought of giving them makes me cringe. So next week I am going to learn how to knit.  I mean, I live in Alaska so who can't use a nice scarf? My BFF and knitting coach assures me that if I start now, there is time to re-do them if they are ugly.

Now, if I were a normal person I could approach the idea of learning knit as the simple acquisition of a new and useful skill without being all neurotic about it, but noooooooo.  I am not going to make things that simple; I am going to overthink everything instead. I have been intending to learn to knit for about three years, but have always helf off because of the emotional drama I spin around in at the idea. I know several really good knitters and it fascinates me. I like to watch them knit and it is amazing when they take some yarn and twist it around for a while, and magically it turns into a thing...a useful item. It is like yarn and stick-based alchemy. In my mind there is an intergenerational communion in practicing old skills, like the rare occasions when I knead bread and I feel in harmony with all of the women who came before me and fed their families with the work of their hands.  It might be a good thing to learn this relaxing and meditative alchemy.  It is probably a better thing to do with my hands than to continue to use them to shove Nutella in my face. But I digress.

As soon as I decide to learn the other voice speaks up. Do I really want to learn to be so domestic? I spent most of my life trying to prove that I was a female person and not that bogie-woman a girly-girl. Did I work that hard to be taken seriously only to fall into a stereotype now?  I mean, what kind of feminist knits for goddess's sake? I had the same thoughts when I learned to really cook and I love cooking now. But cooking is a little different - everyone needs to eat, but no one needs to know how to make their own socks.  If I end up liking to knit, am I telling myself that I am someone other than who I think I am?

To any reasonable person, the second point-of-view is stupid. The whole point of being a feminist is to be able to make my own choices, not to limit my choices to a different, less traditional, more masculine set. As I wrote this I could imagine the Buddha laughing at me.  Why would you not allow yourself to do something possibly useful and enjoyable because it might conflight with your identity which you, yourself created and isn't even real?  But those values of creativity, utility, relaxation, and humility are real, so why let my ego get in the way of giving knitting a try?

Slow Christmas

I have just had the last busy weekend I want to have until the new year. I am focusing on having what I call a Slow Christmas this year – fewer presents, fewer activities, fewer obligations, less stress. I want to reclaim enjoying the holiday season. I simply refuse to spend any time in malls on the weekends for the rest of the month. I will do things with my family that I enjoy doing and will take on fewer things that I have to do. I will be mindfull and present for one of the last Christmases I will probably have with both my girls at home full time. I really mean it this year.

In our house tonight we will have one of my favorite parts of the season – putting up the Christmas tree!

Keillor in a Teapot

I was going to post on Garrison Keillor's recent article, but I find that plenty has already been published. Paul Oakley's take on the subject is well worth reading.

Keillor should focus on his own church rather than worrying about what other people sing in theirs, but I still like him. I loved his book Homegrown Democrat. Right now, I am way too mad at members of the religious right for using the name of God to host a "prayer cast" against health care and taxes to get to riled up about Keillor. I didn't care for his article, but it is a pretty minor deal compared to people preaching that God Allmightly is calling on us to resist health care reform. I guess all those Christians in every other developed country in the world must feel pretty stupid now. Now we've shown them that the free health care they enjoy is the work of Satan.

Such a digusting and blatant abuse of religion is such a disgrace that I can't get worked up about the words to "Silent Night". I'm just going to continue to pay outrageous health premiums and sign Christmas carols however I please.

War on Christmas and Colleagues

It must finally be the holiday season. I just had my first "War on Christmas" conversation with a co-worker. Sigh. I'm not sure which of us walked away more frustrated. How do you argue with someone who actually believes it when they say, "Christians don't have any rights anymore, we are not valued."? She claims the ACLU isn't going to let her say Merry Christmas anymore. I mean, where do you even start with that?

Also, the ACLU apparently NEVER represents Christians according to this dubious source. If anymore knows of a case where they have, please let me know as I'm sure I will get hit with this topic again.