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i am: 40...a capricorn / moon in pisces / libra rising...an old soul with a young spirit...older than i look...contemplating my 3rd tattoo...NOT a web designer...a lesbian...working things out with the g.f....a native iowan...a graduate of cornell college and ohio state...a critical reader and thinker...really rather shy...agnostic...an ardent feminist...a bleeding-heart liberal...a pacifist...and so not your average white grrl...
e-mail me
feeling generous? *grin*
Who Links Here
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December 23, 2002
holidazebeing agnostic makes this time of year a little weird for me...i feel like a great big ball of contradiction.
i grew up celebrating christmas like i'd imagine most people who celebrate it do (at least in the midwestern u.s.): with gift giving and receiving, copious amounts of home-cooked food, traveling long distances (often in inclement, if not downright dangerous, weather) to be with loved ones...that kind of thing. the adults always stressed "the real meaning of christmas"...lest we forget that it was not supposed to be all about the presents. special church functions (e.g., services, youth and children's programs) were always a part of the deal.
but what's "the real meaning of christmas" for a non-christian? for someone like me...raised christian (lutheran, to be exact), but who has not only made a conscious decision to stop practicing, but who no longer believes? am i a hypocrite for celebrating a holiday i don't even believe in? sure sounds like it.
part of continuing to celebrate christmas has been about my family. they celebrate it...they give me gifts...they have expectations that i'll come "home" to join them for their celebration (tho, like this year, i don't always meet that expectation). it would feel very strange to just suddenly stop reciprocating. plus...my mother prays for my soul enough as it is. if i stopped acknowledging december 25th as a holiday, it'd probably put her right over the edge she's teetering on.
a bigger part of it is that i find immense pleasure in giving gifts, and christmas gives me a socially-validated excuse to go "all out" with that. i love to shop, and this time of year, i get to do a lot of it. i pay close attention to my people year-round, so that when it comes time to shop for them, i know exactly what to get, exactly what will please them the most. i wrap each gift carefully and creatively, so that receiving a gift from me (as sherri says) is "a party." i love watching people unwrap their gifts, seeing their faces light up when they see what's inside (or imagining it, if i'm not there). if i suddenly stopped celebrating christmas, i would lose a prime opportunity for all these activities that i love...for these little ways to show people how much i care about them. yeah, i suppose i could celebrate the solstice instead, but...that wouldn't feel quite right, either.
this year, because sherri and niq and the kids (robert, 14; ja'nique, 8; lamont, 6)—plus an extra kid "on loan" for the evening (d'errin, 4)—are coming over for christmas eve...i felt compelled to get a tree. how can you have kids over for christmas, and not have a tree?? it's only 4 feet tall, and it's not even real (tho it's cute for a fake tree), but it's the first christmas tree i've ever bought for my own home. even that felt strange at first. but at 1 o'clock on sunday morning, when s and i stumbled in, all martini-laden from a holiday party/stonewall benefit and were too wound-up to sleep, what did we do? we put up and decorated our first christmas tree. and in an odd sort of way, it felt like we were starting our own new tradition...something we can share with our kids (when we have them...and minus the martinis).
s and i have already started a new tradition by agreeing that we're not going to spend christmas apart anymore, despite pressure from our respective families to be with them. the last several times i've gone to see my parents for the holiday, i've ended up in tears at least one point during the visit, anyway...so why have i separated myself from my lover/partner/best-friend-in-the-whole-wide-world for THAT? on the one hand, i feel good about taking that stand. on the other hand, why is it so important to me to be with s on a holiday that i don't even believe in?
there is the fact that she believes in it, and it's important to her for us to be together on christmas...so maybe that's what it is. but it feels like it's equally as important to me. why is that? am i just hanging on to what should, for me, be a day like any other day, because it's convenient, because it feels good? is picking the parts that i enjoy, and discarding the rest, offensive to people who believe in and celebate the whole shebang?
s said recently that, once we have kids, she wants to start celebrating kwanzaa...and i can't wait. i may not be of african descent, but at least i'd be celebrating a holiday in whose principles i could actually believe, even if they weren't/aren't intended for me.
while it's true that i DO tend to analyze everything to death and take worrying to a level unknown to humankind prior to my birth, i don't mean to imply that i sit around worrying about all this and forget to enjoy the good parts. i don't. but this stuff winds itself through my brain on a fairly regular basis. i never seem to be able to answer my own questions, and my fear of being a hypocrite (as someone who despises hypocrisy probably more than anything else) is...well, it just is.
hopefully, you're at least a little less conflicted about "this holiday season" than i am. hopefully, you've got it all worked out and know what you celebrate and what you don't...what you do wish to observe, and what you don't. whatever that is, for each of you...you have my wishes for the very best of it.
1:10 PM
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