We're in the thick of the holiday season which seems to translate to folks typically most aligned ideologically with myself as a time of stress/sugar/familial pressure/rampant, vulgar and unsustainable displays of consumerism/misplaced religious fervor/pointless, overdone and tacky decorating.
For the most part, I fully recognize and relate to my people reacting with a high level of vitriol and venom to the season. It is, for the largest part, a grotesque, painfully consumerist-based time coated with thick, misplaced doses of
A note before continuing: this post is based on my own pop-philosophy that should one choose to live in a community, thoughtful participation and deliberate choices of non-participation are mandatory and must be communicated to sustain the health of the community. If you choose to not maintain a community (and get all hermitized and make trees/squirrels/squid/ferns your exclusive community) then none of the following is AT ALL relevant to you!
So I'm going to address a few things about xmas and will begin with one thing that drives me crazy which is the attitude, growing in cultural acceptance, that I often hear this time of year: "I don't have to care about seasonal compassion because, as an authentic person, I care and am demonstrative about how I care all year round" or, as a writer from exit 133 put it:
"I’ve never been a big fan of gift giving. It’s a lot of pressure. I’m uncomfortable accepting gifts and I don’t like the obligation I feel to give them. I much prefer to give things to people as I come across them throughout the year, not on prescribed holidays. And I prefer to give what I want to give because I want to give it, not because I’m told to give it. Often there is an expectation to just give something, but I can’t resolve to give something that doesn’t have meaning. And I don’t like to give things that someone could have just bought themselves. That’s not a gift, that’s a favor.
For me, without some meaning behind a gift, the giving is a shallow exercise in responsibility. The best gifts are able to capture something unique about the relationship between giver and receiver; they create a union between creativity and intention, somehow holding the promise of a new start while expressing an appreciation for the blessings of the past."
Okay; I gave the writer more space than deserved in this post but I feel like this is such a quintessential "individualistic/non-consumer/sustainably" minded statement that so many of my peers identify with that I have to point at it and say: quiet you, with all your excuses!
I think the idea of utilizing a season as an excuse to reflect, think about the kind things people have done for you and choose to deliberately reciprocate is not a "shallow exercise in responsibility," it is instead a deep and often vital exercise in responsibility. I absolutely feel like you can identify ANY season for this exercise--it doesn't have to be xmas--but if you aspire to be a mindful, compassionate, responsive, loving and considerate friend, well then, you absolutely should pick your freaking season to give.
I know not everyone is motivated conscientiously when giving at Christmas but really, it’s not your place to say who is or is not. This whiney feeling of discomfort because of the "pressure" surrounding gift-giving; being "uncomfortable" with receiving gifts; and the idea that you should be able to give what you want, when you want to give it versus giving what someone may actually want and when are all just excuses for insecurity and laziness; so you:
-- deflect the pressure you may feel to be and/or show that you are thankful by making others uncomfortable when they put forth effort to show they care ;
-- put off digging in and finding your own meaning and impetus for giving; and
-- label other's efforts as "favors" vs gifts, drawing a completely arbitrary line for which only you control the definition.
I know a lot of people who harness this idea that meaningful giving cannot truly be seasonally-motivated and throw it back in the faces of those who do give seasonally(which is rude and mean); and I also know a lot of people who meaningfully give all year round (which is considerate and kind!).
I guess my secret to relative comfort in giving during the holiday season is that I am blessed with incredibly reciprocal and thoughtful friends who show they care year-round so I don't have expectations that people will give me shit. But for me, holidays help because consideration is a responsibility that shouldn’t be neglected: holidays force me to pull some time out of my schedule to think about whom I love, why I love them and how I can show them.
I feel like specially-designated days hold power: whether birthdays or holidays, I think it's important to allow certain days to hold greater significance because we can all use some outside motivation every once in a while; it's really hard to endow every day with significance (though we should! Must stay conscientious/conscious/considerate at all times!). If xmas didn't happen, I would never make cookies and then what sort of world would this be?
I also consider holidays to have huge communal impact that magically motivates emergence.* We all experience a holiday if we live in a community. We all feel some sort of pressure to observe even if that observation is as a spectator and not a participant. Either role is ok; it's ok to observe and make choices about catalytic occurrences but, like most things, it's not so helpful to jump up on a tall horse, point to everyone with a different method of observation/participation than your own, whine and loudly judge them.
The true challenge with a day that has been arbitrarily defined as significant is to make a choice about your response to the significance, to either find a method to make this significance inclusive or find a way to stay out of it without blaming/judging others for their choices. The search for inclusive practices is the true work of those of us who choose to participate. I think it's hard to feel included in christmas but if you can find what it is that makes you feel that you are, it can make all the difference. And this doesn't really have anything to do with presents.
Ways I find to include myself in xmas:
Singing/ reading out loud with my family/ baking/ walking in winter weather/ watching an insane amount of seasonal movies/ listening to xmas music incessantly/ searching for new and stirring xmas music incessantly/ drinking mulled wine/ drinking toddies/ drinking silk nog/ writing xmas cards and forgetting to send them/ communing silently with my xmas tree/ progressively rearranging all my xmas ornaments/ inserting secret, seasonal accessories into my wardrobe that only I would care about or notice/ collecting vintage ornaments and décor/ reading old xmas cards/ buying holiday books at Kings Books/ making mixed xmas cds/ giving gifts of all sorts all through december.
