I still can't see it as "straight-up lying" somehow. I like how someone down below here said something about it being a play that we all participated in . . . there was never any certainty one way or the other, either from what my parents said or what we ourselves believed. Just this tantalizing secretiveness, this "what-if" . . . everywhere around me as a child, culture, other children, etc were telling me both yes and no, wondering along with me, and so forth. I don't recall my parents giving me straight answers on the subject, either. They'd act just as wondering, curious, but they'd speak about it as though it were a joke of a sort, an in-joke I was included on but hadn't fully worked out yet. None of this starkness: "lying." I never felt betrayed, pandered to, or decieved.
Truth be told, I never saw things in such a black-and-white dichotomy as a child (and I'm pretty sure I still don't, even now); at least, not all the time, not everything. Life wasn't and isn't a true-false test, and a little fantasy was and is a little seasoning to make life that much more palatable.
I remember how you had rage at that, while I really didn't. I think that there is power and wonder in stories and fantasies. I still don't think it's so much a matter of "truth," which is a loaded and, I think, relative term. It's more a matter of fact and fiction, and I'm not committed to thinking that fact is always preferable or should stand alone. Sometimes you can have both.
I think you can tell children about St. Nicholas and/or the various toy drives that go in the holiday season and teach them about giving to the less fortunate in a very powerful way. I think you can tell children about the longest night of the year and how people throughout history have told stories about light in the darkness (and my ideal Christmas celebration, were I to have one, would involve lots of white candles).
All of that sounds great.
I think stories can be powerful things even when presented as stories, but I don't agree with presenting stories as fact. But as far as I was concerned as a child, the story of Santa was never presented as fact. It was presented as possibility, as something to wonder about . . . a mystery and a story, but never something as hard and certain and irrefutable as fact.
None of this is easy to explain, being a somewhat ephemeral value and argument, and perhaps puts me at a discursive disadvantage. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?
The thing about the spiritual/earthly argument is that I think the earthly can be spiritual: they are not a mutually exclusive dichotomy, not wholly separate concepts, as far as I'm concerned. And yes, I agree that "intentionality" is very important, but that's something we have to leave up to the individual revelers, is it not? And from my experience, people tend to get it. The only part of our culture that I see devoid of this outlook on the holidays, is, well, advertisement. Advertisement is a part of our culture that is wholly devoid of meaningfulness, and it's disgusting, but I really don't believe that it controls us or represents how people really feel about the holidays. This may be optimistic of me, but I guess what it boils down to is this: modern cultural expressions of the holiday do not destroy it. If people are able to be intentional and meaningful about it, they find ways to be; I'm pretty sure it's always this way. The meaning of a celebration ultimately depends on the people celebrating.
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Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
Date: 2005-11-15 04:41 pm (UTC)Truth be told, I never saw things in such a black-and-white dichotomy as a child (and I'm pretty sure I still don't, even now); at least, not all the time, not everything. Life wasn't and isn't a true-false test, and a little fantasy was and is a little seasoning to make life that much more palatable.
I remember how you had rage at that, while I really didn't. I think that there is power and wonder in stories and fantasies. I still don't think it's so much a matter of "truth," which is a loaded and, I think, relative term. It's more a matter of fact and fiction, and I'm not committed to thinking that fact is always preferable or should stand alone. Sometimes you can have both.
I think you can tell children about St. Nicholas and/or the various toy drives that go in the holiday season and teach them about giving to the less fortunate in a very powerful way. I think you can tell children about the longest night of the year and how people throughout history have told stories about light in the darkness (and my ideal Christmas celebration, were I to have one, would involve lots of white candles).
All of that sounds great.
I think stories can be powerful things even when presented as stories, but I don't agree with presenting stories as fact.
But as far as I was concerned as a child, the story of Santa was never presented as fact. It was presented as possibility, as something to wonder about . . . a mystery and a story, but never something as hard and certain and irrefutable as fact.
None of this is easy to explain, being a somewhat ephemeral value and argument, and perhaps puts me at a discursive disadvantage. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?
The thing about the spiritual/earthly argument is that I think the earthly can be spiritual: they are not a mutually exclusive dichotomy, not wholly separate concepts, as far as I'm concerned. And yes, I agree that "intentionality" is very important, but that's something we have to leave up to the individual revelers, is it not? And from my experience, people tend to get it. The only part of our culture that I see devoid of this outlook on the holidays, is, well, advertisement. Advertisement is a part of our culture that is wholly devoid of meaningfulness, and it's disgusting, but I really don't believe that it controls us or represents how people really feel about the holidays. This may be optimistic of me, but I guess what it boils down to is this: modern cultural expressions of the holiday do not destroy it. If people are able to be intentional and meaningful about it, they find ways to be; I'm pretty sure it's always this way. The meaning of a celebration ultimately depends on the people celebrating.