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.
Okay, that I could probably be okay with. Since my parents never actively did the Santa thing, I don't have a sense of how it would be done. I imagine it being presented as fact, though I can see how a lot of the presentations could easily be done with a sort of "knowing wink" attitude. There's no way I could ever do that with children, and it still discomfits me as it feels too much like deceit (so maybe not so much with the being okay) but it brings the rage down a bit. [I also have residual issues of feeling like the whole socializing thing was -- is -- a game I didn't quite understand how to play, so the idea of an inside joke doesn't exactly sell me on this, though I know what you're getting at.]
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'm definitely willing to forego the term "truth" for this discussion -- since you're right that it's loaded and in some ways relative -- and just use the terms fact and fiction. I still think that differentiating between fact and fiction is important. You can blur the distinction if you choose, but it should be an informed choice, not a blurring that happens because you don't have the necessary information to distinguish on your own.
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.
Point taken. I do understand that dichotomizing earthly and spiritual is problematic, and I'm partly just using it as terminological shorthand, but yes, point taken.
The commercialization makes me ill, and I can see your point about how it doesn't necessarily control us, but I do think it influences the culture and the people in it. I admit to being heavily influenced by my maternal grandmother's insistence upon getting us stuff for Christmas and feeling like lots of little things are better than a few big things because you want the joy of opening lots of things etc. and how this causes me frustration and rage because every year I get kitschy things I have no use or desire for and then pawn them off on GoodWill or whatever.
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Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
Date: 2005-11-15 07:10 pm (UTC)Okay, that I could probably be okay with. Since my parents never actively did the Santa thing, I don't have a sense of how it would be done. I imagine it being presented as fact, though I can see how a lot of the presentations could easily be done with a sort of "knowing wink" attitude. There's no way I could ever do that with children, and it still discomfits me as it feels too much like deceit (so maybe not so much with the being okay) but it brings the rage down a bit. [I also have residual issues of feeling like the whole socializing thing was -- is -- a game I didn't quite understand how to play, so the idea of an inside joke doesn't exactly sell me on this, though I know what you're getting at.]
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'm definitely willing to forego the term "truth" for this discussion -- since you're right that it's loaded and in some ways relative -- and just use the terms fact and fiction. I still think that differentiating between fact and fiction is important. You can blur the distinction if you choose, but it should be an informed choice, not a blurring that happens because you don't have the necessary information to distinguish on your own.
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.
Point taken. I do understand that dichotomizing earthly and spiritual is problematic, and I'm partly just using it as terminological shorthand, but yes, point taken.
The commercialization makes me ill, and I can see your point about how it doesn't necessarily control us, but I do think it influences the culture and the people in it. I admit to being heavily influenced by my maternal grandmother's insistence upon getting us stuff for Christmas and feeling like lots of little things are better than a few big things because you want the joy of opening lots of things etc. and how this causes me frustration and rage because every year I get kitschy things I have no use or desire for and then pawn them off on GoodWill or whatever.