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 [. . .]
That might very well be the crux of the matter for me, here: you have not experienced it, and your imagination does not describe the reality, at least as I experienced it.
I completely respect and even understand your parents’ decision, and I validate you, in turn, are uncomfortable with the Santa tradition. And, of course, I support that you want to express and discuss the problems you have with it. You’re completely entitled to think that your parents were right, to think that parents who follow the Santa tradition are wrong, etc.
However, this is a tradition with meaning and enjoyment for many other people; there does not seem to be some sort of epidemic of childhood trauma attributed to it (as far as I’ve heard); and at least in my own experience, it does not in fact work the way you seem to have imagined it. The reason I posted here in the first place was that I found your icons . . . insulting. They almost read to me as a judgement on my “culture” (of a sort) by someone outside it. Which might be an overreaction, but at any rate, the icons bother the hell out of me in a way that our simple disagreement never did, and that’s why. I know that's not entirely reasonable, but it’s a visceral thing.
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.
I honestly don’t think that such a differentiation always needs to be spelled out: I’m pretty sure that I was given the opportunity to make that choice, but that I was left to accrue evidence for myself before I made it, which I did. Again, I never wholly believed OR disbelieved in Santa as a child, and nobody clearly told me what to believe about him. They teased me, and I had fun puzzling the whole thing out. This, as with many of my childhood fantasies, may even have helped me to come up with my own definitions of and differentiation between fact and fiction, though that’s a complex exploration for another day, I think. I am getting all tangental-like.
With Christmas, I try to ignore the kitschy commercial stuff as much as humanly possible. It’s no worse for me, however, than any of the other things about our culture that I find distasteful in one way or another (from Wal*Mart stores—I hate the atmosphere and the homogenization on an aesthetic and visceral level, it’s not just my politics—to the plastic-ness of mainstream beauty standards and, coincidentally, pornography).
Oh, I definitely identify with your grandmother-frustration; if things are forced, there's clearly a problem. I have very definite standards that I’ve formed about holiday gift-giving and what it should consist of. When I was a child, some of my gifts would come from my own wishlists, and some would be things that my parents thoughtfully chose as meaningful or useful for me. I emulate that now: my entire family makes lists, but I always try to make everything I choose meaningful, and to make sure not to only purchase items from those lists . . . and, I like to create presents (such as mixtapes, or my father’s poetry anthologies) as well as buy them. I think that people who just insist on Buying Stuff (full stop) have the wrong idea, but it’s still their wrong idea to have. I’m happy with the way things work for me, and leave it to others to find ways to make it work for them.
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Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
Date: 2005-11-16 05:59 am (UTC)That might very well be the crux of the matter for me, here: you have not experienced it, and your imagination does not describe the reality, at least as I experienced it.
I completely respect and even understand your parents’ decision, and I validate you, in turn, are uncomfortable with the Santa tradition. And, of course, I support that you want to express and discuss the problems you have with it. You’re completely entitled to think that your parents were right, to think that parents who follow the Santa tradition are wrong, etc.
However, this is a tradition with meaning and enjoyment for many other people; there does not seem to be some sort of epidemic of childhood trauma attributed to it (as far as I’ve heard); and at least in my own experience, it does not in fact work the way you seem to have imagined it. The reason I posted here in the first place was that I found your icons . . . insulting. They almost read to me as a judgement on my “culture” (of a sort) by someone outside it. Which might be an overreaction, but at any rate, the icons bother the hell out of me in a way that our simple disagreement never did, and that’s why. I know that's not entirely reasonable, but it’s a visceral thing.
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.
I honestly don’t think that such a differentiation always needs to be spelled out: I’m pretty sure that I was given the opportunity to make that choice, but that I was left to accrue evidence for myself before I made it, which I did. Again, I never wholly believed OR disbelieved in Santa as a child, and nobody clearly told me what to believe about him. They teased me, and I had fun puzzling the whole thing out. This, as with many of my childhood fantasies, may even have helped me to come up with my own definitions of and differentiation between fact and fiction, though that’s a complex exploration for another day, I think. I am getting all tangental-like.
With Christmas, I try to ignore the kitschy commercial stuff as much as humanly possible. It’s no worse for me, however, than any of the other things about our culture that I find distasteful in one way or another (from Wal*Mart stores—I hate the atmosphere and the homogenization on an aesthetic and visceral level, it’s not just my politics—to the plastic-ness of mainstream beauty standards and, coincidentally, pornography).
Oh, I definitely identify with your grandmother-frustration; if things are forced, there's clearly a problem. I have very definite standards that I’ve formed about holiday gift-giving and what it should consist of. When I was a child, some of my gifts would come from my own wishlists, and some would be things that my parents thoughtfully chose as meaningful or useful for me. I emulate that now: my entire family makes lists, but I always try to make everything I choose meaningful, and to make sure not to only purchase items from those lists . . . and, I like to create presents (such as mixtapes, or my father’s poetry anthologies) as well as buy them. I think that people who just insist on Buying Stuff (full stop) have the wrong idea, but it’s still their wrong idea to have. I’m happy with the way things work for me, and leave it to others to find ways to make it work for them.