in which I have Santa issues
Nov. 13th, 2005 01:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hermionesviolin
Quote from Thursday's episode of Without a Trace. Santa images from vintage advertisements. I prefer the second icon because the point is not that Santa is a God stand-in who is accusing you of being on the Bad List (which is what I feel like the first icon is implying) but rather that Santa is a lie. And really, neither of these icons gets that across sufficiently, but I haven't figured out a way to get across what I want in icon format.
[For those of you just tuning in: I have serious issues with lying to your children and hate the commercialization/secularization of Xmas anyhow.] And yes I know, spirit of giving and all that, lots of people have fond magical memories of Santa, etc. etc. I am restraining myself from demanding that everyone drop the Santa thing and have an appropriately spiritual observance (or observe Consumalata instead) and people are welcome to discuss in the comments or in personal e-mail, though I'm not likely to change my mind on the issue.
If you wish to raise your children with the story of St. Nicholas and do Christmas stockings and participate in things like Toys for Tots and Angel Tree, explaining all the while that we do these things in the spirit of St. Nicholas/Jesus Christ/the 3 Wise Men/whomever, then I am full of encouragement -- though okay, upon consideration, it still bugs me a little bit, because the idea of setting aside specific dates for gift-giving bothers me; but I am so all about intentionality, so if you are being thoughtful about what you're doing I'll probably be okay. But handing your children presents with tags saying "from Santa" and encouraging them to leave out cookies and milk for a red-suited man . . . that makes me homicidal.
[A post more receptive to fond Santa memories is here.]
1:50am -- Edited a whole bunch of times and now I'm going to bed.
Sunday at 12:42pm: Edited to add my personal Santa background:
My parents absolutely hate lying to their children, so they were always wishy-washy around the issue of Santa Claus. All of our presents had the giver's name on them, and we knew Mommy filled our stockings (since the bulk of it was baked goods we'd been watching her make for the past month). Once my grandma gave us placemats with a "from Santa" tag on the wrapping, but basically as soon as we opened them she said they were from her. I really wanted there to be a Santa Claus for the kids whose parents couldn't afford to buy them presents but saw no need for Santa Claus to come to my house. I don't remember any specific moment of knowing Santa wasn't real, but I suspected quite early.
I know most people grow out of the Santa belief non-traumatically, but it feels to me like you're setting yourself/your kid up for such potential trauma and why do that? Especially because I grew up with consistency being one of my dad's biggest things (credible threat and all that) so I feel like, "Well if you lied to your kid about this thing, why do they have any reason to believe you're not lying about other things?"
Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
Date: 2005-11-13 11:35 pm (UTC)I'm definitely big on not coddling children, but to me, this is about straight-up lying to children. To me, telling your children Santa brings them their Christmas presents is on par with telling them the stork brought them to the family as infants (though admittedly, Santa stories don't have the nasty repercussions of children having unsafe sex).
Do you remember how I had rage at Chesterton's "Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass" (from section 4 of Orthodoxy)? I think truth is powerful and wonderful. 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). I think stories can be powerful things even when presented as stories, but I don't agree with presenting stories as fact. Granted, religious stories are something of a grey area since not everyone believes Jesus rose from the dead, but I wouldn't argue that Christian parents shouldn't tell their children that he did as if it were fact. But I think as long as something is firmly in the religious section of discussion then as children grow they will see these as leaps of faith and agree or disagree with them as they see fit. I can understand if a child latches on to a story not wanting to say, "That's not true, that's just a story" unless active belief would somehow hurt them (like if a child read a story about someone who ate magic berries and gained the power to fly and then wanted to go eat berries off neighbors' bushes) but to actively present a myth as fact (and again, if the parent believes a story to be fact but other people don't -- i.e. Christian narratives of Jesus -- that's different because the parent does in fact believe the story to be true).
I know we have the spiritual/earthly argument a lot, but I honestly have no problem with Christmas (or any other winter holiday) being celebrated as more than just a purely spiritual endeavor. The feasting and candles that is so much a part of so many winter celebrations is very rooted in the earthly -- need for food and light and warmth -- and I can totally get behind that so long as it is done with intentionality. So much of what bothers me about traditional celebrations is that they become rote and meaningless (or at least, they become so separated from any original meaning and it becomes, "We do this because This Is What We Do and What We Have Always Done"). I particularly wish people had a sense of intentionality behind the gift-giving. Personally I would prefer that people gave gifts at random times or just because someone they loved was feeling down or whatever, not because some society or other has dictated that they should give gifts to everyone on some specific day. But there are reasons the tradition developed, and I would be far more okay with it if people were actually thoughtful about it.
I figure some of our difference comes from your much dimmer view of the value of ceremony, but I have to say, it puzzles me. Ceremony is a means by which people create meaning. Creating meaning is important and spiritually enriching.
I think I know what you mean by "ceremony," but do you wanna elaborate and/or give me specific examples so I can better attempt to explain why I hold such a "dim view"?
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.
Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
Date: 2005-11-15 04:41 pm (UTC)As far as "This Is What We Do and What We Have Always Done," I think that the very repetition of tradition, far from being meaningless, is part of what can give it meaning: memories are built, and we take meaning and depth from that. Certainly repetition alone is not enough to lend meaning to celebration, but I believe it's important. That's why I like the special day part, as opposed to random times . . . it makes it special. It gives people a focal point for their spiritual and earthly love and joy. I think that if we gave random presents all the time, it would make present-giving less meaningful, less significant, more every-day. For one thing, present-giving on Christmas is something people do together.
I think I know what you mean by "ceremony," but do you wanna elaborate and/or give me specific examples so I can better attempt to explain why I hold such a "dim view"?
I was referring to our several previous discussions of Catholicism vs. Protestantism, in which we often used "ceremony" as a convenient example of one of the major differences between the two. I believe you used to say that you didn't see as much value in it; I believe this had something to do with the possibility of it being a rote act rather than an intentional one, while I did not believe it was so.
As for examples, "ceremony" includes everything from taking the eucharist and singing certain songs during certain times at church, to decorating Christmas trees and handing out presents. These are symbolic acts that incorporate history, familial bonds, and even more visceral tools such as light, warmth, and melody, which evoke spiritual feelings in the participants. Etc.
Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
Date: 2005-11-15 07:12 pm (UTC)See above reply re: grandmother. When you have to give people things, you don't necessarily end up giving them things they actually/want need (or you spend lots of time and worry trying to find them things they do want). My experience with my grandmother -- plus the fact that I so rarely know what to get people -- means that institutionalized gift-giving bothers me a lot. While random gift-giving all the time would admittedly feel more plebian, I get far more joy from someone saying, "I saw this and thought of you" at some random time than getting a pile of stuff at Christmas. And in the interest of actually getting stuff we want, my family all does specific wishlists -- which are great because it means you're guaranteed to actually get stuff you want/need, but to me there's far more magic in "I remember you were really lusting after this scarf but you couldn't afford it, and you've been having a bad week and I can afford it so I bought it for you" than in "Hey, it's your birthday/Christmas, here are x number of items from your wishlist." The fandom wishlists/secret santas have a lot of that spontaneous magic for me because you only have some idea of what you're going to get (though of course there is the risk factor that you'll get shite).
As for the "something people do together"? As we well know, I adore my parents and get along with my family, but you are so much more family-oriented than I am. The togetherness of events like that is usually a neutral and occasionally negative aspect from my point of view.
Yeah, when you said "ceremony" my brain immediately jumped to Catholicism, but since that covers a lot of ground and I wasn't actually griping about Christmas church services (I do tend to actually find Midnight Mass beautiful and powerful) I wanted to clarify.
The fact that so many people participate in traditional things, be they hymn-singing or what you have for Christmas dinner, without thinking about them in an intentional fashion bothers me no end in all sorts of contexts. I feel like I used "ceremony" in reference to Catholicism more for the High Church aspects in particular as I prefer words to symbols (I thought I talked about this somewhere else in the replies to this thread, but I can't find it, so I must be conflating it with another thread). I do see how traditional things can be meaningful with their connection to history and all that entails, plus of course their actual susbtance.
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.
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.
Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
Date: 2005-11-16 06:00 am (UTC)And yes, you’re definitely right that the family thing has a lot to do with our different views. Christmas for me is pretty much all about family. I try to do a little something for my friends (the common card, which I am so not going to manage, again); but I only buy presents for my family (and that’s my immediate family, not my extended). I CAN buy presents for my family and keep it special and meaningful. With friends it would be much harder, not to mention impossible in terms of finances and time. (I do actually occasionally do that spontaneous gift-giving thing with my friends, incidentally.)
Mmm, Midnight Mass. For that matter, mmm, Vespers. Was just trying to discuss with someone why I find Vespers amazingly uplifting, Bible passages and all, in spite of not being a believer. Must articulate that sometime.
Again, I tend to think that when people are non-intentional, that’s really their own problem. I am the ultimate “whatever works for you” person, and I’m careful to keep my own life and my own ceremonies as mindful as possible. It saddens me when others don’t, but that’s up to them. Until every last participant no longer finds true value in a ceremony, it still has true value and is worth maintaining (at least for them).
Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
Date: 2005-11-16 03:23 pm (UTC)I can definitely see how for someone for whom the Santa tradition is a very positive one would be offended by the judgmental nature of the icons I made. 'Cause honestly, my thought process could have been fairly accurately reduced to, "I value truth so very highly, and here is this tradition which has so many [potential] positive aspects to it being epitomized by a big ole lie," and I was judging harshly. And I still mostly stand behind that harsh judgment, but I can see how it's not necessarily always quite as awful as I tend to think of it as being.
I CAN buy presents for my family and keep it special and meaningful. With friends it would be much harder, not to mention impossible in terms of finances and time. (I do actually occasionally do that spontaneous gift-giving thing with my friends, incidentally.)
Leaving aside my brother, who for the most part seems primarily interested in the acquisition of stuff/money when it comes to celebrations, I think my parents would both prefer a far less stuff-oriented holiday season (though I'm far closer to my father than my mother in my minimalist-orientation) where it *could* be more about just the warmth and togetherness and celebration -- and my grandma's insistence on the exchange of copious amounts of gifts as an incredibly important component of Christmas heavily colors my experience of the gift exchange aspect of the holiday season.
Mmm, Midnight Mass. For that matter, mmm, Vespers. Was just trying to discuss with someone why I find Vespers amazingly uplifting, Bible passages and all, in spite of not being a believer. Must articulate that sometime.
Yeah, Vespers is beautiful. I tend to forget how Christian-centric it is and to this day feel bad for encouraging a non-Christian friend to go (she ended up leaving early it was so uncomfortable for her) but said friend was a fairly unusual case (she had a lot of bad experiences with institutionalized Christianity growing up and was expecting a far less Christian-centric experience than Vespers is) and it makes me happy that so many non-Christians find it a positive experience. (Damn, now I'm all tempted to go back to Smith for Vespers weekend.)
Again, I tend to think that when people are non-intentional, that’s really their own problem. I am the ultimate “whatever works for you” person, and I’m careful to keep my own life and my own ceremonies as mindful as possible. It saddens me when others don’t, but that’s up to them. Until every last participant no longer finds true value in a ceremony, it still has true value and is worth maintaining (at least for them).
*nods* I think one of my big problems is that I feel like the culture [churches included] encourages non-intentionality, which frustrates me a lot. And it's difficult for me to feel like I can participate with integrity in traditions which have become so full of non-intentionality and in many ways turned counter to the original intentions.
Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
Date: 2005-11-16 04:02 pm (UTC)Now I've been as clear as I can about that, moving on.
I'm sorry you have had that view of the holiday forced on you. One reason I've always been grateful for the fact that my immediate family is so separated from my extended is that we mostly escape those parts of the Christmas tradition that I might find extraneous or that might take away from the meaning for me. My extended family's beliefs and values are often problematic for me, but I don't have to deal with them often. My immediate family, thank goodness, mostly suits me very well.
Aw, you should come to Vespers. It'd be great to see you, and as it's quite early this year (the 4th, I think that's just two weeks from Sunday), it won't be so insanely hectic a time here.
I guess I long ago came at least a little to terms with the fact that I will always be at odds with my society and culture in one way or another. As this particular aspect is one I find it very easy to counter in my own life, it doesn't bother me nearly so much.
Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest
Date: 2005-11-16 05:16 pm (UTC)It'll be interesting to see how we do Christmas after my grandma dies.
It would be really lovely to see you. And with Emma going to England, it would be great to get to see her before next summer. Will check my calendar when I get home tonight and if I'm available I'll e-mail Emma.
I guess I long ago came at least a little to terms with the fact that I will always be at odds with my society and culture in one way or another. As this particular aspect is one I find it very easy to counter in my own life, it doesn't bother me nearly so much.
I'm usually relatively at peace with the fact that I don't fit most anywhere, and mostly I just get growly about the Santa thing rather than all out rageful, but it varies.