in which I have Santa issues

[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?"

Comments

Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest

[lilithchilde.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: the defense, er, doesn't rest

[lilithchilde.livejournal.com]

(cont)

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

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, reading your description of how the tradition has worked for you and trying to figure out exactly how I had imagined it working, I was thinking that a large part of this problem is a disconnect between how I imagine it working and how it actually does work for many people (though I doubt anything would make it wholly okay for me).

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

[lilithchilde.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's an agree to disagree thing, which I would be fine with, but I still find your icons to be unnecessarily insulting, and I disagree with your decision to make them and display them. I'm not saying you should take them down, now that you have, but what was it that you used to say about the political cartoons and such that liberals made of Bush? Which I used to defend as catharsis, but I honestly don't see why you'd need catharsis about something nobody has forced you to endure.

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

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I probably won't end up actually using the Santa icons (and I did cut-tag). Santa's pretty pervasive -- including in churches *rage* -- and gets taken for granted as a cultural given. I was largely just being snarky 'cause I couldn't resist using the line I heard on Without a Trace rather than being cathartic, though I do get somewhat cathartically rageful when I actually get going on discussion. Point taken re: insultingness, though I still don't think they're all that bad. But as I've said, I do see how someone for whom the Santa tradition had not been one of outright lying would be upset by them.

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.