"'Tis the Season!"
Dec. 20th, 2007 05:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanObservations by someone who doesn't celebrate a December holiday:
It's weird to see the change in behavior that comes with xmas approaching. When people realize that they won't see one another before the 25th, they suddenly act differently toward each other. I saw people hugging yesterday, that on other days I've heard bad-mouthing each other behind the others' back. I shook the exterminator's hand yesterday, in solemn wishing of happy holidays. Earlier in the month I twice explained that I don't celebrate anything this time of year (to a group of relatively new friends, and to a coworker who asked how my xmas shopping was going) and was twice met with shocked awkward silence. I felt like I needed to apologize or something.
And then, in a couple weeks it won't be "the holiday season" anymore, it will just be winter, cold and icy.
I just think that people put too much importance in this one end of the year festival. Couldn't we measure out our jolliness and generosity and expressions of desire or peace to last the whole year? I'd rather we had quarterly holidays (you know, the "good old days" of pre-Abrahamic seasonal rites) that each had more or less equal weight in significance and energy spent. I celebrated the corners of the year for a while, but I observed that even the self-described pagans I knew had to roll with the xmas juggernaut, to please family, to get through the month at work, many sincerely enjoying it all. Some said "happy solstice," Some decorated exclusively with five pointed stars, some called it "witchmas" or yule or something else. But none put the same kind of energy into the other corners of the year. Who wants to spend all of May shopping and buying decorations for the upcoming Summer Solstice?
I think it's appalling that the economy depends on an orgy of obligatory gift buying in one month to make it through the rest of the year. The cynical detachment of the news organizations reporting on the disappointing "buying season" is a curiosity to me. I can almost understand the dismay of Christians who perceive a holy day being corrupted with secularism and commercialism--but then there's this graph.
It's funny that people who don't celebrate are called "Scrooge" and "Grinch." Those are characters from media products generated for xmas, characters who wake up to realize they are wrong, and at the end embody the spirit of the season and celebrate after all (with great displays of material generosity). Will I someday wake up to the (secular) spirit of the season, just as--after 15 years--I came to decide that raising and killing animals for agriculture was something that I approved of? Will I redeem myself one day, and buy a xmas goose for the Cratchetts and carve the roast beast for the Whos?
This is one of those posts that I've written, but I'm not sure if I should click the "post to urbpan" button; but every other time I've been unsure and done it anyway, readers have enjoyed it or at least had good discussions in the comments. So here I go. sorry.
On this day in 365 Urban Species: Red clover, another post with a freakish photo of a flower blooming in a verdant urban lot in the end of December. Honestly, I was so lucky last year that it didn't ice over until January/February.
It's weird to see the change in behavior that comes with xmas approaching. When people realize that they won't see one another before the 25th, they suddenly act differently toward each other. I saw people hugging yesterday, that on other days I've heard bad-mouthing each other behind the others' back. I shook the exterminator's hand yesterday, in solemn wishing of happy holidays. Earlier in the month I twice explained that I don't celebrate anything this time of year (to a group of relatively new friends, and to a coworker who asked how my xmas shopping was going) and was twice met with shocked awkward silence. I felt like I needed to apologize or something.
And then, in a couple weeks it won't be "the holiday season" anymore, it will just be winter, cold and icy.
I just think that people put too much importance in this one end of the year festival. Couldn't we measure out our jolliness and generosity and expressions of desire or peace to last the whole year? I'd rather we had quarterly holidays (you know, the "good old days" of pre-Abrahamic seasonal rites) that each had more or less equal weight in significance and energy spent. I celebrated the corners of the year for a while, but I observed that even the self-described pagans I knew had to roll with the xmas juggernaut, to please family, to get through the month at work, many sincerely enjoying it all. Some said "happy solstice," Some decorated exclusively with five pointed stars, some called it "witchmas" or yule or something else. But none put the same kind of energy into the other corners of the year. Who wants to spend all of May shopping and buying decorations for the upcoming Summer Solstice?
I think it's appalling that the economy depends on an orgy of obligatory gift buying in one month to make it through the rest of the year. The cynical detachment of the news organizations reporting on the disappointing "buying season" is a curiosity to me. I can almost understand the dismay of Christians who perceive a holy day being corrupted with secularism and commercialism--but then there's this graph.
It's funny that people who don't celebrate are called "Scrooge" and "Grinch." Those are characters from media products generated for xmas, characters who wake up to realize they are wrong, and at the end embody the spirit of the season and celebrate after all (with great displays of material generosity). Will I someday wake up to the (secular) spirit of the season, just as--after 15 years--I came to decide that raising and killing animals for agriculture was something that I approved of? Will I redeem myself one day, and buy a xmas goose for the Cratchetts and carve the roast beast for the Whos?
This is one of those posts that I've written, but I'm not sure if I should click the "post to urbpan" button; but every other time I've been unsure and done it anyway, readers have enjoyed it or at least had good discussions in the comments. So here I go. sorry.
On this day in 365 Urban Species: Red clover, another post with a freakish photo of a flower blooming in a verdant urban lot in the end of December. Honestly, I was so lucky last year that it didn't ice over until January/February.
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 04:39 pm (UTC)Ba humbug to the other holidays.