OK, Noelle, you asked me for an xmas blog, and because you are aptly named, here it is. Just remember, you asked for it.
When I was a teenager, despite my Jewishness, I wore ornaments as earrings and jingle bells on my shoes at holiday time. When I married a Christian, and had kids, I was thrilled to make up for lost time by getting a real tree and trimming it while drinking mulled wine, decorating the inside of the house with pretty candles and pine-scented boughs, insisting we have lights on the outside, hanging stockings from the mantel (also my first mantel ever), piling presents under the tree on xmas eve, all the commercial trappings of the holiday season. I never got into the religious aspect of it, earlier because of my Jewishness and later because of my general contempt for religious-stories-as-fact.
This year, however, I am the least xmas-spirited I have ever been in my life. I'm not sure why.
Is it because my contempt for such stories is growing? I've always been a student of mythology, but this past year I've read a lot more about the whole of mythology, the ideas behind and evolution of western religion (Joseph Campbell, for instance). The early Christians were so sneaky in their attempts to convert the pagans! They said, well, you're already celebrating the Winter Solstice around now anyway, so why not just take this symbol of it --it's the SAME THING anyway--and celebrate it instead? Jesus wasn't born on Dec 25! Nobody really knows when--it was just a convenient date. (Past presidents did the same thing with Thanksgiving, you know--it has been all over the calendar. And FDR tried to make it 2 weeks earlier to extend the xmas shopping season). And if it's all about the birth of Jesus, why is it celebrated with totally pagan symbols? What does a tree or stockings have to do with it? And where does Santa fit in all of this? Whose holiday is it, anyway?
Not that Chanukah is any better for me. We all know that it's to celebrate the miracle of the oil, right? That they had enough in the temple to burn for one night and it burned for eight? OK, somehow I always missed (because I've never been a very observant Jew) the fact that the oil was in a mostly-destroyed temple, from the war the Jews fought against whoever the latest oppressors were--and won. So it was really a celebration of a war victory. Last night I watched a movie called Esther. I vaguely remember a Purim play about Esther in my Jewish nursery school (funny how they call em PREschools now). I wore a Queen Esther mask and we all spun those noisemankers around. ANyway, in this movie, the Persian king had been tricked by his chancellor into making a decree that all Jews were to be destroyed on the 13th of whatever month. Esther, his queen and originally a Jew, brought this to the king's attention and convinced him that they should spare her people. Unfortunately, the Persians have this law: a royal decree can never be revoked. Seems like a pretty dumb law, but I get the sentiment behind it: a king is infallible, etc. SO, their clever way around it is to issue another decree, directed at the Jews, that they should defend themsleves with whatever weapons they can lay their hands on. (Personally, I think it would've been much more clever to decree that the 13th of whatever month be skipped that year, but thousand of years ago, people weren't so clever, I guess). So there was a war, and a bunch of people died on both sides, but the Jews were, for the most part, saved from annihilation, and the holiday of Purim was declared to commemorate the occasion. So it's another Jewish holiday to point out their persecution by somebody and to celebrate their subsequent victory in war. No wonder the Jew-Palestinian thing is never-ending. They LIKE war.
So maybe some of my disaffection with holidays is based on new knowledge, knowledge that makes me think the holidays are either too bogus or too disturbing for me to want to celebrate them.
Or maybe it's my general mood this winter. My husband pointed out that I went into 'hibernation mode' almost the same instant the clocks went back (daylight savings time also really annoys me with its anachronism - are we a primarily agricultural nation still? Hell, no). I decided that I have too many friends, and that most of my friends are either alcoholics or crazy or both. I would rather stay home and read or watch movies in my nice cozy bed than go to yet another bar, show, or party in which I have to listen to my friends whine about their loneliness or pain or turn into deperately 'fun' and/or maudlin drunks, thank you. One at a time, please, in the psychiatrist's office. Who the hell deemed me qualified to listen to all this energy-leeching crap, anyway? I already HAVE kids. It may be the perpetually low, grey skies talking, but only I think it's only partly their fault. The lack of sunshine definitely makes me less tolerant, because my batteries aren't getting recharged.
Plus, the having-too-many-friends thing becomes a problem around xmas time. I no longer have a job, and even if I did, I could't afford to buy everyone a present. And I don't have time to make everyone a present. And I don't have the mental real estate to think of what to get everyone. If I see something that I think so-and-so might really like, I might get it for that person. But does that mean I have to then feel guilty about not having something for another good friend? Where do I draw the line? Same goes for xmas cards. There's a few old friends back home I send cards to, and if I generally get them from certain people annually, I'll send them one, too. They take the time, so I can, too. But I'm not going to send them to everyone I know. Especially local people I see all the time, to whom I can say 'Happy Holidays' in person.
But today, despite all this, I had a smile on my face. I spontaneously went xmas shopping for my immediate family (when I realized I only had 2 days in which to do it before one or both kids would be around constantly until the new year). You know what? Buying stuff for kids is really fun! All these toys that'll be broken or ignored within 2 months bring a lot of smiles and 'aw, COOL!'s on xmas morning. And I think I got at least one present my husband will love.
And, wow, I just remembered what the xmas spirit is supposed to be all about. Whaddya know. 'Sokay, Marley, no need for your services; I figured it out on my own.
