Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: rituals

[Catherine Harper (tylik]

Just a personal take on this all...

In many ways I am a hard core Christmas hater.  The moment Christmas
decorations appear in stores, my teeth are set on edge.  There are few
things that annoy me more than going into a mall to pick up a few pairs
for socks and hearing "Nails, spears, shall pierce him through / The cross
be borne for me, for you".  (Nngh!  This is made worse because thought I
was not raised to be religious, I was in various "non religious" choirs,
and I know all the words to all the Christmas carols.)  And don't even get
me started on deadly Christmas one-two, where you get lured in with the
insidious "Christmas is for everyone!" (everyone is brought together and
made happy and peaceful for Christmas, as long as you sing *our* song and
play *our* game!) and then just as you've settled down for a steaming cup
of eggnog someone whaps you with "Jesus is the reasons for the season!"
right across the jaw.

I fastidiously avoid things that are even too much redolent of Christmas.
Sure, bringing trees in this time of year is a fine old pagan custom, but
in our house, it's tainted, no can-do.  (We do have a longest night party
every year, one that has so overflowed it's banks that it now has staff
and prep meetings months in advance.  Kids, candles, hot tubs, lots of
food, music, burning things, and very little sleep.)  I make a mighty, and
often successful effort, to get all of my shopping done before
Thanksgiving, just to avoid that chaos.  I'm not pretending this all is
ruled by logic, but it's what my set of negotiations with popular culture
has produced.

But I don't mind Christmas parties at all.  Heck, one of my favorite
things used to be to go to a little chapel out in the San Juans and
singing Christmas carols right around Christmas Eve.  Once or twice I've
tagged along with friends to midnight mass.  If someone invites me to a
Christmas celebration, and I say yes, it's consensual.  It's not my
holiday, and I don't like it when it's mindlessly assumed to be everyone's
holiday (and for personal reasons I want to draw a clear line of
demarcation at least across our own threshhold)  ...but in it's own
context it's a fine holiday, and I'm perfectly happy to be someone's guest
at their celebration of it. 

In that sense, I find many generic holiday parties more disturbing,
because they often have distinctly exclusive overtones (did y'all know
that in Issaquah WA, where my Jewish godsons go to school, Christmas trees
are considered religious, and can't be displayed, but Santa Claus is
"secular" and permitted?  It breaks my brain) but aren't honest enough
about them to be gracious to those who are being excluded.  

This all is my longwinded way of agreeing that watering things down isn't
a recipe for any kind of good soup.


I grew up in a religiously diverse neighborhood.  I can't pretend it's
anything other than my feeling from my experiences...  but I like being
around other people's traditions, faiths and cultures.  (Okay, yeah, as
long as everyone is being polite about it all, but this has been the
rule.)  

That's part of what I want out of a community.  

Last year, or maybe the year before, I don't remember, the parents of one
of my childhood best friends decided that they were going to have a party
on St. Patrick's day, and invite all their friends, supply food and drink,
and encourage everyone to hang out around the piano and sing Irish music.

Now, as it happens, many people did not sing, and of those that did sing
many didn't know any Irish music.  Indeed, a large proportion of the
people who did sing were members of a local Klezmir band, and the lot of
us forged onwards, song sheets in hand, to create the best damned Irish
Klezmir music you've every heard.  Maybe you just had to be there...

                                Catherine

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