Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: holiday festivities

[Ellen Keyne Seebacher (elle]

I'm at Mosaic Commons in Berlin, Mass.:

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 06:05:10PM -0800, Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah wrote:

> What do you do to celebrate the winter holidays? 

As a community, nothing.  Some members of our religious/cultural
minorities have made it clear that the model of "winter holidays"
makes them very uncomfortable, as it's often just another way to 
say "nonsecular Christmas"; they find Christmas overwhelming enough 
in the overall culture, and don't want to be surrounded by it in 
their homes, including the Common House.

We do have decorating guidelines for the Common House that say if
someone wants to decorate the CH for a specific holiday, they may do
so for two weeks, in a specific area of the Great Room, and that if
others want to decorate for another holiday in the same period, the
two holidays get equal weight.

There's also a CH event decoration policy for the days immediately
surrounding an event; if a host wanted to put up large decorations
for, say, the weekend of a Christmas party, they could.  (This
happened last year, for a carol-singing event to which outsiders 
were invited; out of respect for residents with evergreen allergies,
the host and some helpers constructed a giant Christmas tree out of
ribbons.)

> On Christmas Day, as on Thanksgiving, there is a coordinated fancy
> potluck dinner for those who choose to eat together, often with
> invited family guests.

We have a day-after-Thanksgiving leftovers potluck. :-)  And a New
Year's Eve party for the community.

> After our December monthly meeting, which is a morning time, we  
> reconvene for an afternoon gift exchange.
> 
> Funny white elephants or "nice" stuff, wrapped and parked in the  
> center of the circle. Draw numbered slips of paper. #1 picks a gift,  
> opens it and shows it around.

Yankee Gift Swap!  We also do this every year, at our anniversary
party in January. :-)

-- 
Ellen Keyne Seebacher                   elle [at] pobox.com

  Know someone who'd love green community living?  Refer them to us,
  earn a finder's fee!  Go to http://sawyerhill.org/1000 to learn more.