Christmas

[liv]

Last year, siderea wrote a thinky post about Why Christmas hurts, and gives the answer The pain of Christmas - of third Christmas, the festival of families – is disappointment.. I found the classification of three Christmases very useful: religious, secular but spiritual, and the holiday of families. And it feels really poignant this year because, well, there's a pandemic, and the festival of families, above all things, is going to be really seriously disrupted.

Several people pointed out to siderea that there's another reason to find Christmas hard, even if your family is entirely happy and functional, which is that Christmas gets Christian cultural hegemony all over people who aren't Christian. Christmas-1, the religious festival, I find largely unproblematic. But for me, Christmas-2, the "season of goodwill", has always been troubling in ways I find it slightly scary to articulate.

I think just about the first social rule I remember consciously learning is that I'm not allowed to have negative feelings about Christmas. Children's media is absolutely full of examples of wicked awful people who don't like Christmas. Scrooge. The Grinch. The generic bad guy in every generic children's TV show. Because what sort of monster doesn't like peace'n'goodwill, charitable giving and forgiveness, kindness and thoughtfulness and making other people happy? The problem is that, not having Siderea's incisive classification to refer to, I often found that peace and goodwill and generosity and bonhomie of Christmas-2 were tied up with the Christian festival, Christmas-1, which is very much about celebrating how great it is not to be like me and my family.

Sometimes children my age (I mean, from pre-school and onwards), would innocently ask me, don't you feel left out not getting Christmas presents / not having Santa? Kids would generally accept the answer that it didn't bother me because it had never been part of my life, and anyway I (happily) wasn't short of toys and gifts, they just didn't arrive on 25 December. But if an adult asked me that question, oh, it was a trap. I couldn't say I did feel left out, because that would be admitting that my minority culture was inferior to their mainstream Christian one. And I couldn't say I didn't mind, because then I was implicitly criticizing Christmas, I was being a Grinch by not thinking Christmas is the most wonderful thing ever. It's never really stopped. People still ask me, don't you feel left out when everybody is celebrating Christmas? As an adult, I sometimes get the even more Zugzwang question: do you feel bad when everybody keeps going on about Christmas around you? I do think that often that kind of question comes from a well-meaning place, but honestly there's no good answer. Mustn't-be-a-Grinch, you know? I can't say that constant barrage of Christmas all through November and December and half of January is annoying, because then I'm criticizing goodwill and kindness. And I can't say that it doesn't bother me without seeming like I'm downplaying my Jewish identity.

Or equally, people attempting to reassure me that Christmas isn't really a Christian festival, it's totally Pagan these days. I mean, for one thing I don't have any more desire to celebrate a Pagan festival like Yule than I do a Christian festival, and this kind of reassurance doesn't actually make me feel more included. If you're inviting me as a guest to your cultural experience, great, that feels like real generosity. But if you're insisting that I'm actually an insider to a cultural context I don't in fact feel connected to, then you're just denying my reality and my heritage.

I think part of my problem is that there's also a Christmas-2a, which I do in fact rather dislike. The Christmas which is all about competitive shopping, advertising getting louder and more aggressive, endless repeats of soppy and annoying songs, forced jollity like work Christmas parties, eating too much of food I don't really like. I can't object to that too forcefully, though, because it's inseparable from Christmas-2 in most people's minds, and being against having all that shopping in my face for weeks isn't allowed if I'm the only non-Christian in the group, because it looks like objecting to people being nice to each other, having fun, giving presents.

I'm reminded of a trans acquaintance who expresses political despair saying, "I hate this country!". And I also experience a lot of political despair at the moment, but I realize that my whole life's conditioning means I can't possibly agree with her. I can't hate the country, because then I'm the stereotype of the disloyal Jew, the rootless cosmopolitan, I'm not sufficiently grateful that my country "let" my ancestors settle here and "saved" my people from fascism. In the same way, I can't dislike any aspect of Christmas because I would be an uppity, ungrateful minority. But I can't like it too much because it's not for me, because that would give too many people an excuse to try to save my soul, whether in the direct religious proselytizing sense, or in the secular "goodwill" sense of making me give up my identity so I can be a properly generous and kind person.

Contrary to the assumptions both within the Jewish community and by outsiders, this whole business has got much easier since I started dating people who celebrate Christmas. My husband's family definitely celebrate Christmas-3, the genuinely secular festival of families. And they invite me because as the partner of a relative I count as family. That's all there is to it, there's no secret proselytizing agenda, they're not Christian at all nor trying to persuade me to join their religion, and they're also not trying to persuade me that the imperative of peace'n'goodwill means you have to assimilate to Christian-flavoured culture. And my Christian partners definitely celebrate Christmas-1, the actual religious festival. Because we are generally careful to respect each other's religions, I'm able to join in as a guest and a loved member of the family, in just the same way that they join in with Shabbat or Pesach or other Jewish festivals. On a broad historical and social level there is of course a power dynamic, but for our particular polycule the relationship feels reciprocal and symmetrical. So yes, I can confidently say in response to Siderea's post that I have no problem with religious Christmas-1 or family-centric Christmas-3. I have a problem with Christmas-2, but it's a problem I can't talk about because what kind of monster objects to kindness and goodwill?

OK, but now Christmas is going to happen during a pandemic. And now I'm going to be a bad minority and say that I do in fact have negative emotions about Christmas. I am extremely fearful of Christmas and the Christmas season, and I am pretty angry, actually, about the way Christmas is being handled politically and discussed on social media. I think siderea's three Christmas model is a useful frame for thinking about how much of a mess we're in.

It is an extremely bad idea for the entire country to spend a month or more flocking to crowded shops and eating celebratory meals in pubs and restaurants. It is an extremely bad idea for everybody to travel all over the country to visit their relatives, to gather families in a way that will mix the older generation with kids who have been in school and young people who have been in massive infection hotspots on university campuses. And the purpose of this travel and mixing is for people to spend hours indoors together cooking and eating festive meals, giving each other hugs, and generally behaving in the most infection-spreading ways possible. This seems absolutely obvious, except that nobody wants to accept the factual reality that it's incredibly dangerous, because Christmas is the season-of-goodwill and restricting Christmas is like restricting kindness and love.

I've seen several Christians commenting that it's not possible to cancel Christmas, no government restrictions and no virus can stop them from celebrating the birth of Jesus in their hearts. This suggests that pure Christmas-1 is mostly ok, though I imagine it will be hard to be excluded from in-person church and the musical elements that are an important part of Christmas ritual for many people. But I think the people who are satisfied that nothing can cancel Christmas aren't really thinking about Christmas-3, the festival of families. Not being allowed to spend time with your family at a significant time which should be about togetherness is really, truly a hard thing for many people. OK, for many, Christmas-3 isn't the real true Meaning-Of-Christmas, because the Meaning is either Christmas-1, Jesus' birth, for religious Christians, or Christmas-2, peace and goodwill, for secular people from Christian-influenced culture. I think, as an outsider, that it's a mistake to downplay the grief of being deprived for Christmas-3 just because it isn't officially defined as the real meaning. Further, people don't necessarily think very clearly about the three Christmases being separate things, so being deprived of family gatherings or present shopping or parties may in fact feel like being deprived of one's religious holiday or season of goodwill.

So far, so analytical. The reason I'm terrified and angry is because there's so much magical thinking going on. Literally, lots of people think of Christmas as "magic", all the cultural stories about Christmas-2 especially are about how kindness and inclusion and generosity create "miracles" and fix all problems. So it's not surprising people therefore find it impossible to hold in their heads the idea that Christmas could be dangerous or harmful. And government messaging is encouraging this. The suggestion of a "Christmas Truce" like the romantic idea of the break in fighting on 25 December during WW1, as if you can make a truce with a virus. The press releases saying, we're going to have to relax restrictions for Christmas because nobody would be able to bear staying apart from their relatives and would all break any restrictions imposed anyway. Hint hint, we're totally expecting you to do your patriotic duty to the season of goodwill by ignoring any safety precautions. And please spend lots of money proving how much goodwill you have while you're at it.

I'm not actually particularly annoyed that Christmas gets priority over minority festivals. Because it was better for us to be mandated to stay home for Rosh haShanah than it is for Christians to be nudged and encouraged to infect each other for the sake of some nebulous concept of goodwill. I wish Eid gatherings had been cancelled through a sensible process including a parliamentary debate and plenty of notice and clear information about the restrictions, not through a Twitter announcement at 10 pm the day before the festival. But I don't wish Eid had been allowed to go ahead because it's a special day so we should suspend public health measures for it.

Don't even get me started on the absolutely disastrous plans for sending students all over the country so that they can be home with their families for Christmas (because obviously all students are 18-year-olds who are missing their mums, and all students celebrate Christmas in exactly the culturally prescribed ways). But between 'send students home' week from 9 December, and 'suspend all public health measures' because of the magic of Christmas, I'm honestly thinking that I need to completely shield at home for the whole of December and possibly into the new year. And, well, I'm someone who can, I'm not being forced to work in retail or hospitality because you can't have goodwill without 50% of annual income generated during December.

Call me a Grinch if you like. But this year I'm staying home, and I'm virtually attending Limmud so I can have three days break from people who want to drag me into their peace'n'goodwill.

Comments

[damerell]

I've a strong suspicion exactly the same people spreading conspiracy theories about mosques being used in lockdown 1 are now the ones proclaiming that they're going to get a dozen people in to eat turkey and the law can't stop them.

I like Christmas 2/3 but only at Christmas; I regret Guy Fawkes and Halloween losing their valiant rearguard action against Christmas in October, and when I am El Presidente Christmas will not be permitted before, say, mid-December.

[liv]

Yes, the racism is not in cancelling Eid but keeping Christmas, the racism is in treating Muslims as dirty foreigners deliberately spreading disease (without any evidence about whether anyone did actually celebrate illegally), but white people as nobly standing up for their freedom by encouraging big gatherings during a pandemic.

I think I would mind commercial-Christmas a lot less if it lasted a few weeks rather than most of a quarter. I do realize that it isn't possible for everybody to fit in their major present shopping trips and their parties with various different social circles into the actual 12 days of Christmas, but Christmas lasting November to January makes it wearing.

[shewhostaples]

Mm. Yes. That's a helpful way of looking at it. I find Christmas-2 interacts very unhelpfully with my mental health (I simply cannot be that cheerful for that long!) and I deal with that by leaning hard on Christmas-1 - or, rather, because Christmas-1 is the 25th December, on Advent. Which is basically a religiously sanctioned time and space for acknowledging that it's miserable and cold and the world is not as we might wish it.

Christmas-3 is a reasonably big deal in my family - but it's sufficiently large and geographically spread out that we haven't expected to be 'all together' by any definition for the last decade at least, and it's involved some form of electronic connection ever since. So me and countertony staying at home by ourselves is by no means unprecedented. I do see that it's going to be difficult for a lot of people. I wrote a post on my walletname blog a while ago which I'm happy to share via DM if anyone's interested, on the understanding that people don't link this handle with my walletname in public.

[liv]

I definitely found the notion that Christmas is actually several different things really helpful. And not even actually at the same time. It's interesting that you avoid Christmas-2 also, and I can see how the liturgical calendar helps with that. I don't personally want to fast during Advent, I just want to get on with my normal life. (Obviously not an option this year!)

I would like to read your other blog about coping with family-Christmas when you're geographically spread out, please. It does feel to me that the pandemic is causing some people to reevaluate some cultural norms, like the idea that "everyone" goes "home" to their family for Christmas is clearly not true, and that disconnect between cultural myth and reality causes lots of the distress siderea describes in her post.

[rmc28]

I am so scared of people all mixing for Christmas. One of my SILs was saying she hoped restrictions would be lifted so all the sisters and offspring could get together, and I limited myself to saying "I guess that depends on how case numbers are going", because that is meant to be the fluffy family sharing-baby-photos groupchat, not the covid-argument groupchat. (But argh: the other two sisters are a doctor and married to a doctor, why aren't they pushing back against excessive socialising?)

I don't do Christmas-1 any more, though it was part of my growing up, and I quite like the "socialising and spending time with people eating nice food" parts of Christmas-2, and for transport-and-autism reasons we've slowly been turning Christmas-3 into "we'll have several smaller gatherings over December and January, and turn into complete hermits for the 25th itself". And of course I can't have any of Christmas-2 or Christmas-3 this year, except my sibling who's in our support bubble, and I'm sad about that, but I also want all my relatives to still be alive this time next year.

[liv]

Solidarity. I wish things weren't scary, but I feel validated in knowing that other people are concerned and it's not just me being blind to the magic.

Doctors of my acquaintance seem to be a weird case. Like, in a way lockdown has never been real for them, because they've been continuing to work throughout the whole period, no matter what restrictions are in place or what the case rate is. So they often don't take the restrictions that seriously; they care about harm reduction but not necessarily what the law or guidance permits or forbids. In another way of course they see close-up and personal just how bad the disease situation is, which can be a reason to be more cautious than the general public. Like, my cousin-the-oncologist actively encouraged her MIL to break travel restrictions and come and stay with her family for second lockdown, but equally forbade my parents from sharing food with my brother when parents had been potentially exposed, whereas I think most people feel that within-household isolation is just unfeasible unless someone's actively symptomatic.

Much support for doing the right thing in the coming months, even though it means missing out on the aspects of Christmas that you enjoy. I think most people actually are going to be cautious, no matter what nonsense the government and social media trolls put out. But I am still annoyed with the nonsense and the pressure on people to take risks.

[wildeabandon]

I actually get quite grumpy about Christmas-2 sometimes, especially the Christmas-2a bits of it, because of the way it conflicts with Christmas-1. I resent that most of the parties and feasting go on during Advent, which is a penitential season, during which I fast.

But it's entirely unfair that I'm allowed to be grumpy about it in a way that you're not.

[liv]

Oh, much sympathy. I think understanding more clearly the ways that Christmas-2 is distinct from Christmas-1 (they're not even actually at the same time, one is mid-October to mid-December, the other starts on 25th) has been really helpful to me with being empathetic to different people. And thank you for understanding the not allowed to be grumpy thing, that does help.

[landofnowhere]

Thank you for writing this! I have a complicated religious background (raised by a lapsed Catholic mom and a secular Jewish dad who was happy to participate in Christmas-3 rituals and gift giving but we also did Hannukah, Mom/I/sister have been Unitarian Universalist since I was 12, Dad passed away about 7 years ago) and am not going to be able to process it all right now, but appreciate this different perspective.

In the US I think this is all being overshadowed by Thanksgiving right now, which is explicitly the holiday of families (and a lot of colleges are ending in-person instruction before Thanksgiving so students can go home then), and actually I've had more sad feels about Thanksgiving than Christmas in my time. I think there's maybe a sense that we're all doomed after Thanksgiving anyway? :-(

[adrian_turtle]

As far as I can tell, Christmas in the US is different from Christmas in the UK. Yes, both include aspects of religion, family, commercialism, and secular universal goodwill...the balance seems different, the effect on outsiders seems different.

[jae]

Preach it, sister. I agree with every word.

-J

[liv]

Aww, thanks for saying :-)

[lethargic_man]

A possible counterargument you could try using (in response to the first half of your post) is: My religion agrees that the run-up to New Year should be the season of goodwill to all and charity; it just disagrees about when that New Year is.

[green_knight]

That is a marvellous way of framing it!

[naath]

See, I am going to admit to Grichyness. I HATE Christmas-3 because my family are aweful and I hate them, and the pressure to dance allong doing pointless crap to no good end. I rather like some aspects of Christmas-2 because it involves people I actually like rather than my vile parents, but not the pressure to shopshopshop (and anyway, you can have your orgy of commercialism online, it's the 21stcentury not 1950).

[liv]

Yes, that was one of the main things I picked up from siderea's post, that Christmas-3 is just horrible for people who don't have happy families. But I also think it's a lot easier to be a proud Grinch if you're an ex-Christian than if you were never Christian. I don't know if Muslims or Hindus are allowed to dislike Christmas, any of the forms of Christmas. I wouldn't be surprised if they experience a similar sort of pressure.

[green_knight]

My Mum and I had shifted Christmas 3 to earlier in December simply because 'I get to see my Mum' was the point, and 'paying four times as much for flights to do it on December 24' was not. These days I mostly celebrate with MIL, but this year, we are strictly shielding, so that'll be a Family Zoom call if we can get it set up, and no travel.

In normal years (e.g. when I actually visit shops) I am fatigued by the time we reach late December, so I understand your hatred of the forced cheer-and-shopping. (Pet peeve: when shops pause Christmas promotions for Halloween.)


If people truly love their neighbours this year and want to spread goodwill for all, they'd stay at home, wear masks, and support/campaign for those in need. I dread how many people will relax their precautions just this once (and once and once and once).

[liv]

I'm sorry you don't get to see your MIL in person this year. I definitely approve of shifting Christmas to a less expensive time; I do that with things like Valentines' Day too. I'm not against the idea of having a day to celebrate romantic love (though that too can be fraught for lots of people), but I resent having to pay extra and fight through crowds and buy a lot of tat to celebrate it.

I strongly suspect that part of why I get grumpy about three months of Christmas promotions is something akin to sensory overwhelm. The lights get flashier and brighter and the music gets louder, and on top of inevitable crowds I find public space becomes close to actively unpleasant for me. And I could live with that for a couple of weeks, knowing that lots of other people find it a big treat, but months of it is too much. But if I actually voice this kind of objection, it's assumed to be because I'm a mean person or someone who rejects British culture. And maybe it is, maybe if I felt part of the whole goodwill season I would be better able to filter out the sensory stuff.

I really like the idea of framing social distancing as a compassion practice. And yes, absolutely, lots of people will forego occasions they love and even seeing people they love for the greater good, but I'm scared of the consequences if even a small proportion don't. And I'm angry at the government and certain sections of the press trying to push people away from doing the right thing, using Christmas as the excuse to push up spending in shops and restaurants.

[worlds_of_smoke]

I am so, so scared too. We are going to have so many people get sick and die, all because of Christian superiority and the stupid belief that we should celebrate the holidays, even if there's a pandemic going on.

[liv]

Much sympathy. Europe is suffering at the moment but the situation in America seems much worse. And there's a whole bunch of extra factors to contend with around very limited labour rights, and the certain types of Christianity having disproportionate political influence, plus the holidays falling in the lame duck period of the outgoing administration. I really hope you and yours manage to avoid the plague even if people around you are taking stupid risks.

[superborb]

It is interesting that in-- the well educated, young millennial US circles that I am a part of, there is a growing acknowledgment / belief that espousing Christmas-2 type views are unacceptable. I've mostly seen people who celebrates Christmas tend to preface with either a caveat that it's of type -1 or -3 now. Of course, not universally true, but it is an interesting trend. I assume it's also backlash against the -2a flavor too.

[liv]

Oh wow, that is interesting. I thought that the festival of love and goodwill couldn't be touched. I expected backlash against religious-Christmas since younger generations are more likely to be conscious that not everybody is Christian, and against family-Christmas because there's a move towards chosen family and away from blood relations automatically being the most important connections. But I'm glad I'm not alone in finding the trappings of celebrating niceness a problem (obviously niceness itself is good, but the way it fits into culture at this time of year is difficult).

[hatam_soferet]

Here I've not seen so much about Christmas itself but more about--they're talking about extending the school holidays to try and bring transmission down, and everyone's trying to figure out how the hell that's going to work. I'm basically assuming people are going to do stupid shit in the name of Christmas and there'll be a spike, because they did stupid shit at Canadian Thanksgiving and there was a spike. Some worthy spirits have been rhapsodising about how we can all go snowshoeing with our friends and flasks of hot cocoa, and the rest of us are staring at three months of it being too damn cold to go out much.

[liv]

Oh, goodness, and I was thinking winter would be hard when we can't socialize indoors, but Canadian winter is going to be a nightmare. Depending on the regulations I can meet up with friends outdoors, it's a bit unpleasant but with enough coats it's ok. But not in serious cold temperatures. You really are going to be stuck at home for most of several months, not surprising at all if people think just one Christmas party can't hurt. And the stats from Canadian TG are really terrifying :-(

[hilarita]

Christmas-1 will be fine, because Easter was fine, and that's literally The Most Important Festival in the Christian calendar. I mean, obviously it will be lacking some things that normally you get in Christmas-1, but it's no different from Easter being cancelled.

I am fine with Christmas-3 being cancelled, because the people I'd normally visit are 70+ and some are extremely clinically vulnerable, so sign me up for Not Travelling And Not Giving People The Plague.

And Christmas-2 is always pretty miserable, because it starts so very very early and is so very very commercial and contaminates nearly every single public place and has nothing to do with Christmas-1 and not that much to do with Christmas-3. I'm totally OK with cancelling that this year. Call me Scrooge and pass me a stick to shake at carol singers. (Though I do like carol singing as a general rule, provided - and this is important - you're doing it in a way that makes it easy for people to avoid you.) But then, I do this All Wrong. I've done my shopping online for years, because I hate shops and pavements full of people.

And I loathe and detest and despise the magical thinking that Christmas celebrations (which encompass more of the population than Eid celebrations) will be OK, while other religions have to sit through their big celebration days shut in their houses, and the mass deception that a virus. Can. Hold. A. Truce. I don't even. OMGWTFBBQ!

I mean, I will still try to do nice things for people I know, because I'm not opposed (in a personally secular but informed by being raised Catholic way) to a season where one tries to do that sort of thing, especially when it's cold and dark and miserable. But then that's a personal choice, and I feel that no-one should be compelled to join in. Because fuck proselytisation. Just fuck it. Actually, don't fuck it - shut it out in the cold and let it wither away and die.

[liv]

Thank you, I find this angry comment really cheering and supportive! I am sure most of my friends, indeed most people, are going to be sensible and not visit elderly or vulnerable relatives, and I have nothing but sympathy for the sadness of missing out on Christmas-3 in order to do the right thing. I'm mostly angry about politicians and journalists encouraging people to prioritize the abstract idea of Christmas over people's actual safety, because at least a few will be influenced by that. The virus truce (even some actual Christian leaders are proposing it) is one of the most terrible ideas anyone has come up with this year and it has some pretty serious competition.

I'm glad you feel ok being Scrooge yet still do nice things for particular people. I'm not sure that's really Scrooge-like, but yes, it is annoying when the nice things and presents are a cover for proselytizing.

[steorra]

I hope you don't mind me rambling a bit about my experience of the different Christmases.

I grew up with Christmas-1 mostly wrapped into Christmas-3: Christmas was family celebrations and traditions that specifically commemorated the birth of Christ. This was part of a larger pattern of Christian holidays being family celebrations more than church celebrations even if we also went to church for them.

When I became an Orthodox Christian (and also lived in a different country from my family for about a decade, though I was usually home at Christmas), this shifted, for Christmas as for other Christian holidays: the church element became primary for me and the family element secondary.

The most important part of Christmas for me became Christmas-1 celebrated at church. Family Christmas-3+1 continued but modified and somewhat damaged - for reasons related to family disharmony that are hard to explain briefly, it never happens on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve anymore, but there is usually a family Christmas get-together some time mid-late December or early January. As a result, for several years recently on Christmas Day after church I've gone home and been alone.

I don't connect with much of Christmas-2. I don't mind other people celebrating it, but it's not mine and I don't "get" it.

~~~

It sounds like the line that's being taken about pandemic Christmas there is quite different than what I'm hearing in the news here. What I'm hearing is a general assumption that Christmas should not involve big gatherings, and questions about whether case numbers will allow small gatherings, with warnings that if we don't get case numbers down, we won't be able to have Christmas gatherings.

~~~

EDIT: I want to add that it makes sense what you say about being less "allowed" to have issues with Christmas. And that's not fair or good.

[liv]

Definitely don't mind, I really treasure when people talk about their different experiences. Thank you for describing this. The massive cultural hegemony of Christmas-2 must cause a few headaches for Orthodox Christians working on a different calendar; I know a lot of my western Christian friends find it troubling that their Advent is filled with party and shopping season, but that's even more the case if you're time shifted and even 25th is in the middle of Advent.

It is also really interesting to hear about family celebrations with specific religious meaning. I experience a lot of Jewish festivals like that and it can be surprising to some of my Christian friends who are used to religious occasions being more centred around church. I'm sorry to hear that that got disrupted by geography and disharmony.

Also it's good to know that people around you are taking the pandemic seriously and not doing the thing that's pissing me off of trying to make Christmas an exception.

[theandrewhickey]

Can't talk about the cultural/religious minority aspect, though I think I understand something of your experience just through neurodivergence causing some of the same pressures (EDIT, which is not to compare marginalisations or whatever. Your experience is your own and distinct.)
But I know *exactly* what you mean about the public health stuff. My dad's had four strokes, has asthma and hypertension, and can barely walk upstairs. He's been isolating himself since March. He's now being pressured by my sister and Mum to see my aunt on Xmas, because "She'll be alone!" I'm just glad he's as stubborn as he is, because I would *not* consider it worth him giving up the years he has left in order that he can spend Xmas with a sister-in-law he doesn't even particularly get along with...

[liv]

Thank you for talking about your experience of Christmas, that's interesting and doesn't come across as at all invalidating. It makes sense that default Christmas is designed for neurotypical people, and friends in my comments have talked about ways they've adapted it to be more autism-friendly.

It is really scary worrying about the pressures on vulnerable relatives. I'm glad to hear your dad is stubborn, but all this taboo on being negative towards Christmas really doesn't help.

[ewt]

When I was (somewhat transiently) ex-Christian, I basically gave up all of those3 forms of Christmas. I observed Christmas-3 only insofar as required to by extended family. I sometimes gave small homemade gifts to others who I knew observed Christmas, but not very often.

I didn't have siderea's terminology to help me, but I do remember conversations in which I said things along the lines of "I have no problem with other people celebrating religious Christmas, but that isn't my observance, and the consumerism and sentimentality of it is really trying and not the point of the religious holiday at all."

I think the most people ever thought of me was that I was a bit weird, or perhaps protesting a bit too much. And I did miss aspects of Christmas-1 (and always found Christmas-3 hard).
I'm so sorry that you have had so much pressure not to say the "wrong" thing about something which affects you so much while not being your own observance or in any way within your control. I think my ex-Christianness put me in a very different position, even as a foreigner.

I'm worried about the pandemic-related consequences of Christmas-2 and Christmas-3, too; less so of Christmas-1, if communal worship is even allowed by then. But at some point with all of this I reached the conclusion that other people, some of whom I care for very much, are going to do what they are going to do, they are going to make some bad choices and there isn't much I can do to influence them. All I can really do is continue staying in.

[liv]

Thank your for reporting that experience. It feels like the three intertwined but actually different Christmases can lead to weird clashes; an ex-Christian might well feel uncomfortable celebrating Christmas-2 or Christmas-3 if those seem too connected to the religious Christmas they no longer believe in. But I imagine there's a lot of the same excuse I hear, it's not really Christian, it's "Pagan", it's just a day for being nice and celebrating families. Equally someone who has a horrible family might find their experience of religious Christmas tainted by bad family gatherings and expectations.

I really like term consumerism and sentimentality as a description of Christmas-2. I was sort of expressing my feelings as, I can't object to the consumerism because it's bad to dislike kindness and goodwill. But actually in some ways I object to the "goodwill" as well, in as far as it isn't real kindness, it's sentimentality. Thank you, that's a really helpful framing.

And yes, of course you're right that I can't control what risks other people take. I'm honestly not that angry at individuals deciding, I've had barely any contact with my loved ones since March, I'm going to make an exception for Christmas. I'm angry at powerful people who could be using their influence for good actively trying to persuade people to take risks in the name of Christmas. And even the arguments against celebrating Christmas carelessly seem to miss the point: we should "cancel" Christmas so that we don't have an extended lockdown in January. No, we should avoid travelling all over the country and spending lots of time indoors with big groups so that we don't kill thousands of people!

I do hope you get a religiously meaningful Christmas, whether that's remote or in person.

[sorcyress]

I really loved reading this post (as an American who grew up with EXTREMELY strong Christmas-3, moderate Christmas 2a (our family likes _stuff_ and also likes thrift stores and used books and so there's a LOT of shopping that tends to happen) and has absolutely zero connection to Christmas 1.)

I fully agree with most of your conclusions -- I am _horrified_ by the magical thinking parts. Do I want to spend Chrimmas with my family like I have always done? Absolutely yes very much so. But it's not safe so we're not going to and it drives me up a wall that other people think that it's okay for them.

[liv]

I'm glad you liked it as a fan of Christmas! I am sorry that you won't get as good shopping or as good family time this year. It's like a lot of things with this pandemic, making the safe but depressing choice is one thing, but you're always affected by other people's risks too. That's why I'm not just not visiting my in-laws for Christmas, but looking at taking additional precautions too.

[lannamichaels]

I hate Christmas.

I have no objection to the Religious Christmas, except for a vague feeling sometimes of the Christmas-Is-Not-A-Safe-Time-To-Be-A-Jew ancestral memory, but that's not, in my actual life, been a problem from the religious Christmas side of things. But the religious side of things is how I always see Christmas, since it's a religious holiday. Like you, I have also been assured that Christmas is a Pagan holiday. I do not see how this makes it a different situation. Like, okay, yes, it's a Pagan holiday.... and? It is still celebrated as a Christian holiday and I'm not Christian. I'm also not Pagan, so I'm not gonna celebrate a Pagan holiday. It being Pagan just adds to the confusion, because me, as a Jew, being told that I should celebrate it... it being Pagan does not solve any of the difficulties that already exist in that direction. It seems odd to me that that keeps getting presented as a solution.

But all the talk about "can't cancel Christmas!", I always see Christmas firstly as religious, so my reaction to all that has been confusion. Of course you can't cancel Christmas. It's on the religious calendar. I assume they'll still observe it, and it's not like that would stop because there's a plague. It'd be the same as I've observed Pesach, Shavuos, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Succos... the religion still goes on. I just haven't seen my family for any of those, and the only services I attended was a shofar blowing while standing on the other end of a parking lot, and I'd have not done even that if I had the breathing ability to blow for myself. But the holidays still happened. Nothing got cancelled. I assume the same would occur with Religious Christmas observances.

But Religious Christmas doesn't make me rabid. I've even got some Christmas music, such as Gaudete, in my playlist, it's quite pretty. All the other parts of Christmas are things that I hate and have never been given a reason not to.

As to Christmas being a season of goodwill and kindness and niceness and peace, I've never seen it. Which doesn't mean it doesn't exist! I assume they are doing it elsewhere; it's not like I tell everyone about the tzedaka I give after all. But in my life, Christians who have been nice and kind and peaceful have been that way all year around; they didn't change into better people once it was December. Likewise, the ones who were jerks did not stop being jerks just because it was Christmas. Christmas is no change in human beings.

But it is a change in culture and grocery stores and endless music and displays and government buildings with Christmas trees and my boss who once made us all sing Christmas songs during the Christmas party at work and fill out quizzes that quizzed us on our Christmas movie knowledge. It's driving home from my workplace and passing by a public park that had trees up and instead of putting string lights on the trees for illumination, they put plastic shells around the trees to make them look like Christmas trees, so driving home was this park that was cosplaying as Christmas for months and months. It's the VLC icon on my computer suddenly getting a santa hat. It's unescapable and I hate it, and I've never in my life been given a reason not to hate it.

If Cultural Christmas would go away, I'd be really happy.

[liv]

Oh my goodness thank you so much for this rant. I really admire that you actually full-on hate Christmas, it's really good for me to see that expressed. I guess part of why I don't feel I'm allowed to hate is because here, there's no real expectation that public spaces or government institutions or workplaces will be secular. I live in a Christian country, there's no pretence that Christmas is just this random spontaneous explosion of fir trees and santa hats. But I have so much sympathy for the sense of this cultural occasion being everywhere and unescapable.

[meepettemu]

What you write is interesting to me. It’s interesting to think about my privilege. I don’t do Christmas really. One of my people is coming up but honestly I would be ok if it was just me. And when people ask me about Christmas I get to have whatever opinion I like. I never really considered it before but I can see it now - thank you.

And my thought about universities and travel is that so far in the three universities I am some how connected to, they have taken the travel window as ‘you said we had til the 9th. We will damn well teach til the 9th and no-one best change any of their teaching to be online. We can’t stop anyone travelling home in the window but please note we are teaching f2f and your absence will be noted and you may fall foul of mandated attendance requirements. PS some of you will be required to stay after 9th where we can’t fit required teaching in’. I think a lot more students are being expected to travel on/around the 9th than as part of any week-long travel window.

[liv]

Thanks for reading and taking an interest. I'm glad you have a low-key or not really happening Christmas that works well for you.

The university situation is so bad. So utterly dire. The government have totally let universities down by insisting on in person teaching, but far too many universities have made a bad situation worse through their responses. From locking students into halls to enforcing attendance policies on people who should be isolating, it's just multiple horrifying trash fires all up and down the country. It's completely horrendous for staff as well; in some ways that's a bit less surprising given that right before the pandemic there was a mass strike over the really bad treatment of staff at all levels by many universities, and none of that has magically got better now all the universities are panicking. But they really do have blood on their hands.

[lilacsigil]

Part of my job is retail, and that has made me an utter Grinch about Christmas forever. However, I'm culturally Christian, if not personally so, so saying this is outrageous and startling, not a display of disloyalty. I have no interest in Christmas 1, actively despise Christmas 2, and with a family all over the world tend to have Christmas 3 at other times of year.

At least here in Australia the goal of being able to celebrate Christmas has been used to accustom people to sudden and hard lockdowns - "if we lock down now, we've got a better chance of a normal Christmas" is how it's been going. Eid and Rosh Hashanah were shut down in my state (well in advance, properly planned) but celebrated in other states that didn't have an outbreak, and Diwali got to go ahead because the lockdown ended.

[liv]

Oh yes, retail workers have every right in the world to hate Christmas. And this year they're being forced to take unacceptable infection risks on top of all the other problems of working through December.

It's interesting that "normal Christmas" was the carrot offered to support the intense lockdowns you went through. It's really impressive how well that's worked, that you were out and mostly back to normal by Diwali. Kudos to both the leadership and the people who did the right thing.

Honestly I do think cancelling major festivals would have been fine if handled sensitively. If it wasn't one rule for them and another rule for us, and if the restrictions were clearly following the science and justifiable and everybody had plenty of notice. We can all understand the concept of making sacrifices for longer-term public health gains. And that includes Christmas; I do accept that the sheer numbers of people celebrating make it more complex than other religions' big holidays, but if we trusted our leaders and they respected us, people would have coped.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

One aregument I've seen in favour of relaxing restrictions for Christmas is that Christmas family gatherings are so important to people that a lot of people *will* break the rules "just this once" in order to have them, and then that will normalise rule-breaking going forward, whereas if people are allowed a legal escape valve, they will be more willing to hunker down and isolate properly in the new year. I think that's psychologically quite plausible. With any restriction, like a diet or an Internet fast, if you cheat once that smooths the pathway to cheating again.

(Presumably this is no more true of Christmas than of Eid or Chanukah or whatever, but Christmas affects far greater numbers, so will have a greater effect on the pandemic)

I've seen a suggestion to let people have family gatherings for Christmas provided they then self-isolate for two weeks afterwards, which sort of makes sense in the same way as the rules about travelling abroad earlier in summer. Or allowing larger "bubbles" of three or four households just for Christmas week, but not a complete free-for-all.

Personally I quite like all three Christmases. But something I found a bit alarming, which ties into your concerns about magic miracle thinking and having a Christmas truce with the virus, was a Christmas advert with a little boy repeatedly and excitedly asking his parents "Do you think he'll come this year?" and them reassuring him "I'm sure he will", and you're supposed to think it's about Santa, but actually it's about his grandad, who he thought he wouldn't be able to see for Christmas this year because of the virus, but in the last scene he turns up at the door and the boy gleefully hugs him. There's some stuff in the dialogue or the on-screen text about believing in miracles. The message seems to be that if we all believe hard enough, we will be allowed to see beloved relatives this Christmas. I think that seems a bit unhelpful and setting kids up for disappointment.

[liv]

Yes, I do find it somewhat plausible that people would just break too-strict rules, so it's better to have more lax restrictions that may actually be kept. But at the same time, back at the start of this the government were saying, we can't lockdown too early or people will get "lockdown fatigue" and break the rules, and actually our late lockdown likely cost tens of thousands of lives and compliance was in fact pretty good even when it went on 5 times longer than initially promised. And then you had the Cummings affair and the government openly telling people, obviously we don't actually expect you to keep these rules if you have a serious reason not to, and messaging since then has been constantly like that, we're reluctantly introducing some restrictions under duress but we don't actually expect to enforce them.

It is absolutely a good point that the sheer numbers of people involved in Christmas make it a different case from the festivals of minority religions. Not all the suggested exceptions for Christmas are pure racism.

But I think in order to get to a sensible balance between risk, and giving people the opportunity to have their genuinely important once-a-year family gatherings, we would have needed sound and trusted policy from the beginning. A circuit breaker lockdown in September might have left case rates low enough to justify a Christmas exception, especially if it was properly explained rather than just vaguely leaked to the press, and properly enforced rather than heavily encouraging most people to ignore it. Consistent and trusted messaging would have opened the possibility of something like, ok, you can have your Christmas dinner but no more than three households and you must isolate afterwards. As it is I don't think that's a viable possibility, because every other set of rules have been deliberately set up to be confusing and people have been encouraged to break them.

As for Christmas adverts, I am absolutely avoiding them. They are everything I find difficult about Christmas, the deliberate blurring of goodwill and niceness and hope and personal connections with persuading people to spend lots of money on stuff. The framing of Christmas as a moral universal rather than a particular Christian festival even though in fact all the iconography is essentially Christian. (Yes, Santa was popularized by Coca Cola but he is also basically a Christian saint.)

[oracne]

Thanks for this, it is giving me a lot to think about. I am not traveling [airplane needed] to see family in December for the first time ever, which I decided months I confess I am glad not to be faced with some extremely religious family members this time!

[crystalpyramid]

The link to siderea's post was really interesting. I totally hate Christmas-2 and the way all the performative parts of it poison my family's attempts to do Christmas-3; it seems like if we just could pay attention to each other and do our-family stuff instead of worrying about what we're Supposed To Do and buying gifts to buy gifts and What Will Other People Think (not that my insular family talks to any other people), maybe we could ever have some family enjoyment. And instead we have the family tradition of one of the siblings ruining Christmas (we take turns) and I just hate it.

For some reason I only started to appreciate Christmas-1 after reproducing. Up until then, the implicit understanding that Reproduction=Hope that seemed to be obvious to everyone else made totally no sense to me. And my family's relationship to religious Christianity (awkwardly grafted onto family traditions after raised-Baptist mother divorced from secular Jewish father) has not worked super well for me.

Season of Goodwill

[(Anonymous)]

The ultimate comment on Xmas-2 and Xmas-3 is Tom Lehrer's A Christmas Carol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck-FMAMmCrE&list=PL520FA475863B4C0C&index=26

See, in particular;

On Christmas Day you can't get sore
Your fellow man you must adore
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four

Southernwood

[silveradept]

I certainly wouldn't grudge anyone being Grinchy when people insist on peace and goodwill during a very short time of the year and are hypocrites about it the rest of the year, and that's before you find out that their peace and goodwill is extremely circumscribed and only really truly being offered to the people that think the same way they do. That seems to be a lot of Christmas-2, and Christmas-2a makes that even more of an aggravation. (For as much as I dislike the Charlie Brown Christmas, because it's a lot of Christmas-1 being put in the mouths of children, it does a very good job of describing Christmas-2a out of Lucy's mouth, when she's trying to make everyone believe she's describing Christmas-2.)

I'd much rather have Christmas be Christmas-1 solely, and those who aren't Christians can celebrate Harvest and MidWinter and other such things that mark the passing of the calendar and are just as good of reasons to gather people together for feasting. Plus, if we do it that way, and put the emphasis on being happy around other people, we can let people not have to deal with the pain of Christmas-3 and not put pressure on them to be with family unless they really want to.

I'm lucky in that I get along with family, but being across the country from them means that most of our time spent together and in celebration is by distance and telecommunication, and that's okay. I do miss out on a lot of things by not being able to go back there, but I'd rather keep myself and everyone else safe so that we have more times together in the future.