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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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? :-(

[jae]

Preach it, sister. I agree with every word.

-J

[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).

[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).

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[shewhostaples]

I have sent you a PM.

Yes, keeping things at the baseline normal level would be fine with me!

[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.

[yrieithydd]

Yes, this is where I am. I hate a lot of Christmas 2 especially Christmas 2a and get very grumpy about it. I love Advent. I'm also very unimpressed by the privileging of Christmas (in whatever sense) over any other community/religious festival. The Eid shut down was particularly awful.

And the unthinking Christian dominance is something we need to repent of and change, though the secular and religious aspects of this are different. As a Christian I have major issues with the right's "Christian heritage" language, but also recognise that the church has major issues in our history and the present.

I'm also bracing myself for losing my favourite bit of Christmas 1 (Midnight Mass)* while the people are allowed to do all sorts of things which strike me as worse from a transmission point of view.

*various clergy of my acquaintance are suggesting that though public worship will probably be allowed, there might be a 10pm curfew

[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]

It does seem to me like a lot of the demands to respect Christian heritage aren't very helpful to actual Christians. I really hope it doesn't work out that Christmas shopping is prioritized over your actual religious celebration, but it wouldn't surprise me. I don't believe in curfews as an infection control measure, but moving Midnight Mass seems especially hopeless; it's not like worshippers are going to get drunk and start behaving badly if you get to have your service at its proper time!

[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.

[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.

[adrian_turtle]

Even before the pandemic, some churches in the US moved "Midnight Mass" to earlier in the evening. I saw signs in front of churches saying things like
"Merry Christmas!
Midnight Mass 9pm
Christmas morning 11am
Everyone is welcome here!"

There's a Jewish tradition of having a midnight service the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah. (It's called "selichot.") My own synagogue shifted it earlier a few years ago, so people wouldn't have trouble getting home on the bus. And this year we put the whole thing online, and it was nice in some ways to have more people join us.

[liv]

Sorry to hear about your Dad. I think siderea's writing is really helpful because so many people are complicated and are going to get bruised by the assumption that "everybody" spends a wonderful happy Christmas with their family. Because even the best families experience bereavement, let alone all the other ways families can be complicated.

I am sitting here being horrified by Thanksgiving, and the way that preventing even more virus spread has somehow become a culture wars / politically polarized issue. It makes sense that Thanksgiving is going to raise these kinds of issues even more intensely because it's explicitly a celebration of families, there isn't the confusion with shopping or religion or general positive-ness. I expect it probably is in some ways an assertion of the dominant culture too; I'm not American at all, much less Native American or African-American, but I am not totally comfortable with the pro-colonialist mythology.

Here, Halloween is a small deal, and Thanksgiving doesn't exist (though some retailers are trying desperately to convince Europeans that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are somehow relevant here), so basically from mid-autumn onwards everything is all about Christmas.

[liv]

Aww, thanks for saying :-)