Don't stop Mark. I enjoy em.
Mack > > but now, for me...there is a simple beauty to be found at this time of > year > > that has to do with putting up lights & gathering together with friends & > > family during the dark & colder winter months... > > Well it's pretty obvious that I was raised to believe that Christmas is a > very special time of the year. Not only my maternal grandparents but my > mother also worked very hard to make it that way. Of course she was a stay > at home mom & times were very different. I certainly do realize that there > are many people who did not have the same childhood experience that I did. > I also understand how people who were raised with it can come to hate > Christmas. There is no magic exemption granted to December 25th that bad > things will never happen to good people on that day. A very dear friend of > mine & Edward's died on Christmas Day in 1991. His partner who just passed > away a few years ago could never completely enjoy the holiday again. My > first Christmas after Edward died, I debated whether I wanted to put up a > tree (one of my favorite things) but somebody said to me 'Do it. You'll > feel worse if you don't.' They were right. I made up my mind that I wasn't > going to let Christmas be ruined for me. But that's me. Other people feel > differently, I know, and they have a perfect right to those feelings. If > Christmas ain't your thang, the heck with it. > > Christmas Day when I was a kid was spent with the Scotts and that was a very > different experience from Christmas Eve at the Thiems. We would go to one > of my aunt's house. The men would sit in front of the tv, drinking beer & > watching football while the women worked on getting dinner ready in the > kitchen. After dinner there was usually a poker game. There was always > plenty of alcohol at the Scott family Christmases. I remember there was > this couple that my aunt would invite every year, friends of the family. > These people were definitely alcoholics and as my female cousins got older > they began to complain that the husband got 'too free with his hands with > the girls'. Certainly there were one or two of those Christmases that were > tainted by hurt feelings or anger, usually as a result of people having too > much to drink. The Scotts are a sometimes overly sensitive bunch. But I > loved those family gatherings as much as the Christmas Eve parties at my > mom's parents. The Scotts are more demonstrative & expressive of their > feelings than the Thiems. I would usually spend Christmas night at my Aunt > Doris's house, playing games with my cousins til after midnight. They lived > in half of a run-down duplex and partly because Doris worked outside the > home, she really didn't do much in the way of house-keeping. The place was > always a mess. But I loved the time I spent there. > > So I have a kind of running conflict in my psyche, I guess. My dad's family > were blue-collar people, oftentimes blunt and quick to anger but they were > also affectionate & open. I think of the Scott family gatherings as being a > lot more fun than the Thiems. By the time I came along, the Thiems were > upper-middle class people, my grandparents being fairly well off. They are > much more reserved than the Scotts and more inclined to be aware of class > distinctions. The result is that I like the nice things that money can buy > although I have an unfortunate tendency not to take as good care of them as > I should. I also enjoy music and the arts. But at the same time I am > suspicious and sometimes judgemental of people who have money or who are > more knowledgeable about cultural things than I am. If anything or anybody > seems remotely pretentious to me, I tend to dismiss it or them outright. It > can be an unfortunate tendency. > > But back to Christmas. I was getting to the point where I was getting way > too stressed about it and enjoying it less every year. Finally I decided to > scale it back. Why make yourself miserable? Find ways to make it simpler & > be able to relax and enjoy it. Of course I don't have kids and I can > understand how it's more difficult to do that for people who do. I know > that some people also feel pressure to make Christmas into some kind of > idyllic family celebration because their own parents (their mothers in > particular) seemed to be able to do that. Life is too complicated nowadays > for us to put that kind of burden on ourselves! > > I don't subscribe to any religion so I've sort of rationalized Christmas as > the birth of an idea more than the birth of one man. To me it's the concept > of love & having compassion for one another that I celebrate at Christmas. > I do agree that the commercialism that has been piled all over the holiday > is abhorrent. But I also think there are ways to separate that from the > holiday and find something meaningful in it. > > I was thinking during the last week that I should stop sending these > rambling personal observations to the list. Where did that particular > thought go? At least the NJC tag's on this one. Sorry if I bored you all > silly but now that I've written all of this I feel like it would be a waste > not to send it. Besides, with all of these 'I hate Christmas' posts I felt > like I had to set the record straigtht lest some of you believe that I lived > my childhood in a Norman Rockwell painting. There's more to me than that. > > Mark E.
