a dream

I awoke this morning from a VERY odd & amusing dream.

We were at something between a street fair and the Five & Diamond sale I recently went to (check out Five & Diamond - they sell insanely expensive gear for post-apocalyptic circus performers - I would buy everything they make if I were 100 pounds lighter and way richer - almost nothing in there sells for under $120, most of it over $200). I was trying to find a garment that both metaphorge and I could wear because everything was so expensive. metaphorge was elsewhere hanging out with darkmoon and merovingian. I remember looking through racks and racks of distressed leather garments, considering holsters and garters and vests and antiqued Western-style floggers with agate inlaid handles....

merovingian had bought a poster about Atlantis that showed a lot about their local industries. metaphorge found the poster so insanely inspiring that merovingian gave it to him and went to buy another for himself.

Somehow this inspired metaphorge to think up the idea of selling crackers with peanut butter to finance our space travel and move to Caprica. We had to move because Earth was getting too fucked up. He had come to me to bless this new proposition, and talk about logistics.

When I pointed out that there are already prepackaged crackers-and-peanutbutter things for sale, he said, "no, but these will be *gourmet*!" in a very convinced-he-was-right way. He was not joking at all.

Merry Christmas & All That

Time for a funny cat picture! It's not even my cat, but this amuses me greatly: http://twitpic.com/v6k12

Over the last few years, I have been trying to come to an understanding with Christmas. I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this holiday which I will explicate in great detail below.

On the one hand, I am not Christian: Christmas is not my religious holiday. I like the Christ myth, and yet I don't really feel like we've been saved from anything - for a good dose of this, check out the news of genocides and misery across the globe. I also don't personify God. I have a pretty well defined concept of the divine, and it is not anthropomorphic at all.

I also hate most popular Christmas music. My first job ever was working in a card and wrapping paper store over Christmas. This has given me a lifelong snobbery about cards and wrapping paper (I like elegant and colorful, usually do not like "funny" or cheesy), and such an overdose of popular Christmas music that it used to make me flee stores.

I've been listening to classical music radio in the car lately, and they've been playing some classical Christmas music (which is nice - this is the Christmas music I actually like since it's not an overdose of schlock). The lyrics are often very peculiar to me - a baby is born and now we are all saved from Satan, o let us adore him! What? Really?? Because I still see a whole lot of "Satan" (or at least, what I would define as evil and against divine love of creation).... Similarly, it's hard for me to think of this as "the most wonderful time of the year." I like parts of the Christmas season (see later in this post), and yet I still see Spring as more wonderful.

The other thing I genuinely find unpleasant about Christmas is that it makes January seem deeply depressing. I have called January "the long, dark Monday of the soul." After a festive holiday season, January feels like every awful grey "back to work" stereotype. There's nothing to look forward to until April (with the exception of PantheaCon & annual visit from witchchild), and it's hard not to get deeply depressed every year. Part of me wishes I could avoid celebrating entirely, because then January might be less of a lifeless hangover.

On the other hand, I've grown up celebrating a secular Christmas, and I love any excuse for twinkling lights at night, spiced warm drinks, singing songs, cooking extravagant food, and exchanging gifts with people I call family. I love wrapping paper, and wrapping presents with gorgeous layers of colorful paper and ribbon. I love Christmas candles (as a kid, I was utterly fascinated by the giant white pillar candle with embedded fake holly - how did they get that in there?!??). I love ornaments that provide a sense of family history.

When I was little, so many family members gave me ornaments that I had my very own (smaller) Christmas tree in my room as a kid. The first time I stayed up till midnight was by the light of one of those trees, and I remember loving the warm glow of the lights in my room to fall asleep to. My mother labeled all our ornaments with the names of who they were from and to, and what year. Some day, I will go through all of them and cry at my mother's handwriting and miss her, and remember things I had otherwise forgotten.

Favorite ornaments from my parents' tree: precious hand-blown glass icicles (like the ones here), glass-encased miniature scenes from the nativity (a shepherd and sheep, three wise men, Jesus in manger, etc.).

Every year growing up, our Mormon neighbors (as opposed to the other side, where we had Polish neighbors) would bring us a Christmas pastry that was sort of cinnamon bun but vastly vastly better (I don't like regular cinnamon buns). That was always breakfast on Christmas. Other memories: every year, my mother filled the bottom half of my father's stocking with malt balls. I don't know why, but I usually continue the tradition and get Dad malt balls every year.

The only real holiday food tradition we had is that every year, my beloved great Aunt Ruth would make divinity. I miss her. She was my favorite relative for a long time. My dad's father's sister lived a block away from my grandparents in South San Francisco. She had been married, and her husband had died before I was born. She kept house for several cats, cultivated beautiful roses, and did the best kind of volunteer work at her church. She pretty much kept their food pantry running. She was the best role model for attitude and health in old age, kind and spirited and driven. She made our Thanksgiving cranberry sauces (yes, plural!) and the Christmas divinity. I try to do the same to honor her.

I loved the Christmas tree. metaphorge is sadly allergic to real ones, but we have a small red fake one up (will post pictures later). We have a larger fake one in storage that we'll probably put up when we move somewhere with a little more room for it. As a kid, I remember hunting for the perfect real tree every year, and the day we took to light and decorate it.

I love giving people presents. I am fairly good at gift giving, and I love everything about the process. I delight in picking out the right present for someone, knowing their tastes and preferences well enough to come up with something just right. I love wrapping presents. It's a little harder when the pressure is on to get something by a specific date; I usually work better when I can spend as much time as needed to find just the right thing. Still, giving presents makes me really happy.

Much as it makes me sad that people aren't like this the rest of the year, the "holiday spirit" thing that a lot of people do is also really nice. People at the grocery store last night were smiling and joking with strangers. It was warm. This is what being a person is supposed to be about.

As metaphorge and I have combined our lives, we've been trying to find the traditions that work best for us both. As darkmoon has joined the Hivemind, we have been trying to work out the holiday stuff that she loves too. What are our most beloved traditions, and should we create new ones?

So... as an adult, I've been trying to find a place with Christmas that I'm comfortable with. I have too many happy memories to be one of those dour atheists who hates on everything holiday. I spent a couple of years as a teenager being too not-Christian for Christmas, and mostly that just felt too self-righteous and lonely and sad to keep doing. At the same time, I don't have much of a personal relationship to Christianity (either way - we went to church a few times growing up, but mostly Christianity has felt orthogonal to my life) to really feel like I'm celebrating the birth of religious figure who means a lot to me. It feels very strange and a little inauthentic to celebrate a religious holiday for not-my-religion, and yet it's associated with so many good family memories that I don't want to let it go. Calling it a solstice celebration (and a "solstice tree") doesn't feel like a good workaround for me, either.

At any rate, I am probably overthinking this. I do that.

Merry Christmas to all of you, those who celebrate and those who don't. My Christmas wish is that those I love get the best this holiday season has to offer. May your day (and life!) be blessed with wonderful food, delicious people, and a feeling of magic.

What about you, friends? Do you celebrate Christmas? Why or why not? And for those who don't, how do you feel about those who do? Is Christmas a totally weird tradition for those of you who grew up Jewish or otherwise not Christmas-celebrating? How do you reconcile your current religious beliefs with family celebrations and popular culture?