Making gifts for others, doing something nice for/with them as a gift, or donating something to a cause in someone's name is much cooler than going to the mall to buy someone something. That I can appreciate. Of course, there's nothing wrong with buying gifts, it's just the presurre to buy (and buy a lot) that is really distasteful to me.
I think that it helped that christmas was never MY holiday. I was always going to be on the outside since I was jewish. So I never felt that obligation to buy lots of stuff. And I never felt like there was some idealized vision of what my holiday was supposed to be. There are no hanukkah movies they show each year. The decorations in the stores and the overwhelming amount of christmas music is more oppressive than enticing. So I've always had to invent the rules...
Yeah, that kind of sums it up. The presurre to participate in this idealized tradition that doesn't really exist. It's weird! As we move away from getting swept into that, we are moving towards the creation of our own tradition. I'm guessing that over the next few years we'll be fine tuning it to fit our values and celebrate w/ our chosen familes. :-)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2003-11-25 07:19 pm (UTC)I think that it helped that christmas was never MY holiday. I was always going to be on the outside since I was jewish. So I never felt that obligation to buy lots of stuff. And I never felt like there was some idealized vision of what my holiday was supposed to be. There are no hanukkah movies they show each year. The decorations in the stores and the overwhelming amount of christmas music is more oppressive than enticing. So I've always had to invent the rules...
Yeah, that kind of sums it up. The presurre to participate in this idealized tradition that doesn't really exist. It's weird! As we move away from getting swept into that, we are moving towards the creation of our own tradition. I'm guessing that over the next few years we'll be fine tuning it to fit our values and celebrate w/ our chosen familes. :-)