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[personal profile] quesarah
In the previous post, [livejournal.com profile] wafflelips wrote "Wait, I thought holidays were about drunken relatives, family angst, and finding a way to get away from the family."

Well, in my family they're about stressing over the preparation and diverting energy into making five times as much food as necessary. They're about everyone yelling at each other until the meal is over and they can find a place to sneak off. They're about praising family bonds then never making any attempt to connect on anything but the most base level. They're about feeling alone and like a stranger in a house full of people wiith the same surname.

Growing up, I never understood the point of Thanksgiving; after I stopped focusing on getting a bunch of loot for Christmas I realized I didn't understand it either. Everybody talked about family togetherness and spending time together during the holidays. I thought that was a load of bull. In my experience, it certainly was.

It wasn't until recently, when I found a new family of people that I really do connect with that I understood why people travel halfway across the country just to spend time during the holidays. I would travel anywhere to be with these people; I can't say the same for my siblings.

Tonight, two very dear friends will be arriving from Tucson. We'll spend the holiday together, reconnect, talk, eat, and enjoy each other's company. On Thursday I will be very thankful for them and for their love and support.

I get it now.

Date: 2003-11-25 07:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wafflelips.livejournal.com
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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