Thinking back on some of the holiday parties and celebrations I concocted and hosted, it's hard to believe that I can't get motivated to get dressed (no I am not yet dressed at 4:30 pm on a Saturday) to go to the grocery store to get ingredients to make Christmas cookies. My son and his family are coming over tomorrow afternoon to make cookies and with grandma. I know I'll get it done, and I know I'll be happy to be doing this with my two darling granddaughters and their parents. But then what?
I wonder if my lack of enthusiasm has anything to do with being single? When I was married, I was sort of the torch holder for anything emotional - holiday celebrations, birthdays, milestones. I think I may be from the last generation of women who agreed to do all the emotional shit in the relationships. Maybe that's why I can't get too excited about Christmas, per sey. I am ALWAYS excited to have my children and grandchildren around, I just don't like when there is a reason for gathering other than the sake of gathering.
I find it amusing that my son and his wife celebrate Christmas. You will never meet two more affirmed atheists, yet they are going over board with holiday preparations. It would be just plain cruel to children to ignore Christmas in our culture. My three year old granddaughter is expecting a visit from Santa, mostly because of interactions with other children, story time at the library, and various media forms that she's exposed to. How do you tell a three year old that we don't celebrate Christmas when all your friends and neighbors are?
So, I too, would have to claim to be an atheist. I do believe is some energy that connects us all, that we are all a part of, but I do not believe in some entity that is called God or a God who created the universe. I think that God is really the noun and sometimes adjective for what humans, as their best selves, do. I am a spiritual person - I think that we are more than flesh and bones and understandable thoughts. I embrace and seek experiences that make me feel a part of something larger than myself. I cry when sad and unfair things happen (like my daughter-in-law's inflammatory breast cancer), I dance when I feel so filled with motion and energy that I might burst, I sing when I want to be connected to my truest self without having to think about how to make that connection. Yes, I believe there is a spiritual quality to humans, even all living things. Some spirits are more evolved than others, understanding that the highest endeavor is to treat others as you would like to be treated.
So, my rambling reminds me of some Thomas Merton writings. When I said that the highest endeavor is to treat others as you would like to be treated, I guess we first need to know how we want to be treated. Growing up, I thought I wanted a lot of things. I wanted to live in a big modern house with all the latest furnishings and decorating. This was probably because the first house I remember living in was a 800 square foot farm house that I shared with my mom, dad, brother and sister. It did not have indoor plumbing and was heated by an oil stove that smelled all the time. We did have electricity, and so televisions, so I wanted to live in the Ward and June Cleaver house or Donna Reed's place. I also wanted cute children who were dressed in HealthTex children's clothing. I got those things, just didn't realize so much crap came with it, for me anyway. But I digress from my Thomas Merton thoughts.
Merton was pretty radical for being a Catholic priest. He understood, and shared, that by being a Catholic priest he was able to be supported in his contemplation and writing. The Catholic church, give them credit, did not throw him out when he was writing subversive things about religion. What I was referring to in the previous paragraph is his idea about original sin. He says that maybe we are not born with original sins, it is not an affliction that is cast upon us by the God that so many believe in. Instead, he ponders whether we can think of original sin being our response to the way we were parented and the interactions we had in our very early life. We were not born with the potential to be bad, we were born with the desire to survive. Survival required differing types of actions depending on what our experiences were. Kind of makes me wish I had been having these kinds of thoughts and introspection as a young parent. When children "defy" their parents, perhaps all they are looking for is a way to be the same as that parent. This could be quite a tome, so I'll leave this for readers to consider further.
How the Thomas Merton idea that we create our own "original sin" relates to Christmas (for me anyway) is that Christmas is an experience that many of us in this culture experienced. Even though there were holiday pageants, carols and Santa, I always knew that what Christmas was really about was whether or not my dad was going to get my mom the right present, or any at all, whether it was our turn to go to the maternal or paternal family, how much was in the Christmas Club account, where we would stay, etc., etc. Jesus, who I think was a radical who brought great ideas to light, had very little to do with our real Christmas.
So, now, here I am. Twice divorced and trying to get motivated to celebrate Christmas. Ho, ho, ho. I'm heading to the grocery store. First I have to look up a recipe since I can't even remember who I loaned my damn cookbook to.
Happy Holidays!
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