7 Minor Grievances I Face Every Christmas

Christmas is next week, and, like every year, I feel a flood of conflicting emotions. As an adult, I’ve learned to appreciate Christmas and the Holiday Season as a whole. This is due in large part to celebrating it secularly. Without the religious onus, the whole holiday is a lot more relaxed feeling. Do what you want, when you want, who gives a shit, no one. Pastafarian Holiday lasts from Halloween to the New Year, after all, and it only requires that you have a good time.

However, I was raised in a Christian home by a Christian family that seems like it wants to be super traditional but has a hard time coming to terms with the fact that it’s actually full of very modern, progressive people at its core. So Christmas was one of the big holidays where you have to do all the Christmassy things you’re supposed to do. It was a big affair. I don’t get super fuzzy feelings at Christmas, though, and I haven’t for a long time. And there are some very specific reasons.

1. There are traditions that no one else in my family it willing to do anything about but still expect to happen.

I’m super into tradition. I like there being this thing that you do every year that you can hand down. It creates symmetry and community and patterns. Every year we have Mexican food for Christmas, do family Christmas on Christmas Eve, and a whole host of other little things. In my family, everything breaks down, though, when more than a cursory effort is required to keep a tradition going.

It started with the Christmas tree when I was a kid.

Every year my mom would say these exact words “we’ve got to get the living room clean, so we can put the Christmas tree up.” Okay, she was correct in that regard. I grew up in a house that was perpetually a mess, and yes, to get the tree up, we needed to clean the living room. Except, it wasn’t “we” cleaning…it was “me” cleaning. Fine. Whatever. Par for the course for how things worked the rest of the year. So we’d put the tree up and decorate it. Again, by “we” I mean “me.” Christmas trees are supposed to be a fun family affair, but, no, it was me, sitting in the living room alone, doing it myself while watching Law and Order. Then Mom would come back in from whatever she was doing and proceed to tell me all the places that I needed to move ornaments around because it wasn’t quite right.

By my teen years, I was just done. Her yearly serenade became “We’ve gotta clean this place up so I can get a damn tree up. It’s been [x number] of years since we’ve had one up.” My response was, after putting away whatever three things I had in the living at the time, “okay, your turn.” When I left the house for good at twenty-one, we hadn’t had a tree up since I was fourteen. My sister put one up the past two years because she was living there and HAD to have a tree, but there isn’t one up this year. On the phone last night, of course, I was also met with “I really need to get this place cleaned up so I can have a tree.”

There’s also this thing my Aunt Judy started years ago where we do a photo slideshow of the year and watch it at Christmas Eve. When I was eleven or twelve, I started helping her with it because I was learning PowerPoint and I was “good with computers.” Now I do it in its entirety and have been for very nearly a decade if memory serves. I like doing the video. I got really good with Windows Movie Maker producing it every year. Last year, I finally got a copy of Adobe Premiere, and I stepped up my game. This year I’m going to include a title sequence made in After Effects (if I have the time, more on that later). Getting the pictures, however, is a pain in the ass. People in my family are taking pictures all the time, but getting them from all my cousins is like pulling teeth. And you wouldn’t think it would be hard. Just e-mail me the stupid things. But, no, I have to hound certain people via e-mail every day for a week. Facebook was the best thing that ever happened to me, in this regard. Click. Save As. Done. Then, of course, I get hounded the week leading up to Christmas with “You’re making the video right? RIGHT?”

Ingrates.

2. As a family, we’ve spent far too many Novembers, Decembers, and Januaries in hospitals.

My grandfather died December 12th, 2006 after a series of a dozen strokes starting when I was ten. Before that, he had spent at least five Christmases either in the hospital, neuro rehab, or just getting home from one of the two.The only thing that can make you feel more drained of hope than putting up a Christmas tree in a hospital room is doing it the second time. One New Years my sister got into one of her worst car accidents. Another is when the first seeds of the discontent were sown that would eventually dissolve her marriage. My niece, born about three weeks premature at the beginning of November, spent the first six weeks of her life in the neo-natal ICU, coming home just in time for her first Christmas.

So, the holiday season has a sort of sad magic for me. Good things have happened, (not everything is doom and gloom), but when your most pervasive memories of a certain time of year are bad ones, it’s really hard to break free from that.

3. I stress out about all the stuff I have to make

I tend to make a lot of Christmas presents. I’m, just…weird about presents, in general. It’s complicated.

So my weirdness leads me to making Christmas presents for people quite a lot. One year, everyone got crocheted beanies, scarfs, and/or mittens. This year, Mom, Sister, and Mom-in-Law are getting pillows and tote bags that I designed digitally and had printed via my own Redbubble store (obligatory link). Gran’s getting some updates to the great-grandkid illustrations I made for her a few years ago. In addition, I started doing yearly Christmas cards in 2011 that I hand draw. Then there’s the video I mentioned above….and oh, great spaghetti monster in the sky, just thinking about what I still need to accomplish in the next week is giving me a panic attack. Because of Ren Faire, I’ve been making making making since October, already, and I feel like all I’ve been doing is running out of time for the past three months.

It doesn’t help that I fed a solid week and a half of my life to Dragon Age: Inquisition. I didn’t regret it at the time. Still don’t. But I have to recognize the impact it made on my timeframe.

4. I always seem to get sick.

Early winter (i.e. the rainy season) is when my allergies start acting up, and sometimes I get so sick. I’m super prone to upper respiratory complications, and this year is no exception. It’s like my lungs are filled with cotton candy, right now, but I can’t up the dosage on my chest decongestant or I’ll go into weeble wobble mode. When I was a kid, I couldn’t really handle antihistamines, so there are hours of videos of me at church Christmas pageants standing in the back of the choir rubbing my nose. Oh, man. I just did it. *cough* *hack* *sputter* *sneeze* Excuse me while I go sleep for the next seventy-two hours.

5. Something about Christmas music makes me cringe all over. 

Call me all manner of grinchy insults, I’m starting to really grow weary of Christmas music. Maybe it was all the choir concerts, pageants, and caroling, I did as a kid. I just got tired of it, and the fact that it all stars on Black Friday, now, doesn’t help. Surprisingly, it’s actually the secular music (especially the modern pop stuff) that I dislike the most. I love hymns, just, in general, and the classic Christmas hymns are right up there as some of my favorite things to sing. A good arrangement of “Oh, Holy Night” fills me with the same frisson that “Love, Reign O’er Me” does.  But the pop singer renditions are what you hear on the radio and in stores, so that’s not nearly as fun for me.

For reference, this is my actual, honest to goodness, favorite Christmas song.

6. I’m occasionally wracked with ex-Christian guilt. 

There’s this big mega-church down the street from our house, and I pass by it pretty much anytime I leave the house. A few days ago, they put up a sign advertising their three Christmas Eve church services. Pretty much my entire childhood, even after we stopped going to church regularly, we went to Christmas Eve service to sing hymns, hear the word of God, take communion, blah, blah, blah. We would build Extended Family Christmas Eve around it, and my out-of-town cousins would come, too. It was all very pleasant. When I pass by this sign, then, I feel this little pang of guilt. “I should take Mom to a Christmas Eve service,” I think. “That would make her happy.” But I hate sitting in churches, anymore. Then, when I have kids, Mom’s going to want to take us all to Christmas Eve service, and I’m going to let her, but I’m going to have to handle it with my hypothetical children.

Humanist problems.

7. My mom is kinda shit at buying me presents, I don’t know what to do about it, and it makes me feel really bad. 

There is literally no way to make the above statement without sounding like one of those spoiled brats that complains loudly on Twitter that Daddy got them a white iPhone instead of black iPhone. I assure you, though, it’s more subtle than that and has gotten worse as the years progress. Part of the problem as an adult is that my specific interests have veered so far off into the ether that she’s now completely out of her depth when picking something out for me on her own. That’s fine, and I get it. In theory, I should be able to make up for this by giving her specifics, and we’ll come to an accord and have a pleasant gift exchanging experience. But it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

When I was kid, there were two things I asked for on every birthday and Christmas for, like, six years. Maybe more. A super soaker and an RC car. I finally got the RC car when I was sixteen as one of those “Hahah, we got you a Chevy for your sixteenth birthday” presents, but that was after I had stopped asking. I wasn’t hard to shop for, and I did get some great presents over the years. I was into Harry Potter, Legos, and Greek mythology, so you could pretty much buy me any combination of those things and I would be happy. But when there’s something very specific you keep asking for over and over again and you never get it and you don’t know why, you start to wonder what it is you’re doing wrong. Over the years there have been so many baffling little off the mark presents that it feels like one of those old text adventure games where you know what you’re supposed to do but you can’t get the exact command right. I’d ask for a specific book that I knew for a fact was easily available, and I’d get another book that was the same price if not more that I in no way wanted or needed and would eventually end up being sold to the local book buyback store. She’d get me a shirt that was just not in any way my style, and I would return it to the store and get two or three items on clearance that were much better suited to my taste and looked better on me. The 60’s classics CD collection was all well and good, but it wasn’t the Labyrinth Anniversary DVD I was hoping to receive and was literally at Walmart at that exact moment. It’s kind of laughable…except when it’s not

Second year of college I asked for some herpetology equipment to start keeping a leopard gecko. She got me the tank, light, substrate and few other things, but told me I would have to wait until end of January to get the actual lizard. I was like, “yeah totally. No probs. Thank you.” Then I opened my next present, and it was a $200 rain coat. I had never in my life up to that point and since, ever wanted, asked, or needed a rain coat. We live in almost perpetual drought conditions. It’s not really a thing around here. She got it for me because the last time we were at that store, I had commented on how I kinda liked the pattern of the material. Now, years later, I understand that she probably bought the coat on her in-store credit card, and really was short on the cash that would have been needed for the animal adoption. But I’d like you to pretend you’re nineteen year old me. You transferred to tech school from a university because it was more affordable You’re working part time to pay for most of your own tuition. You’re only asking for a pet because you’re having a hard time making friends at this new school. Then you’re told the one thing you asked for you can’t have while holding a couple hundred dollars worth of I-didn’t-need-this-shit in your hands. It almost feels like an insult. You know what also feels like an insult? Being given a stand mixer that won’t fit anywhere in your kitchen after emailing a certain person the exact make and model of the hand blender you want.  Or, even better, imagine receiving a bunch of little dessert bowls, custard dishes, tiny spoons, and other similar bullshit when you put together a wedding registry for a reason. We didn’t need ice cream shooter glasses for my imaginary dinner parties, Mom (and sister), we needed new measuring cups and some bath towels. Which I got the next day when I returned literally everything she gave us at the wedding shower to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

She got me the exact sewing machine I wanted last year for Christmas, so maybe it’s getting better, but damn, it’s exhausting pretending you like a present when you receive it, then having to make the tough decision as to whether you lie about returning/selling it or let her down gently….again.

5 Falsehoods I Learned in Sunday School

            Every Sunday and Wednesday until about age fourteen we went to church. That was when it started waning down to every other week, then once a month, then barely at all by the end of high school. The church we attended was part of the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination of Christianity that can be particularly conservative even if the pastor is a little more liberal (like ours was until he retired.) We weren’t fundamentalist or particularly evangelical, by any means. We were what I’ve come to think of as “Christian by default” or “American shorthair Christian.” So, though we might not have been the MOST religious, we did all the church “extracurricular” activities: Bible builders, choir, Girls in Action, Acteens, youth group, vacation bible school, etc. All in all, we spent  about ten hours a week, on average, at church. I “learned” a lot about life there.

               Some of these things I “learned,” however, I found to be lacking a certain veracity when I reached adulthood and started to know better. It’s not a question of faith or belief in a higher power or Biblical Truth. That’s subjective and will never have an empirical answer to debate. It’s more like there were little nuggets of information that were passed off as hard, irrevocable truths that life experience showed me to be generally inaccurate. Things like..

 

1. The first time always hurts because you’re breaking the hymen.

                This is just patently wrong and sort of summarizes all the not that awesome sexual education you tend to glean from religious educational settings.

                Other gems include:

• Virginity/chastity has inherent value (especially for girls) and makes you a better person
• As a girl, you’re somehow more responsible for not going “all the way” because boys are worse at controlling their hormones
• There is such a thing as “evil” copulation (e.g. homosexual, non-procreative, pre-marital, multi-partner, etc.)
• Girls shouldn’t “tempt boys to sin” by wearing “sexual” clothing (yeah, this was totally a thing)
• Condoms don’t “actually work,” hormonal contraceptives are pretty much abortions in pill form, and SO MUCH other dangerous misinformation about STD and pregnancy prevention.

             Even if there are things you never explicitly believe to be true, you can internalize a lot of sexual and romantic dysfunction if you take that kind of advice at face value. And it all traces back to the underlying belief that sex is icky and evil…unless you’re doing it for God.

 

2. Atheists are literally the worst human beings on the planet and will actively try to pull you from the righteous path.

                I have a distinct memory of a conversation I had one time with a guy two years older than me in youth group. Under the guidance of the youth minister, he was prepping himself for “Christian arguments against atheism.” Basically, this consisted of memorizing a list of common atheist arguments against Christianity and the scriptures you should use as rebuttal. He was an apologetic in training. I was raised up with the notion that atheists weren’t just amoral, spiritually defunct, pseudo-humans that would always try to test your faith, but they could, also,  be swayed back towards the arms of Christ with proper application of the gospel. Supposedly this would work with any and all non-Christians.

                That’s totally not how any of that works, obviously. I’ve never met a true gnostic atheist who “went back.” When I still identified as Christian, neither I nor anyone I knew was ever specifically targeted by a non-believer for any kind of religious dissuasion even when we, ourselves, were on evangelical errands. Then, considering morality doesn’t break down in the absence of Christian sacred texts, it seems straight up wrong, and dare I say un-Christian, to demonize people with different belief structures. Or maybe it’s the most Christian thing ever to do that. I don’t know anymore.

 

3. Anyone who isn’t Christian just hasn’t read or doesn’t understand the Bible.

                Yeah, because the Bible is such a perfect piece of literature in every aspect, that there is literally no way someone who has ever read it could conceivably deny it’s truth for even an instant. We can just ignore the fact that it frequently contradicts itself, has a number of translation errors and ambiguities, and, at one point, had canonical issues worse than the Star Wars Extended Universe. These things don’t necessarily diminish the overall message and poetry of the Bible, but it does make it strikingly clear that the text itself is a construct of man and, therefore, limited to the same constraints of imperfection that man is famous for. Reading the Bible extremely closely is generally how a lot of intellectuals, in particular, turn AWAY from Christianity. They read it, go “wow, totally not completely okay with all this,” then go about their merry way.

                Funnily enough, I don’t recall any Sunday School lessons on why writings from other religions were less Truth-y than the Bible. Either no one felt the need to defend the Bible against other holy books, or someone realized that if they ever showed young people how similar the Quran and the Bible can be they might, heaven forbid, start questioning their absolute divinity.

 

4. You can be the harbinger of someone’s salvation literally anywhere: in line at the bank, at a carwash, outside an abortion clinic….wherever.

                I coined a word for this in college: Chick-fil-A evangelicals. One of the hallmarks of big youth gatherings were testimonies about how “teenagers just like us” were leading people to the Lord on a daily basis. Because, you know, there’s a quota to fill. A solid half of these stories started with “I was in line at Chick-fil-A when…” And it was always Chick-fil-A, for some reason . I was taught that a “good Christian” was always ready to teach the word of Christ. The purpose of Bible builders was so that you knew the scriptures well enough to spread the Word verbatim. Asking the person behind you in line in the cafeteria at school whether they’ve accepted Jesus into their hearts was considered a legitimate tactic for bringing someone into the flock.

                Here’s the thing. 31% of the world population identifies as Christian. It’s the majority religion in 2/3 of the world’s countries. A fat  lot of people are already familiar with at least the basic concepts of Christianity. As a kid, my question grew into: who the hell are these people actually saving? I know we’re supposed to be “fishers of men,” but I think the nets are full. I’ve always found it hard to feature someone raised in Islam or Buddhism or Shinto being flash converted at a bus stop by a sweaty kid with a dog eared version of The Teen Action Bible. The neo-pagans, non-theists, and Wiccans I would eventually meet already fell out of Christianity with nary a regret, so there’s no way those folks are going back. So who’s left? I sort of figured it out after listening to enough of these stories of successful proselytizing. The people they’re saving with one conversation are probably those that were DCAB (Designated Christian at Birth) and either never really strictly adhered to the tenants of the faith to begin with or degenerated into a “life of sin.” Having at one point been a young Christian that got baptized because you were “supposed to,” I feel confident in broadly presuming that pretty much all of these speed date salvations aren’t the result of the glowy love of Jesus pouring into someone’s heart all at once. It’s guilt, a desire to conform, or a desperate need to feel divine forgiveness that leads the people in these kind of situations to allow themselves to be “saved.”

                I always thought the stories of people brought into the fold through extended witnessing and carful study were a lot more effective.

 

5. You will be persecuted and reviled for being a good Christian and face struggles defending your faith.

                This was one of the first things I realized was probably not quite all right, and it still irks me the most.

                Yes, there is a history of Christians facing persecution. Yes, there are parts of the modern world where Christian churches are burned down and missionaries are killed. Indeed, Christians, as a group, have faced death and despair just for practicing their religion. So have Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Serers, Baha’is, Atheists, Druids, and a great multitude of other formal and informal religions in different regions and points in history. Catholics and Protestants have killed each other. Shia and Sunni have killed each other. People, as a whole, have an exceedingly hard time being civil to those that disagree with them. Every religious, racial, and/or ethnic group has suffered and/or been enslaved at the hands of another at some point somewhere. Pretty much no one group has historically clean hands.

                And yet, there’s this huge, pervasive persecution complex among certain groups Christians in the U.S., in particular. When eighty-three percent of your countrymen and your leader share your core beliefs, major religious holidays are also federal holidays, and some levels of government will gladly fund public displays of your faith you can’t claim your country is part of some kind of systematic persecution of your religion. 

              I was told growing up that I would be mocked for praying in public and ridiculed for fasting. That going to See You at the Pole was a brave thing. That I might feel the desire to hide my church involvement from my peers for fear of incurring their disdain. But I had to be strong! For God! For faith! For Christ!

Bullshit. I think the girl I knew in college whose car was tagged with anti-terrorist graffiti because she wore a hijab might have a different perspective on things.