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The tree's up, the presents are being wrapped, soon to be unwrapped again...
May those of you who celebrate this holiday have a good time; may those of you who do not have your own form of wonderful day.
Light and peace to all, on this midwinter's day.
In about four and a half hours I will have to pry myself out of my nice warm bed, force myself to become awake as well as upright, and drive for an hour in the dark slushy cold -- probably with sleet -- so I can get to the airport and wait for my flight to depart (while praying that the sleety slushy snow doesn't affect my departure time).
Ugh.
There seem to be several stages one goes through in one's life with regards to Christmas and getting presents. When you're a kid, it's all about the excitement and the tree and the presents and trying to stay up to catch Santa in the act, and waking up far too early for your parents' comfort. My brother and I even went so far as to have our toys exchange presents when we woke up at 5am, to stave off the frustration of waiting for the adults to wake up and drink their morning coffee. By the time you're a teenager, the adults are the ones that wait for you to wake up, bleary-eyed and hair standing on end, and you no longer believe in Santa Claus, though you still put out socks and some gifts get labeled "From Santa" in a burst of pure altruism. You know you've hit adulthood when you not only don't mind getting socks for Christmas, you request them. Then eventually you hit the stage of "I don't need anything. Food or books are fine."
I reached that stage this year. I honestly don't want or need anything for Christmas. I have a house that not only has everything I need, it has more than that. Some of it is stuff I've been carting around for years; some of it is stuff that was sent me after my godparents died. The former I've been meaning to winnow down for years; of the latter, only a scant handful of objects has any personal meaning, though much of it is nice (even more of it is not, and was dumped straightaway into donation boxes). The house -- and me -- is burdened with junk and paper and clothes I don't wear and clothes I love but which have worn out. The clutter is tiring and frustrating, instead of comforting. I want things to be simple, to have only what makes me happy and inspired.
I'm feeling that way about the holiday season, too. The holidays have always been somewhat complicated in our family, at least as far as the religious aspects are concerned. There are a lot of small "traditions" in my immediate family -- putting up the tree Christmas eve, putting silly joke gifts in socks and overflow paper bags, laughing at certain odd ornaments as they're unpacked -- but Christmas has always been more about getting together with the family than anything else. (I've been with my parents for every single one of my life.) My mother and I are "lapsed" UUs (meaning, every few years we might attend a church service, but otherwise ignore our purported religious communities), my brother is an atheist, and my father has long been indifferent to organized religion and says little about what he actually believes. We put up a creche or two, but they're more about the wee little animals and the tradition of getting it out each year than anything truly religious. So the spiritual content of December 25th has always been pretty low, as far as we're concerned.
Yet I won't say that I don't feel the pull of the holy during the winter holidays, nor that I am unmoved by the professions of cheer and the twinkling of the lights. Indeed, part of me is deeply moved by the idea of family and friend gathering together to celebrate their bonds, by the rituals of hanging sweet-scented pine and glittering garlands from the eaves and mantelpieces, by candlelight and song, and food and gifts generously exchanged, by the contrast between the cold dark outside and the warmth and light and cheer within.
To me, this transcends the frameworks of established religion, and so I have long been in the habit of wishing people happy holidays rather than merry Christmas. For these are holy days to me, but holy by dint of love and affection, not by creed and sacred texts. When I offer my wishes for cheer and happiness and good fortune, I want all my friends to feel embraced and nourished by them, not alienated and offended. I have friends who are Jewish, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, UU, pagan, and, yes, Christian. Thus far, they have all met my wish for a happy holidays with the spirit with which it is intended: a recognition and celebration of our shared humanity and desire for warmth and friendship during a time of darkness.
So it is with irritation that I hear of people insisting that to offer such a wish is to be insulting or denigrating of their beliefs. They claim that doing so is to reject the spirit of the season, to piss on their spiritual rights. I would argue that this is exactly what they are doing, in demanding that they get special treatment and sectarian attention granted to no one else, in denying the celebration of diverse spiritualities during a time of shared darkness. It is, in a word, selfish. In another, defensive.
To me, a greater attack on our sense of shared humanity than universalism is particularism, selfishness, and greed. In this, I am saying nothing new. People have been complaining about greediness trumping spirituality, about commercialization and secularism and the decline of morals for decades now. Yet I see this as part of a larger pattern. It as if we as a culture were trapped in the greedy years of childhood, when presents loom large and are eagerly anticipated and the family focuses on you, but without the companion joy and wonder and altruism that causes babies to gaze on lights and candles with awe, and small children to write letters to Santa asking for jobs and clothes for their parents, and other children to carefully craft cookies or snowflakes or handprint ornaments for their loved ones.
I will not go so far as to insist that we should all learn to take joy in socks -- even when they are unique and cozy handknitted ones -- nor that we should reject the idea of exchanging gifts outright, but I am troubled by this notion that our holidays -- our holy days -- are most important as excuses for indulging one's greed and selfishness. It is hard enough living through days of darkness; to insist petulantly that it is better to do so proud, huffy and alone than in the company of one's fellow beings is both foolish and mean-spirited. We are all small creatures in the dark, huddling together to keep warm. If we in our pride and arrogance insist on standing alone as special, we will freeze long before winter's end, and it is no one's fault but our own.
I hold up a candle to you, the warm scent of cider wafting from the open door behind me, and I say invitingly, gesturing toward the coziness and laughter inside, "Happy Holidays!"
If you refuse my invitation, and would rather stand crossly outside waiting for a "proper" greeting, well... there's a shovel out there, and my driveway's still rather snowy... You might as well make yourself useful while you're pouting. The cider will be waiting for you if you change your mind. I hope you will.
| Androgynous You scored 63 masculinity and 60 femininity! |
| You scored high on both masculinity and femininity. You have a strong personality exhibiting characteristics of both traditional sex roles. |
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My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test written by weirdscience on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test |
Last seen at Feministe.
New Kid recently posted on feeling guilty about taking a day off from academic work. As I and several other commenters noted, that's part of the problem with academic work -- since it's not neatly confined to a specific time and place (e.g. 9-5 in an office using the in-house office software on the office computer) and since it easily expands to fill all available time, it's difficult to shake the idea that all free time should be spent doing something "productive." Indeed, one of the points of graduate school is to disabuse you of the notion that something like "free time" even exists -- which is why it's always so hard to explain to non-academics why you're not able to spend an hour on the weekend doing something fun, if you're a graduate student, or why a full-time teaching schedule of 9 hours a week does not mean 31 hours of goof-off time, if you're a professor.
The sad thing is, this feeling of guilt does not necessarily go away if you leave academia. If anything, it gets worse, because now you actually do have free time, but you can't enjoy it. Or, conversely, the things you could use to fill up those unscheduled hours begin to look undesirable, because free time does not exist and all activities that should/could happen during them must perforce be "work."
Yes, this is a whacked-out way to view the world.
Below the fold are some of the things I could or should be doing with my free time, and somehow am not. It should be noted that most of them are, in fact, things I like doing or want to do. So why aren't I doing them?
I blame my academic brainwashing.
"This book is waaay too French to assign."
D. remarking on The Possession at Loudun, by Michel de Certeau, which he had been considering having his students read for an upcoming class.
It only seems light, when it's floating in the air, or swirling about your head.
There are now two more-or-less parallel grooves in the snow on the driveway, suitable for tires. The part in front of the garage is more challenging -- we have to do variations on the 3-point-turn to get in and out and I haven't figured out all the angles yet -- so I've hacked a bit away at it, but will need to eat and rest before I go after it some more. (Good thing tomorrow is a weekend!) I'm proud that I got as much done as I did.
Now the snow is turning lovely firey and golden shades as it picks up the light from the setting sun. The neighborhood bird flock is at the feeder on the front porch, the sparrows swarming the perching shelf, bouncing on tree limbs, hopping and pecking in the snow on the railing for spilled seeds. A junco is back-kicking the snow, doing the same. The female cardinal sits demurely to the side, billing a sunflower seed in her red-orange beak. I bought suet at the hardware store when I purchased the shovel; I will have to hang it out for them tomorrow.
The squirrels are huge and puffy and leave great tracks in the snow. One stared at me when I was washing dishes; another was screaming alerts in chorus with the trio of bluejays when I wandered into the backyard -- at me, or at a hidden cat? I'm sure they would like the suet too, but I seem to recall that the suet cage's grill is too narrow for squirrel muzzles. We'll see. They've been polite about the feeder; I don't begrudge them some suet.
At least, it is for area schools. D. still had to get up and go to work today (it's the last day of class), though he chose to make the half-hour walk instead of chancing the drive. According to the news late last night, our area received amounts between 7 and 8 inches. Our little side street has been largely ignored by the snowplows and de-icers (though it's still possible to drive out); our driveway is more alarming. Our garage sits under the back side of the house, so there's a hill between the cars and the road, and it's currently covered in deep snow. Plus, it's gravel, so the surface underneath is rather uneven. I'm going to buy a real snow shovel today (should be fun walking home from the hardware store with it over my shoulder), as cleaning the walks last night with the collapsible one I normally keep in the car was no fun.
Still, it all looks quite beautiful, and it will be good for me to get out of the house and have some exercise.
| You Are Japanese Food |
 Contrary to popular belief, you're not always eaten raw. |
A note to all college administrators and faculty and staff dealing with spousal hires, especially short-term, temporary, adjuncting spousal hires, or equivalent:
Just because the person you hired initially went through orientation, and has been informed about all the various helpful departments, the grading proceedures, the help desks, the faculty web page, the locations of buildings on campus, curriculum requirements, etc. does not mean that the new temporary hire will automatically absorb this information from her partner by osmosis as they sleep.
This person needs her own orientation, too.
That is all.
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