Deck the Halls : A Very Long Reflection
by NinjaChick
The Holiday Season, it seems, has been thrust upon us even
earlier this year than in past years. The day after Halloween, the very first
day of November, radio stations started playing Christmas tunes here in
Philadelphia. Ads suddenly took on glittery red-and-green motifs, fir trees
were everywhere. Good-will and high spirits fill the air.
For my family, it has always been a triple-dose of the
holiday spirit. Thanksgiving, followed by our own faith’s Hanukah, followed
by Christmas with my mother’s Catholic family. We pinball from home
in New Jersey to my father’s family in Maryland to my mother’s
in Ohio.
When I was little, I could easily get myself in the spirit
of the season. I was going to get lots of presents, right? That was good.
I never believed in Santa and despite being Jewish, we went to midnight mass
more often than we went to synagogue. That always bothered me: it was boring
and I felt like I stood out, so why should I go? We didn’t go to synagogue
at home, why go to a service for a different religion, away from home? I
was always told to stop being selfish, my grandmother wanted me to go with
her.
As I grew older, things began to change, as they do for
everyone. Sometime towards the beginning of middle school, though, I began
to think that puberty was treating me differently than everyone around me.
They seemed happier, less caring, better adjusted to middle school. I alternately
condemned them as stupid or wrote myself off as a social reject, or perhaps
both.
I’d become a bat mitzvah in September of 1999, but
had been distressed by the entire day. The service felt empty and meaningless
to me: the only thing I truly remember of the ceremony was embarrassing myself
by panicking when my rabbi put his arm around my shoulder. I had never liked
to be touched, something assumed to be simply part of my personality. But
that action combined two of my greatest stresses: being touched and being
in front of a large group of people. I started to cry then, and had to take
a moment before I could lead whatever prayer I was saying. The party afterwards
felt equally hollow. These people weren’t my friends, and my family
didn’t know what I was going through inside. I distinctly remember looking
around, at the balloons and the catered food and the DJ, and my eyes settled
on the mostly-untouched stack of envelopes. My synagogue dictates that all
bar/bat mitzvahs must complete a community service project. Originally, I
had organized a clothing, toiletries, and canned goods drive for the people
of Honduras, which had been wrecked by hurricane Mitch. But that had not
satisfied me, so I solicited signatures for Amnesty International letters
at the party. They were pleas to the Egyptian government to release political
prisoners, and I know that not everyone signed a letter. I looked at that
stack of envelopes, and realized that I was so lucky, yes, but horribly spoilt.
We all were. We were sheltered and spoilt, and I seemed to be the only one
to see that.
I held on to all the money I was given from my bat mitzvah;
gifts from friends and family. That Christmas eve, as she always did, my
grandmother gave me a gift of fifty dollars in addition to other gifts. I
took all that money, nearly all the money I had, and made my first donation
to a charity that winter. When we got home, I convinced my parents to let
me donate my money, all of it – more than two hundred dollars –
to Philabundance, a Philadelphia-based anti-hunger charity. It was, I figured,
the least I could do.
When my extended family found out about it, they were stunned
that my parents allowed me to do that. They said it was irresponsible, and
that was my first experience feeling rejected by my family. Mocked. I’d
thought I had done something good: I didn’t need that money. My parents
mostly ended up agreeing, that they should not have allowed me to do that.
Since seventh grade, I’ve spent well near a thousand
hours doing community service. This summer, I ignored my parents urgings
to find a ‘real’ job, as I had already arranged to volunteer with
the American Friends Service Committee. I have had a hand in starting my
school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, volunteered for Philabundance, six local
food charities, my school’s turkey drive, a pet shelter, the AFSC, the
local Amnesty International chapter, the Multiple Sclerosis foundation, the
Relay for Life, the Million Mom March, various other marches on Washington
and local protests, and most recently, volunteered for the American Red Cross.
It always hurts me the most around the holidays. There
are so many people out there, among us, who need help. We talk about tax
cuts and school vouchers here: how do people not see that those are nothing
more than band-aids? School vouches and affirmative action are not the solutions
to the problem, the are solutions to the symptoms. Fix the public schools.
Give them money instead of giving people money to leave them. Don’t
cut taxes for anyone, but make better use of that money. Spend less money
on pointless bureaucracy and more on helping people.
I live in a mostly middle-to-upper-class suburb. People
here are so often blind to poverty, blind to hunger, blind to violence, blind
to problems that “aren’t found here.” My relatives live in
similar suburbs, in Maryland and Ohio. They, too, don’t see this.
Every year, despite not having the budget approved, my
school district allocates a fund, for the families within our schools who
have no money for the holidays. Families on welfare. Families who can barely
afford to put food on the table, to say nothing of nice clothes and a turkey
or ham dinner and maybe even a couple gifts.
My ex-boyfriend’s family was, until a year or so ago,
when his mother got a new job, one of those families. I’ve heard his
stories and seen his pictures. In an apartment – a
‘controversial’ low-cost housing area – just down the street
from one of the most expensive developments in town, they hardly had a Christmas.
They could pay the rent and the electricity and the other bills. But they
got a welfare check every month and they all got maybe two or three gifts
under the tree.
Poverty around the holidays isn’t what most people
think it is, though. They weren’t wretched and miserable, huddled in
a freezing corner. His older sister is one of the best cooks I could even
imagine. She can turn a batch of home-made cookie dough, skimpy on chocolate
chips, into the most delectable, savory creations ever tasted by man. Give
her some rice, some vegetables, a little bit of meat, and some seasonings,
and you have a five-star meal. Created in a kitchen with a second-hand fridge
and no brand names to be seen.
A lot of their gifts were homemade. Two parents, who both
worked full-time jobs, and they both managed to give all three of their kids
things that were clever, practical, and clearly thought-out gifts.
I get gifts from my parents, one a night for hanukah. Then,
I may get something small with our extended family for hanukah. Then, I get
more, and from other relatives, on Christmas. So often, it’s nice clothes
I never wear. I’ve told my parents, and my grandparents, and my aunts
and uncles, in all seriousness, “Don’t buy me anything. I’d
rather you donate that money to a charity or something of the like. Take
the time you’d spend shopping for me volunteering someplace. Please.”
I’ve been saying that since seventh grade, and once has a relative –
my cousin – given me what I asked. He made a donation to Amnesty
International in my name; it was the best gift I have ever received.
My impression of the holidays seems to change the more
I learn. When, in ninth grade, I had my first real history class, Thanksgiving
was suddenly meaningless as well. Because what, exactly, are we celebrating?
Why on this day? Last year, when I was a junior, we read two books by Louise
Erdrich, a Ojibwe writer. I did research, on my own. America, up until the
1970’s, forcibly took native children from their homes, sending them
to boarding school, ripping their culture from them, telling them that they
were worthless as they were. But, of course, Thanksgiving is simply a holiday
to enjoy your family and gorge on turkey and cranberry sauce. Interestingly,
many Indian reservations today have some of the highest poverty rates in
the nation. I wonder how many of them would sit down to a turkey dinner if
they could afford it?
Christmas is celebrating the birth of Jesus. A man who,
according to the Christian belief, dedicated his life to others. Who died
for our sins. Is one of those sins not gluttony? Is another one not greed?
Are we not supposed to, according to the bible, help those who need it? Love
thy neighbor as thyself? Or is that only if the neighbor can afford his own
gifts?
Hanukah has been corrupted. It is a minor holiday, but
has been turned into a “Jewish Christmas”. The oil, in the story,
the miraculous oil that burned for eight times its expected life, is a minor
detail. It’s not mentioned in any of the scriptures. The original
celebration was that oppression, under the Greeks, had finally been lifted
from the Jewish people. No one really cared about the oil that much, since
it paled in comparison to an end to the raping and pillaging and whatnot.
But hey, religion’s about faith, not truth, right? You learned it in
Hebrew school so we shouldn’t question what our rabbi tells us.
I don’t know entirely where this bitterness comes
from this time of year. As everyone else starts to get excited over the holidays,
I head in the opposite direction. It’s not S.A.D, as my mood generally
lifts right after New Year’s (which I think is just stupid). But
there’s so much pain out there. So much suffering, and no one sees it.
If they see it, most people are content to toss a coin at it, then turn their
back.
Problems don’t fix themselves. When you buy a brand-new
pair of Nikes for your cousin Joe, that goodwill is canceled out by Nikes’
slave labor practices. Big festive dinners don’t taste as good when
you know that three years ago, your boyfriend’s family – all wonderful,
kind, deserving people – had no big dinners. Not on regular days, not
during the holidays. They weren’t starving, but they didn’t get
a huge 30-pound turkey and twelve cans of cranberry sauce and two pots of
apple sauce with extra cinnamon. A small turkey, maybe. The injustice of
that is enough to take away the strongest of appetites for me.
Kudos, and apologies, to anyone who has actually read this
long. I’ve already begun my yearly crusade, telling my parents, my
grandparents, not to get me anything. My maternal grandmother is a cancer
survivor. Thus far, she has been deaf to my pleas to not buy me a gift, but
make a donation to the American Cancer Society instead. My need for a new
sweater or nice skirt or another computer game is far less than society’s
need for a cure for cancer. It takes less time than shopping, would mean
far more to me, and would also benefit people other than me.
I’m boycotting the family thanksgiving in Maryland
this year. I’m refusing to go, and instead, I’m going to spend
the day working in a soup kitchen. I don’t want to be with my family,
true. They don’t accept who I am: they deny my past, try to convince
me out of my sexual orientation, tell me over and over that I’m living
my life wrong. But that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing
it because it may be someone’s one warm meal that day. They could use
it more than I could. That’s what’s important, not my discomfort
with my family.
And, if you look at things technically, isn’t that
what the holiday season is about? Perhaps I’m not a grinch, perhaps
I’m what Santa is supposed to be. It’s not about piped-in Muzak
in crowded department stores. It’s about giving. And if you can give
to hundreds, thousands of people in one swoop, isn’t that what the holidays
are about?
Posted 11/16/03