On tradition, or the lack thereof
My family is not particularly religious. And what I mean by that is my Grandmother denounced God in her thirties when her son died shortly after birth. My stepmother insisted that we attend Baptist church on Sundays, meanwhile she drank her youngest daughter into deafness and retardation via fetal alcohol syndrome and her junkie friends ripped off the coin collection my Dad had cultivated since he was 8 years old.
My Dad, far and away the strongest influence on my upbringing, placed value on spirituality and ceremony. He told us about Buddhism and the Qu'ran and Central American Shaman that used vines and mushrooms. When we were little the family would do Christmas morning, and when I got older I helped put on Christmas morning for my younger cousins. My brother always woke up before me, and I remember sleepily watching him sort out the nuts, oranges and chocolate that he'd plundered from his Christmas stocking early in the morning.
About the time I got to be 15 or 16 Christmas went away. It wasn't with a bang or a whimper. We weren't Christian (and hadn't been to church since Dad divorced stepmom when I was 11), my childhood was traumatic and even by then, as now, there are big holes in my memory so I didn't have fond associations of the holiday from which to draw. I remember being confused by the presumption that Christmas was celebrated a certain way by the world around me; as with many of the presumptions of society that were nothing like my life these expectations confused me until I was old enough to learn to discard them. Seeing as how Christmas had never been really meaningful to me it didn't mean much when I stopped observing it.
My brother is four years older than I am. He had all of his childhood and all of mine to form emotional connections to holidays. It is because of this time spent, and because of his loyalty and love of simple things, that he has had a much harder time letting go of what he thinks the holidays should be. Ditto for my Mother. For whatever reason I have for most of my teenage years and all of my adult life had no problem examining expectations and choosing to embrace them or pitch them and replace them with my definition of what is important.
As callous as that sounds even to me, I still place an extremely high value on spirituality and ceremony. I also place an extremely high value on consideration. You can bet your tinsel tail that if I observe any holiday I've thrown open the hood and looked at it, messed with the gears and made sure the fluids were to my liking before I even considered keeping it. I think long and hard before I bring anything home. Anything.
This whole essay is an exercize in me trying to untangle how I feel about having my traditions diminished by someone I care about, embracing the traditions of someone else because I love them, and trying very hard to be understanding to everyone including my Brother and Mother, who are both having a hard time anyway right now made even more toxic because of the stupid holidays. It feels like I'm circling ever-closer to some kind of realization. And I'm acting out in weird ways, like trying to patch the hole of where society's tradition have let down my family by sending them money since I cannot be there. What a fucking thoughtless act.
At the end of the night last night after thinking myself into an Emerson, Lake & Palmer- fueled crying jag mostly I just wanted to go camping.
I suppose that is the tradition I value most that I have carved for myself: the Tom Waits Christmas. Getting off of work and getting as far away from the city as I can, having a drink in a bar in the middle of nowhere on Christmas eve, and going hiking Christmas Day away from people and presumptions. I won't do that this year. Maybe I miss it.
My Dad, far and away the strongest influence on my upbringing, placed value on spirituality and ceremony. He told us about Buddhism and the Qu'ran and Central American Shaman that used vines and mushrooms. When we were little the family would do Christmas morning, and when I got older I helped put on Christmas morning for my younger cousins. My brother always woke up before me, and I remember sleepily watching him sort out the nuts, oranges and chocolate that he'd plundered from his Christmas stocking early in the morning.
About the time I got to be 15 or 16 Christmas went away. It wasn't with a bang or a whimper. We weren't Christian (and hadn't been to church since Dad divorced stepmom when I was 11), my childhood was traumatic and even by then, as now, there are big holes in my memory so I didn't have fond associations of the holiday from which to draw. I remember being confused by the presumption that Christmas was celebrated a certain way by the world around me; as with many of the presumptions of society that were nothing like my life these expectations confused me until I was old enough to learn to discard them. Seeing as how Christmas had never been really meaningful to me it didn't mean much when I stopped observing it.
My brother is four years older than I am. He had all of his childhood and all of mine to form emotional connections to holidays. It is because of this time spent, and because of his loyalty and love of simple things, that he has had a much harder time letting go of what he thinks the holidays should be. Ditto for my Mother. For whatever reason I have for most of my teenage years and all of my adult life had no problem examining expectations and choosing to embrace them or pitch them and replace them with my definition of what is important.
As callous as that sounds even to me, I still place an extremely high value on spirituality and ceremony. I also place an extremely high value on consideration. You can bet your tinsel tail that if I observe any holiday I've thrown open the hood and looked at it, messed with the gears and made sure the fluids were to my liking before I even considered keeping it. I think long and hard before I bring anything home. Anything.
This whole essay is an exercize in me trying to untangle how I feel about having my traditions diminished by someone I care about, embracing the traditions of someone else because I love them, and trying very hard to be understanding to everyone including my Brother and Mother, who are both having a hard time anyway right now made even more toxic because of the stupid holidays. It feels like I'm circling ever-closer to some kind of realization. And I'm acting out in weird ways, like trying to patch the hole of where society's tradition have let down my family by sending them money since I cannot be there. What a fucking thoughtless act.
At the end of the night last night after thinking myself into an Emerson, Lake & Palmer- fueled crying jag mostly I just wanted to go camping.
I suppose that is the tradition I value most that I have carved for myself: the Tom Waits Christmas. Getting off of work and getting as far away from the city as I can, having a drink in a bar in the middle of nowhere on Christmas eve, and going hiking Christmas Day away from people and presumptions. I won't do that this year. Maybe I miss it.