Take Back Your Holidays

As often happens, when I started writing this it was a reflection of Kongzi’s ritual psychology, but along the way it turned into a sort of holiday manifesto. I believe that our social connections are the key to our healing, and the mess the capitalism has made of our ritual celebrations needs some clean up. Let’s do that together so that holidays are a haven and not a hellscape.

I love Christmas. I spend all of December thinking about it, and all of November trying to put off thinking about it so I can better enjoy thinking about it all December. Waiting until after Thanksgiving to celebrate is now a part of the ritual. Other parts of the ritual include watching Christmas movies, building gingerbread houses, making specific cookie recipes and one new one, filling stockings, and other traditions that fall in and out over the years. One of the richest parts of my traditions is the time I allow myself after Christmas to process and reflect on what the holiday season was, is, what it means, what I missed, and what I will carry to the next year. This year I am creating a new tradition of inflicting my reflections on you. 

I used to be somewhat embarrassed by my celebration of Christmas. When I was still attending Christian churches I often encountered people who were very critical of the contemporary practices, which made me feel like my celebration was too much Santa hat and not enough creche. I can see their view, as to them it seems that Christmas has been stolen from them (don’t get me started). In secular crowds my form of celebration can be seen as embracing a false religious practice that is tied to religious trauma. Both crowds hate the commercialism. I get it. I don’t disagree. What I want to propose to you is that there is a space for this holiday, and every other holiday, that is completely separate from religion, myth, and commercialism and is actually important for our functioning as a society. I know, big claim.

One of the things that every organized society has in common is ritual. Every. One. Maybe you as an individual opt out of every single one, but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t getting the social benefits of them. You may be a lone wolf in the neighborhood, but the world you live in would not be liveable for you if others weren’t managing social cohesion on some level.

That brings me to what Confucius said. When I first read Kongzi (Confucius), I bristled at his attitude toward ritual. But as I read more and started to reflect I developed a personal philosophical attitude toward ritual that changed me and how I operate in the world as my community. Kongzi was a stickler, you might say. But his rigidity to the ritual form was a product of his rigidity to the ritual attitude. And to his way of thinking the right attitude would inherently result in a person’s desire to perform a ritual in the proper form. He believed that adherence to ritual would also result in a sort of moral discipline that would shape your desires in a positive way. I am chiefly a virtue theorist and my approach to moral philosophy lines right up with that. Because I believe that our behaviors shape our desires and through that, shape us. So I was won over, because who wouldn’t want to be able to say with a straight face that Confucius says that Christmas is good for you?

Yes, that is a gross oversimplification. For one thing, the mass consumerism and stimulation seeking that is widely thought of as the American version of Christmas doesn’t seem to me to be likely to make anyone better. I know so many people who are outright depressed by it. I hate it. 

This year Christmas and the importance of ritual came together in my mind with so much clarity it felt like purpose crystalizing in my heart. I spent a great deal of time this year making things. In particular I hand made animal dolls for my three children, and a set of runestones for my husband. Hand making can be very stressful, especially if you have internalized perfectionism and consumerism. But I have blessedly overcome a lot of that, as well as having finally achieved a sense of meditation that occurs while I craft. I think it put me in a particularly ripe state of mind for the days around Christmas when the family was together. This year was the first opportunity my own children had to spend time with my husband’s son and daughter-in-law. Christmas afforded us a reason and an opportunity to bond as a family which in my view is the most important purpose for any ritual. The ritual of gathering, of consuming foods that we traditionally do, of exchanging gifts, of sharing time and stories is actually crucial for us as social beings. I think the mistake we have made as a society is the very one that Kongzi was critical of. We have been practicing our American Christmas out of habit and not reverence, and that has so many consequences, as it distorts the practices themselves, and allows that consumerist biggering to move the ritual further from its necessary cohesive functions and use them for nasty capitalist purposes. There have been years where I got swept up in that, cared too much about the kids having the same candy they did last year or about finding a hot new toy and forgotten to be present. If we are focusing on things looking right, then we aren’t even present at the ritual, are we? 

Those of us who have spent too many holidays with people we don’t get along with, buying gifts for people we don’t really know, and just waiting for it all to be over are trapped by our own practice and the practice of others. And the thing that keeps us trapped is that we are all trapped together and no one wants to be the one to make the first move to change it. We think this surface performance needs to be held on to because it is all that is holding us together. And we are RIGHT, but it is also standing in the way of us creating a ritual that would ACTUALLY hold us together.

Now is the perfect time to sit down and contemplate your holiday. What parts were wonderful? What parts stressed you out? What do you want more of in the future? What do you never want to do again? Which good parts could be integrated into a new practice that will serve the functions that you want and need?

The good news here is that there is not actually a CORRECT way to do Christmas. There is a way that works for you and one that doesn’t. It is an opportunity to grow and enrich your relationship with the people you do spend the holiday with. If you are very brave you can talk to those people this spring when there is no Christmas in sight and everyone can think about what function they want Christmas and every other holiday to serve in their life, to consider what their priorities are. There will be change and compromise. And that in itself is good for your relationships. A healthy relationship will even allow you to opt out of celebrations. Loving and respecting each other means respecting each other’s capacities.

For those of you that read this and see only the impossibility of having a holiday you enjoy, that alone should be a message to you. Deep reflection on who you are sharing your holidays with, what your role is in that, and how you can move toward a life that protects your wellbeing are in order. A holiday ritual is an opportunity to strengthen your relationships. If you feel you are merely subjecting yourself to the holiday ritual, you reading this is your sign that even if you don’t see it, there is a way out. We are not socially obligated to allow ourselves to be abused.

As much as we are all out here trying to heal, it won’t work if we’re all doing it alone. We have to learn to be together in community and holidays are such a beautiful opportunity to maintain and grow our relationships with people we don’t get to see every day. The more isolated we are, the more vulnerable we are to being used by power, whether it is abuse by individuals, or manipulation by corporations, religions, and government interests. The calendar holidays have the potential to hold our social structures together. But we have to work to wrestle them back from those who have taken control of them. We have to be willing to make the time to imbue them with meaning that is relevant to us. We have to do it together.

If you have questions about why and how, leave a comment. Let’s start a conversation about the impossible task of reclaiming anything from the jaws of capitalism.