Tag Archives: Christmas

What ‘Merry Christmas’ can really mean

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Every year, for many years, I have mailed off roughly the same Christmas gifts to my siblings: a funny dog book or wall hanging for my sister Penny, who dotes on her four dogs; “crazy Cat Lady” trinkets to my oldest sister, Debbie, a cat lover whose husband used to volunteer at a shelter to help socialize feral cats for adoption; and a Minnesota-themed calendar or T-shirt or hat to my brother in Boston, who likes to showcase his Midwestern heritage.

They, in turn, would send me boxes of See’s candy, wax-wrapped aged cheese, frosted cookies in a holiday-themed tin — gifts that I appreciated but really do not need.

This year, I decided, would be different. Crossing my fingers that I wouldn’t appear dismissive of their past efforts, I emailed my siblings before Thanksgiving and asked that, in lieu of material gifts, they give to one of two nonprofits in my name: a local community services organization for which my husband and I deliver Meals on Wheels every Friday and a feminist policy-based organization that is gearing up against threats to Roe v. Wade.

“With the pandemic pressing in on us again and racially based divisiveness rocking our country, I am more aware than ever of the privilege we were born into and from which we continue to benefit,” I wrote.

“To that end, David and I respectfully ask that you take any money you would normally spend on the lovely gifts of food you send us for Christmas each year and instead donate that amount in our names to one of these causes.”

Each of my siblings generously supported the food shelves, youth employment and senior classes at Keystone Community Services, one noting that our father and stepmother received Meals on Wheels for a time. Soon after my initial request, I wrote again, saying that I would like to donate to their favorite causes and elevate the reach of Christmas beyond its consumerist underpinnings.

In the process, I got to know my sisters and brother better. Just as a budget reflects a company or a country’s core values, where a person chooses to donate money says a lot about that individual’s priorities, and about how they see themselves.

Access to the outdoors

My younger brother, L.J., showed himself as the Bostonian he has become since marrying a native of the city some 28 years ago. “Please donate to the Rose Kennedy Greenway,” he told me. “It is a great urban park that adds a lot to downtown Boston.” The public space and programming commits to “providing a park environment that is welcoming to racially, culturally, and economically diverse residents and visitors,” according to the website.

With food trucks, fitness classes, fountains and open green space — typically concentrated in the more affluent neighborhoods of our nation’s cities — the Greenway looks like an inviting place for people of all ages, abilities and economic classes to play and hang out.

An ADA-compliant carousel at Rose Kennedy Greenway makes a “spin” safe for everyone.

I’m not surprised that equity and inclusion in the natural world is an important value to my brother — raised, as we were, in a community with ample municipal and state parks and in a family that prioritized fitness and outdoor exercise — but we’ve never discussed it. Less politically liberal than I am, my brother revealed a side of himself I otherwise might not have seen. “Thanks for donating,” he said, pronouncing this philanthropic gift exchange “a nice idea.”

Dog-friendly diet

My sister Penny’s overt, over-the-top love of dogs is a running joke in our family. We love to recount the time her father-in-law said that after he died, he wanted to return to Earth as one of Penny’s pampered dogs, the ones who get soft-serve cones at Dairy Queen and homemade dinner so enticing that I once mistakenly ate it myself.

No surprise, then, that Penny’s choice for my donation was Colorado Pet Pantry, a food bank for pets that allows low-income people, or those whose luck has temporarily turned, to keep their animals rather than surrendering them to shelters.

Colorado Pet Pantry is a food shelf for animals whose owners might otherwise have to give them away.

“Being the dog lover that I am, I’m drawn to charities for pets,” she said. “This charity is unique in that it helps people to be able to keep a beloved animal they maybe otherwise couldn’t. That just spoke to me as a nonprofit worth supporting.”

What matters most

The morning after Christmas, I survey the leftovers in the fridge and determine that I can take a break from cooking that day. I recycle the plain brown wrapping paper that my younger son used on his thoughtful gifts of books. I force myself out, despite the cold, on my daily dog walk, trying to counteract the intake of overly rich food.

No Amazon boxes to break down and recycle. No cursing at the amount of plastic wrap that shippers use. No pondering whether to freeze or give away the pounds of candy and exotic edibles that my husband and I, as older empty nesters, do not need to consume.

Instead, I look over the website for the Retreat Center of Maryland, a 5-year-old organization that aims to bring yoga and other wellness practices to people with autism or Parkinson’s disease and other populations that the industry historically has not served. This is my sister Debbie’s choice for my Christmas gift, a nod to our mutual love of yoga. One of her neighbors, a volunteer yoga teacher in prisons, serves on the board.

My stepsister, Mary, my only sibling still living in Minnesota, chose Vine: Faith in Action, which matches volunteers with the needs of people ages 60 and older. In-person and online exercise classes and programs on topics such as diabetes, financial exploitation of seniors and healthcare directives have helped the Mankato-based organization continue to grow and serve.

“I want the gift of time,” I used to tell my sons every Mother’s Day. Now I want this practice of Christmas donations to become a tradition, bringing to life a quote commonly attributed to John Wesley, founder of the Methodist church in which my siblings and I were raised:

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.

As a Unitarian, I no longer celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. Still, I watch myself get caught up every year in the trappings and trimmings, the whirlwind of shopping and spending. Today, as December draws to a close, I can say, “Merry Christmas” and mean it, knowing that my brother and sisters and I shared what I believe is the true Christmas spirit.

Happy New Year? That’s up to you and me

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Nothing is more over than Christmas when it is done. I feel that as I begin this New Year’s greeting the morning of December 26. We spent too much money. We ate too much food. All of it was an investment in people we love: our grown children, our siblings, and the friends and colleagues we are blessed to have.

But now the wind is blowing strong. A Christmas Day storm has left the streets rutted with ice. We are back to daily life, still facing the real-world problems that we briefly escaped over the holidays.

My neighbor’s empty house was nearly vandalized on Christmas Eve, because some desperate soul — perhaps addicted or unemployed — lacks the empathy to recognize how his criminal, intrusive actions will haunt this family for years to come.

A man chastised me on a neighborhood Facebook group the other day because I complained about the slippery sidewalks at the soon-to-open CVS drugstore near my house. “Caught in a war zone in Syria. Living in such poverty [that] starving is the norm vs. sidewalks aren’t shoveled where I like to jog. #FirstWorldProblems.”

Sanctimonious, to be sure (or, as my son said, “what a dick”), but I see the man’s point. Looking beyond my relatively privileged life to the real burdens some people face seems especially important at the end of 2016, seven weeks after an election that dashed my hopes for a more inclusive, benevolent society.

Counting blessings is the surest antidote to the inevitable post-holiday letdown. It also is a positive start to 2017, a year when my primary intention is to figure out how to contribute my time and talents to the causes I care about.

Blessing No. 1: A middle-class safety net protects my family.

present

My husband lost his job barely three weeks before Christmas, and I earn significantly less than I was making in a previous management position. Paying our mortgage and monthly bills on my salary alone will be a stretch.

And yet: We own property that brings us income. We have savings we can tap. My husband is able-bodied and employable.

Born and raised in what is now the declining middle class, my husband and I were taught not only how to save money but to invest it. Modest inheritances from deceased relatives have helped put our sons through college. My job provides health insurance and a generous retirement plan. Because we have maximized those privileges, we will make it. The uncertainty is scary, but we will be all right.

Blessing No. 2: Having less money is helping me discover who I really am.

We hosted three different Christmas celebrations this December, and the one where I recognized what I truly value was at a potluck gathering of working-class people whom I had never met. The mother and grandparents of my older son’s girlfriend, our guests talked about their jobs as a means to an end, not as some noble calling or an integral part of their identity.

That notion that the professional is personal — that title and salary confer self-worth and justify self-importance — has gnawed at me for the past two and a half years, since I sidetracked my career and stepped into a job that affords me less income but more time for résumé-enhancing activities such as blogging and going to graduate school.

present_2Having less money this Christmas forced me to give presents of homemade food or inexpensive items that required thought and creativity. Similarly, spending an evening laughing and talking with people for whom work is not their lives helped me, finally, to quit apologizing for my unconventional career choice and to reacquaint myself with the reasons why I made it.

Blessing No. 3: I have learned the practice and necessity of gratitude.

Back in 2011, a spiritual adviser asked me to exchange a gratitude list with her by email every night. The practice helped me notice and recognize blessings such as good health and strong friendships, the ability to support myself, and the dogs who bring me companionship and joy.

The discipline of that gratitude exercise carries on in my ability to seek perspective when I’m upset, to respond rather than react to disagreements or unpleasantness, and to remind myself daily of all that is good about my life.happy-new-year

“You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings,” writes essayist and novelist Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s a modern take on an ancient Biblical passage: To whom much is given, much will be required. 2017 can be a Happy New Year but only if each of us, individually, thinks and acts communally — and has the grace to share what we’ve been given.

What an Atheist Is Teaching Me about the Nature of Faith

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The day after Thanksgiving, my son and I talked about God and gratitude, religion and reason, faith and Ricky Gervais.

I knew the British comedian as the originator of The Office. Turns out he’s also a “pathological atheist,” according to former CNN talk-show host Piers Morgan, and a surprisingly articulate authority on the wisdom of living in the here and now.

“I get frustrated when people say that atheists live a less fulfilling life because they lack spirituality and they believe nothing comes after we die,” said my son, 19, a college sophomore and recently declared religious studies major.

“Ricky Gervais made the point —and somewhat facetiously, because he’s a comedian — that atheists have more to live for because they’re not spending their lives anticipating what comes afterward. So they want to make the most of what they have.”

And so commenced a conversation that held more meaning for me than the facile reminders of “gratitude” that every listserv and website I subscribe to threw at me in the days before Thanksgiving.

Christmas ChristiansXmas Tree

I regret that my husband and I didn’t raise our children with a stronger religious faith. They don’t know the Lord’s Prayer or a Thanksgiving grace or the traditional Christmas hymns, and I feel the loss of that during these frenetic five weeks we have come to call “the holidays.”

Baptized a Methodist (my childhood religion) and raised in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship during his elementary school years, Nate at 19 is now an atheist. He questions why I would pine for some shared, sentimental religious feeling that our family hasn’t earned.

“An atheist’s approach to the holidays isn’t that different from the average Christian’s approach,” he says. “Christians will just say grace before the meal. I think Christmas has been secularized in the majority of the United States. There are plenty of casual Christians and families that aren’t religious who celebrate Christmas for the sake of giving gifts and having a meal.”

Studies support his claim. According to the Pew Research “Religion and Public Life” project, 90 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, but only half view it as “mostly” a religious holiday, and fully a third say it’s cultural — a chance to gather with friends and family.

My own family celebrated Thanksgiving this year at the home of non-religious friends. No one offered to lead a prayer before the meal, so I raised a toast to the cooks who had prepared two entrées, three desserts, four appetizers and more.

During our talk the next day I asked my son whether he prays, in any form.

“No, not prayer,” he said. “Because prayer implies something religious, and I’m not religious. It doesn’t mean I don’t hope for things. I hope that I’ll do well on my finals, but I’m certainly not going to pray to God to let me get an A.”

What about offering thanks to whomever or whatever may be guiding our lives?

“For the most part, I think gratitude is expressed in small moments on a day-to-day basis. You make me a sandwich and I say, ‘Thanks, Mom. That was nice of you to do.’ There are bigger things, like being grateful for the people in your life who are a constant, who are there through thick-and-thin.”

And whom you can love and honor, he contends, without attaching those feelings to religious faith. “I’m grateful for things that are tangible, as opposed to thanking God when there’s no apparent intervention on God’s part.”

An atheist explains

Nathaniel Gage Studer

Nathaniel Gage Studer

When I tell my son that I am “saddened” by his atheism, or find it to be a cynical choice at his age, he points out that this is a considered decision — not a failing or a whim — and that believers have no corner on moral virtue.

“If I was being very cynical,” he counters, “I’d say a lot of people weren’t fully educated in matters of religion. I think a lot of people just grew up in a church: ‘Well, it’s how I was raised, it’s what I’m going to stick with.’”

Schooled in the importance of what he calls religious literacy, Nate would choose Buddhism if he had to follow a particular practice. “But that’s true of many non-religious people,” he says. “Buddhism involves coming to terms with yourself and your surroundings, and involves less of the dogma that comes with other religions.”

However reasoned his choice, my son will have an uphill climb to convince anyone other than his mother that atheism makes sense. Americans overall regard atheists only slightly more warmly than they do Muslims and seven points below Mormons, according to a July 2014 study by Pew Research.

Black Protestants and older Americans hold atheists in especially low esteem.

Asked what frustrates him most about people’s misconceptions of atheists, Nate said it’s “the idea that every atheist hates religion and is against religion.” In fact, he says, knowledge of the world’s religions helps him understand other cultures and history’s course.

“Even though I’m not religious, I think it’s important that I understand how and why other people are religious. By being religiously literate, people can better understand what’s going on in the Middle East, why 9/11 happened — almost all that happens in the world.”

He challenges whether I, as an unchurched believer, am willing to learn more about what atheists do believe. I begin with Ricky Gervais’ distinction between spirituality and religion: “One is a very personal feeling, a journey, a hope, a need, a joy,” the comedian said on CNN last year, “and the other is an organized body that uses that for power and corruption, in many cases.”