the holiday season (Already Hatachi)

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the holiday season Thursday December 12

listening to: esther's classical mix cd
reading: the silent cry
feeling: productive enough not to go to class

i can't quite explain why it is that i am far more productive when i don't go to class; it is as if class merely occupies your time. when i think about it more, though, i just realize that class exists to add to your workload, not reduce it, and therefore the sole act of going to class is futile on days when you want to feel as if you accomplished something. anyway.

for at least five years, my mom has been sick of christmas. capitalism has given me much of the freedom i enjoy, but at the cost of things like the holiday season: marketers ask themselves how they can take a fundamental holiday to our society and turn it into a product; they have succeeded. truly, we are brilliant minds that have learned to manipulate each other so well.

i don't know who brought up the idea first, but someone suggested working in a soup kitchen on christmas. that was about five years ago, and i have spent the last five christmases at home. it's time for a change. therefore, my mom is getting me one present this year: a new wallet, which i was going to buy anyway (sorry todd, i tried your no-wallet approach, but i just have too much plastic in my pocket). fine.

the question is, how much of a bleeding heart liberal am i? is it not fair to say that i should get to enjoy christmas with my family with eggnog and presents and fireplaces and cookies? has my family not worked to deserve that holiday? who is to say that some bum who cannot hold a job deserves a warm christmas dinner served by my hand? why can't he or she just get a job, and begin building their own christmas?

in a capitalistic society, there will be rich, there will be poor, there will be middle class. unfortunately, those with some money have difficulty projecting themselves onto the poor, and there have been thousands of tired, cliche films and stories based on this sole concept. however, there is some value to it: regardless of wealth, people are people, and they deserve the same basic respect. we don't give it freely because of our prejudices.

i'd like to say that i am prejudice-free, but i know that is not the truth. yesterday, esther sent me a link to tolerance.org, and i took their hidden bias test for white/black adults. naturally, the results indicate that i have a strong subconscious bias for whites. i'm not pleased by that result, and the website discusses how my result is entirely natural: our nature makes us categorize, and i am categorizing based on my in- and out-group experiences; i grew up in a white town. i intrinsically feel more comfortable around whites at first glance.

foremost, go take that test; it meant a lot to me. however, the relevance to this post is the extrapolation of the in-group concept. if you grew up in middle class white america, that's what you're prone to, regardless of whether or not that group fairly represents humanity at large. that group (or, my group) has a basic standard definition of christmas: the things i mentioned above. christmas trees. family. eggnog. cookies. fireplaces.

many people have live lives where christmas means nothing like that, but the conceptual idea of the holiday has absolutely no stipulations on class or race. i was under the impression that christmas was supposed to be a broad, all-encompassing moment for humanity?

oh, and don't start about christmas only being a christian holiday; i know that it is, but i would like you to find me a religion that doesn't have a holiday that supports a similar idea. seriously. find me one. i'm not doubting their existence, but i am saying that the basic desire to have a holiday with family, love, and bonding as the main highlights are independent of christianity, or religion for that matter, and i think we should view this argument in secular terms.

back to the point: i would like to think that christmas (other days too, but within the context of the argument, christmas) should be a day where i realize that my true in-group is humanity itself, and that serving homeless people food is a way to interact with more of my "family" than sitting in my living room. does that make sense?

mom, there's no backing out this year. we're doing it.

Comments

ange on December 12, 2002 04:17 PM
don't be one of those people, mark, who decides on christmas or thanksgiving or any other family holiday that their notion of family is all encompassing. the homeless population doesn't need you to serve them food. after spending my entire thanksgiving break serving food to and chatting with the homeless men of atlanta, i realized that the real thing they need is a job. a soup kitchen on christmas is merely a bandaid for an entirely broken system that allows terrible inequity. that food is only going to last until the next time they're hungry. but then they'll find another soup kitchen. and another. and they'll keep surviving running from soup kitchen to soup kitchen without ever really accomplishing what they need to accomplish. thus, doesn't the soup kitchen merely proliferate the problem? if there were no soup kitchens, people would either starve or survive. and the system--the real issue (hunger and christmas are only sub-issues)--would eventually have to change in order to allow for survival. yeah, i do community service for a living... and i spend entirely too much time philosophizing about volunteerism with my friends...
mark on December 12, 2002 04:23 PM
fair. you would be in a position to truly know, and maybe it is just a hand out. but i think i would rather have that experience with my own family than sitting around our fake tree.
reva on December 12, 2002 08:04 PM
"American and British authors and illustrators in the first sixty years of the the nineteenth century invented Christmas, weaving together disparate elements from many cultures: the German Christmas tree, the Dutch Christmas cookie, the American Santa, the hanging of Christmas stockings, and the British Christmas card. These elements were quickly defined as tradition--in England, a celebration of 'Merrie Old England' and in the United States old-fashioned Christmas on the family farm."(Elizabeth Pleck, Celebrating the Family). It was, in fact, the Victorians who added the element of exchanging presents. Yes, it is a consumer holiday. But not everything related to consumerism is invented by marketers. Marketing and advertising are TOOLS used by companies and manufacturers to get their product information out to their various target audiences. This is not about manipulation, or who can spend the most money. If you want to read the rest of the text, you will see that the gift came before the holiday. Does society reflect ads or do ads reflect society?
Mom on December 13, 2002 09:01 AM
Christmas is not about marketing manipulation, personal philosophy, man-made religion, cookies, trees {fake or real}, or even a gathering together of families. It's not about Santas from any origin, or even a 'token' serving of soup to the homeless. Christmas is about Jesus Christ. Serving others is symbolic of humbling oneself and having some compassion for a stranger --by not judging who deserves to eat another meal from a circular soup-kitchen, or assigning a lesser value to a human condition we do not understand. In our "it's-all-about-me" world, the precious gift of giving is distorted and lost, as is the higher purpose of gaining wisdom. Christmas is about Jesus Christ. If you don't know Him, then humility and Grace aren't known either. Our carnal, innate nature denies a god other than our own ego [humility's opposing rebel]. True giving asks for nothing in return. I love you, Mark.
Ashley on December 13, 2002 02:07 PM
The only reason I enjoy this time of year is the giving of gifts to others--no matter what the gift may be (material or otherwise). I've never helped out in a soup kitchen, coats-for-kids drive, or anything else like that, so I'm in no position to toss in my two cents on that subject... but... I do think it's a good idea. Even if it is "just a hand out" or whatnot, I think a lot of overlooked people (those in need) would appreciate your efforts. You might even meet someone really cool or learn about others/yourself, and that won't happen unless you give it a try. However, there's nothing wrong with celebrating family during Christmas, either. So do what *you* want to do. Either way, I think you'll be giving a gift to other people, and that's the gift of yourself. Good luck on your finals, Mark. :)
ange on December 13, 2002 02:48 PM
mark, i'm not in a position to know anything, and i don't know anything. but i think lots of things. and one thing i think is that soup kitchens aren't a bad thing to do. i'm just toying with ideas of social order. and especially if you work at the soup kitchen for your own educational experience--as a way of opening your own eyes and developing your understanding of the world around you, it is a worthwhile experience. because change doesn't happen if no one even knows what needs to be changed. (and it may not even happen then... grrr.)
dave on December 13, 2002 02:56 PM
Hey Mark, Totally unrelated item, but I didn't want to send it through the school's e-mail. Someone sent me the link below; it is an amusing cartoon from the Kikkoman company, makers of soy sauce and the like. I thought this might be up your alley. Perhaps you could translate? http://yoga.tripod.co.jp/flash/kikkomaso.swf Dave
sarah on December 13, 2002 02:57 PM
i'd like to offer some thoughts on the matter, having spent the last 6 or 7 thanksgivings participating in said soup kitchen handing-out-of-food activity. it's become something of a family tradition, and it's something that's meaningful to me because i think for most of us, it's all too easy to get caught up in the the holiday present giving/food/fun/etc and completely forget about the people who aren't going to be enjoying any of the above. i know on thanksgiving after we come home and have dinner, i'm that much more grateful than pretty much anytime during the rest of the year to have that home and food to come home to. and yes, while soup kitchens exist because the system is broken, think about it for a minute. the existence of the soup kitchens is not what caused the breaking of the system, so how do they proliferate the problem? they merely fill the gaps left by it. and although i do not think it is very efficient, i would rather such a fallback be there than to have even more people starving. it does not seem that no longer being able to get food at a soup kitchen will somehow be an incentive to suddenly go get a job; even more, many of the people i see on thanksgiving have more severe problems with employment than being lazy such as children, mental ilnesses, etc. as for removing the soup kitchens as a medium to force the system to change so people can survive, i am dubious. how many peple REALLY care about the homeless and hungry, enough to do something about it, instead of just saying yeah, that sucks, i feel bad for those people? if the soup kitchens were to go, what makes you think that the system won't remain the same and those people won't just go hungry? at any rate, mark, if you feel you'll get something out of it good for you, you'll have left the ranks of those who say 'that sucks' and move on. and that's a small step in the right direction.
Todd on December 13, 2002 03:45 PM
This certainly won't be an insightful exposition of ideas on the nature of Christmas and what it has come to mean, because I don't think about it very much."(sorry todd, i tried your no-wallet approach, but i just have too much plastic in my pocket)"Hey now, don't knock my method simply because you're still trying to overcomplicate your life. :)I'll certainly be the first to vouch for capitalism and holidays going hand in hand, after all I have no concept of faith and look at the celebration as (at this point) little more than a current social construct. But that doesn't mean there aren't things to be gained from it, I very much look forward to the time I get to spend with my family.I agree that it's a nice thing to donate your time to working in a soup kitchen, but this is something that you never do. (I never do either. I'm not criticizing, just trying to make a point) One day is the same as another, does making the "sacrifice" of going on Christmas really seem so much more generous as to make it worth tossing your family time? I've always much more enjoyed doing volunteer work when I'm less likely to get attention for being nice enough to do it on a certain day, even though that isn't why you'd be doing it. No one wants to be the person who says "that sucks" and forget about it, but we're already forgetting about it for the entire time in the year that we don't have a major holiday to remind us. (This is, in fact, the first time I've heard you talk about this) Oh, and I like to think I make at least a passable attempt at humility and grace even so. :P
Ashley on December 15, 2002 03:00 PM
This reminded me of you and this post, Mark: http://www.aperfectwallet.com/smc-2002.html

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