cannot remain silent

Last week, the NYT online ran an article about the new "green crusaders" trying to make their mark on their family's Christmas celebrations. I read the article with some dismay.

I think one of the things that frustrates me about the modern world is how so many people have to make everything about themselves (she says as she writes on her blog).

When I was a kid growing up, it was kind of understood that at family gatherings, you didn't talk about politics, or religion (in my family we have Catholics, lapsed Catholics, Protestants of various stripes and degrees of devoutness, agnostics, people who would list their religious affiliation as "none" but who express a certain love and veneration for pop-religion figures like the Dalai Lama...). You tried to avoid subjects that would upset people.

Why? Because it was the holidays. Because it's nicer to spend time with people when there aren't hurt feelings or animosities. Oh, it can be hard. And there are people who sometimes violate the code and say whatever they damn well please. But the general unwritten rule in my family is: Thou shalt not make a pain of thyself.

So it bothers me that there are people who think it's perfectly okay to "reform" their families (or try to) by being somewhat unpleasant about it.

There was, for example, a person who was planning on giving each of their loved ones a CFL bulb (and, presumably, nothing else). She also comments about a relative who works in a field related to "nasty, old-style fossil fuel stuff." Nice. If her relative read the story, it should make for some interesting convo around the dinner table come Christmas.

Look, don't get me wrong: I'm in favor of conservation. I make an effort to limit my driving and to plan trips carefully, both to save money on gas and reduce the amount of pollution I generate. I turn off lights when I leave a room, and when I need to buy new appliances, the level of energy efficiency is part of my decision. It makes good fiscal sense to conserve energy and resources, and it does cut down on pollution.

I even recycle, at least items where it doesn't cost more energy to reprocess them than it would to produce new items "from scratch." (It's my understanding that plastic recycling at this point is not terribly efficient but that's neither here nor there because there's nowhere in my town to recycle plastics anyway. And I almost never drink pop or bottled water, so it's not like I'm a heavy producer of plastic waste).

But I draw the line when it comes to spewing my beliefs to other people. I don't walk around going, "You really should recycle that" or snapping off the lights in a room someone just left and glaring at them (I may snap off the lights anyway but try to do it in an unobtrusive way).

I guess I feel about conservation and such about the way I feel about my faith: if someone asks me what I believe, I'll share with them. Or I will try to quietly model the tenets of what I believe without talking about them. But I won't walk around telling everyone that they should do as I do, or telling them about the dire consequences they will face if they don't.

And I kind of view Christmas as a chance to relax things a bit. I eat things at Christmas I normally wouldn't eat (another thing I hate with a passion? All the news stories about "OMG everyone is going to gain 5 pounds this Christmas !!!11!!"). I do things I normally don't do.

I think perhaps in this country of plenty, we've forgotten the old meanings of "holidays" and "feasts." In the early days - in Medieval times and up to the 1800s, most of the year was kept as fasts or at least a time where not having all your desires fulfilled was the normal state of things. Christmas was a little foretaste of Heaven - where you were warm enough and had enough to eat and got to play a little and got to sing a little and maybe drank more than you should...

Nowadays, those of us in the Western world (or at least those of us in the middle-class and above) live as if every day is a feast day. And so we maybe don't know what to do when a holiday comes around. (Which may be why there's recently been a spate of advertisements for things like cars and diamond pendants as Christmas gifts: having to do more and more). And some people rebel against it, and see the time as a big time of wastefulness, and so appoint themselves as Saviors of the World (hrm...) and have to go around telling others to mend their wasteful ways.

I don't know. I live pretty frugally (by most North American standards) most of the time and I like being able to relax a little at Christmas - buy stuff for people that I know they will like, make cookies and cakes, spend more time socializing, put up strings of lights - all those things. And I don't like being told that what I'm doing is wrong and I should not do it.

Don't get me wrong - I have no problem with dialing back on materialism. I have to admit I'm a little nonplussed by the adverts that suggest buying a new car or a lavish vacation for your beloved for the holiday (or for the ads suggesting that risky, high-interest "payday loans" be used to shop). But there's a difference between a family deciding as a group, "This is what we are going to do" and then treating it as a foregone conclusion, and a person taking on the role of the proselytizer, where they have to constantly talk about it.

(Again, it reminds me of the Bible verse admonishing those who would fast against walking around looking sad and drawn and talking about how much they are fasting in front of other people. It's not just spiritual aggrandizement, it's also wicked annoying to the other people. It's kind of like the person in the department who's on a perma-diet and cannot shut up about it - who, every time there's birthday cake or cinnamon rolls or something, instead of just smiling and saying, "No, thank you" or avoiding the breakroom altogether, has to sit around and mope about their "terrible" diet and how they 'cannot eat those things' [or worse, say "I can't see how YOU can eat THAT"]).

I also think if one person is swimming against the tide of family tradition, it kind of behooves that person not to be unpleasant about it. If I were in the petroleum industry, and I had a "greenie" relative that I knew was going to harangue me at the dinner table, I'd probably make other plans for the holiday and explain to my other loved ones exactly why. Or if someone insisted on giving donations to causes in place of presents (which I have to admit I'm not totally on-board with but if someone asks me to do that for them instead of buying them a gift, I will), I'm not going to pretend to agree with them that "this is what we ALL should do next year."

I guess I still kind of am in "child mode" when it comes to Christmas: I want at least one of the gifts I receive to be "for fun" instead of "what I need." (Books count as "for fun," as do dvds or cds. Craft supplies count as "for fun." Stuff like nice tea or chocolate or nice soap or bath products count as "for fun") If gifts are too practical (socks and underwear, or "carbon credits" which I suspect are the new "socks and underwear"), then Christmas becomes little more than a festival of "I'll do your necessary shopping for you, and you do mine for me." And I'd rather pick out my own underwear, thanks.

(I bought different kinds of games - card games and board games and such - for a lot of my loved ones this year. A lot of the people I care about really enjoy playing games and I think I found a few new good ones. [And there's a slightly selfish motive: I will get to play the games, too, after Christmas.] I think games make a good gift. And also books, if the person likes to read.)

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I feel that all of the propaganda being put out - the "wrap your presents in old newspaper if you must wrap at all" or the "serve broccoli florets instead of pigs in blankets" or "give gifts of donations to good causes instead!" are as much of an attack on Christmas by those who would deny the holiday as are the (often inflated in the imagination of commentators) attacks coming from those who would deny the origin of the day - the One for whom the holiday is named.

I don't know. It seems to me there's so much bad news in the news that it's not necessary to go further to make people feel bad - laying on guilt for eating things that might not be 100% healthful during the holidays, or spending a little more than they might have planned, or using the "old" type of light bulbs instead of new "energy-efficient" bulbs, or whatever.

Leave Christmas alone, please, fearmongers in the media.