Winter Holiday Traditions?

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt is "winter holiday traditions."

You could say that my hereditary winter holiday tradition is finding a different way to Scrooge out every year. 

In their defense, my parents were still prosperous in the year they received enlightenment from Herbert W. Armstrong about Christmas, Halloween, and Easter. The Worldwide Church of God does nothing about the first two and little about the last one. Dad, who absolutely refused to answer to "Reverend Doctor" but might have become a Bible teacher if he'd found a congregation who shared his views, at least gave serious thought to joining the WCOG. 

Herbert W. Armstrong was not the con artist or cult leader that the many colleagues he'd offended hoped to prove that he was. He and his family lived modestly, by Southern California boom-years standards. Not by Dad's standards, mind you. Dad listened to Garner Ted Armstrong's report on a trip to India, heard GTA describing the beggars outside and saying he felt funny eating a fine meal in the fine restaurant where his hosts took him, and was angry enough to have blistered GTA's bottom if the young soon-to-be-rogue preacher had been within range. "Send some food out to them!" But when the Armstrongs said they bought expensive treasures only because the way to get churches and schools organized in some countries was to give expensive "gifts" (bribes) to influential local people, they were telling the truth. The Steuben glass really was given to the officials. The schools and churches and printing presses really were built. The WCOG's favorite thing was getting a new ministry going. They believed in separatism, God had intended different groups of people to live in different countries, but they also believed in courtesy and hospitality; they were much less racist than most "White churches" in California used to be. 

But the WCOG does seem to me, in hindsight, to have been anti-fun for children. I could read picture books and print letters to Santa Claus? Then I ought to have been reading the Bible, or reports about the desperate condition of orphans in poor countries. Making up stories and pretending were just plain lying, according to Herbert W. Armstrong. The Santa Claus story was nothing more than a lie. My parents should apologize for telling it to me. And they actually did.

I was delighted to learn, much later, that although the Santa Claus story as told in pop culture today is just plain silly, it's a degraded version of a story that is true and worth telling. There really was a Bishop Nicholas who was beloved by his congregation, but just a bit on the impulsive, childlike side. He had the final decision about how to use church funds and he might very well have broken three balls of gold off a showy symbolic cross and used them to repurchase three children who had been sold as slaves. In those days "redeeming slaves" was part of the regular budget for many religious groups, Christians and others. There's no reason to doubt that Nicholas was one of the many people who have prayed while a small boat sailed through a storm, and I incline to believe he really did "slap down" Bishop Arius--whether with a hand, or with a scathing rebuttal. Sneaking around leaving prezzies for people who didn't want to admit how poor they were was the sort of thing he did. He seems to have been the sort of creative, radical, sometimes outrageous Christian that people remember by the title "Saint."

So the story The Nephews heard was that of course "Santa Claus" is "really" lots of different grown-ups who do or do not try to disguise themselves with silly red suits and white whiskers. Anybody and everybody gets to give prezzies, especially to children, in memory of that dear old preacher so long ago and far away. You can be Santa Claus too, dear! Whenever you have things that are really too small or too childish for you, you can help your parents give them to a younger child as a present from Santa Claus! 

St Nicholas apparently liked to give people money early in winter, which was smart of him, because that is when people are most likely to need money. But what the WCOG liked to do in autumn and winter was preach about how bad it was to observe the big commercial holidays. They argued that:

* We don't know when Jesus was born, exactly, The special tax/census was taken in October. The shepherds were outdoors, watching their flocks by night, because nights were still too warm for them to sleep comfortably in a stuffy old shed. By the time the Magi arrived, other visitors had left Bethlehem and the Holy Family had rented a house, and by the time Herod missed the Magi, Jesus might have been two years old. Of course, everything we think we know about the Magi comes from later church pageants and has always been recognized as pure fiction. 

* We do know that the apostolic church never celebrated Jesus' birthday. Christmas parties started more than 300 years after Jesus' time, as alternative celebrations to help the young avoid competing Pagan festivities. There is no record that Jesus either condemned or participated in any observance of secular holidays. If any days were special to Him, it would have been the Jewish Holy Days.

* We do know that, over the centuries, many Christian reformers have condemned the traces of Paganism that crept into the "Christian alternative" celebrations of Christmas, May Day, All Hallows (Halloween), and even Easter. Although traditions like Santa's flying reindeer are not the abominations that stirred up the reformers--extravagant credit-card shopping would be closer to that!--they're not Christian in origin and may, in some way, be seen as idolatry. 

I think it was 1970s "satanic panic" that made people fear that asking Santa Claus to bring prezzies on his sleigh might invite an ancient "spirit of confusion" into the house. The Bible does mention that the more confident Christians, like St. Paul, ate food that had been consecrated to Pagan gods before it was sold to the public. It mentions that fact in the context of telling those Christians that, if others were worried about their eating food and thus seeming to support the cult of the idol, they should waste the food rather than "cause a brother to offend." 

So what did we do with the school holidays? They often started early for us, as my parents would keep us home so that we didn't participate in any school parties. 

Some years we had the duty of taking vacations in Florida, where an aunt had rental properties she summoned relatives to occupy so that they wouldn't be taxed as unused. She tried to make these vacations a pleasure. Her company was a pleasure, when she visited us. When I went to Florida I always woke up with a "cold" that lasted until I reached Atlanta on the way home. Allergies made my vacations in Florida a grim duty.

One year, in December, before my tenth birthday, my natural sister was born. Another year, in December, after my tenth birthday, a second cousin who lived nearby was born. After that the problem of winter holiday parties was solved. We could celebrate the little girls' birthdays, on or about the day between them, with any theme for the parties but Christmas. 

Some years snow fell. We were allowed to celebrate snow with as many snow races, snowball throwing contests, slides downhill, snow sculptures, and snow ice creams as we wanted. 

Often, in Virginia, the December thaw falls on Christmas Day. Sometimes we could celebrate the thaw by going out without coats. If that doesn't sound like much of a celebration, well, it's not. Sometimes we trickled up to the homes of relatives who were having big Christmas parties and got to help eat up their junk food and play with their presents. This was not encouraged, but it was fun.

Often we spent one or more of the days between school terms singing for old disabled patients. We could sing religious songs, pop songs, any songs we'd learned--almost. No Christmas carols. I happen to like Christmas carols.

Sometimes I wished we could at least celebrate Hanukah, but that was out of the question. Both my mother and I were occasionally told we "looked" Jewish, or some other ethnic identity we're not. Mother thought people who said that never meant it as a compliment. I hear it as one; I've heard it from Jewish people of good will. I do have cousins who are Jewish, and cousins who are Saudi as well. But what's been documented about my ancestors' religious lives is that several of them were Christian ministers, writers, and teachers. 

New Year's Day, however, we were allowed to celebrate in a low-key, cost-free way. We sat up till midnight, made a bit of noise, shouted "Happy New Year," and slept as late as we felt like sleeping the next morning. We learned the benefit of making modest resolutions, and doing something about each resolution on New Year's Day. 

My parents didn't demand that each of us choose a holidays project for each of the big breaks in the school year, but usually we did, just to have something to talk about at school when others were showing off their prezzies. 

"I got a pen that writes in four colors."

"I got a walkie-talkie radio set but I"m not allowed to bring it to school."

You have to say something.

"I built a tree house."

"I tape-recorded my great-aunts singing their favorite old songs."

Some people suspected that some of my parents' not only Scroogery, but general tightwaddery, was planned for the purpose of motivating us to do and learn things. To be fair, we chose our own projects and usually enjoyed working on them. 

At a Seventh-Day Adventist school I was a little more free. Adventists have a full range of positions on Christmas. Some are as anti-Christmas as the WCOG; some have Christmas trees in their homes and even in their churches (where, when I was there, the trees were a topic of debate). Some of the girls exchanged gifts and cards, and that was when I noticed that I couldn't afford to buy into any commercial Christmas customs if I wanted to. That was cool with the Adventists. And they did sing Christmas carols. 

Then, in my twenties, came the years when the Salvation Army advertised that they'd pay carolers and bell ringers by the hour. I signed up. Some days I felt shy, and listless, low in energy, as young women sometimes do. I just sat beside the kettle and jingled the bell, as many bell ringers do. Then I was easy to ignore and didn't bring in much money--as, I learned, those bell ringers generally don't. Not good. I knew enough carols to sing for ten hours without repeating one, That brought in the donations. Frosty days with a hint of snow in the air? Add nostalgic traditional carols, and the kettle would be packed so tight I'd have to collect donations in my hat. 

And Mother said, "Oh dear."

And I said, "There's a reason why churches use that ridiculous image of the Holy Family ankle-deep in snow. That's not the way Jesus' real human family were, but it's the way poor people are now, and we're supposed to try to see Jesus in them."

So my parents gave their blessing on my singing Christmas carols for the Salvation Army. 

Later on, during a vacation in Florida after she'd become an experienced home nurse, Mother met a particularly lovable patient who wanted her to cross over to the Messianic Jewish side so she'd fit into the patient's kosher home. Would I ever do that? I don't know. Converting to Messianic Judaism does not affect what a Christian believes about Jesus (Yeshua) Bar Joseph, the spiritual Messiah. The main difference is cultural. Mother did most things the same way she always did, took a quick language course, learned new songs and made new friends, but she found herself having to think about history from a different side. She had not already had that experience from thinking of herself as biracial; she had no Cherokee ancestors. 

Anyway, now she had Jewish friends, and at least one party thrown in honor of my little sister had the theme "Introduction to Hanukah." Well, mazel tov, it worked! But Mother made bas mitzvah. Mother loved all her patients, treated them as if they were all her aunts, and probably really came to feel that she had at least a Jewish aunt. My sister and I never made bas mitzvah nor lived in a really kosher home. I respect the cultural tradition and have not tried to appropriate it. 

But I have been known to sing Hanukah songs along with the Christmas carols. If someone had objected to that as cultural appropriation I would have stopped. No one did. At the time, bearing in mind that this was in a more liberal era, people seemed to appreciate a little inclusivity.

As a bachelor I didn't entertain much. As a household of bachelors my co-"mother" and I didn't do much about Christmas either; small gifts among ourselves and to my adoptive sister's real mother and grandparents, and small donations to charity, were about all. 

My husband didn't do much about Christmas, either, except when called to baby-sit for a very special student. This was not a child from the DC schools; it was one some of his family were rearing as a foster child. The child's disabilities were so extensive that rearing her was more of a medical experiment than an investment in the future. She liked bright lights and bright colors. I used to knit her loud-colored winter things, and she used to like wearing them. Not "ugly" holiday sweaters, just the brightest red in the store; she was small enough to look cute in such things. She was the sort of case about which people debate whether it's humane to try to keep them alive. Maryland is still a Catholic State. That child was lovable, and was loved, during her short hard years in this world. 

My husband also thought it was more appropriate for a diplomat's wife to send boxes to the Salvation Army rather than carol in front of stores. Maybe he was right. He didn't ask me to give up much, and was worth giving up a few things for. I didn't like the effects W Bush's handouts have had on the Salvation Army anyway. Starting with the way, after my husband died, when I said to myself "Now I'm no longer a diplomat's wife and can go caroling again," the new people at the Salvation Army claimed to have no records of who'd done what for the organization in the 1990s, but they were hiring only beneficiaries of their now federally programmed "help." "Help" to stay poor, but no help whatsoever to recover a decent standard of living. American capitalism does not require anyone to be poor but American socialism needs a lot of people to remain both poor and miserable. I could use some help to get back on my feet and survive being a widow, I wailed, or maybe whined. Go away, they said. Since then I've donated a coin now and then, but I've felt bad about doing that, so mostly I don't.

I always knew that, without immediately remarrying a rich man, I'd have little chance of ever getting back into a comfortable economic bracket in my home town. Well, the Internet had been invented by that time. I could always be a professional writer for the Internet. So I am one. I still can't afford to do much of anything about any holiday. By now I have a well established tradition of ignoring holidays anyway. 

Except, of course, for writing about them. I am enjoying this month's wallow in frivolous novels where the dognappers are caught, the ghosts are laid to rest, and the couples kiss and make up, by Christmas Day. I don't plan to do this every year, but it is fun. 

I hope you readers are enjoying this web site's month-long sleigh ride through cozy Christmas stories, too.