paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- count down to the holidays My count down to the holiday feeling: 1 term paper, 10 sources and 20 pages on Milton. I decided to write on what Paradise Lost teaches us about civil liberty. done 1 conference call to national experts who are giving a workshop at the university. done Somewhere in this list of stuff that must be done by December 18 at 6:30 p.m. I will catch the holiday spirit. I don�t know what I believe about Christmas these days. It is horribly inconvenient, but at the same time, it provides a framework for connecting with people in my family that without the ritual of Christmas we may loose touch altogether. At the same time, my Christmas preparations are far more complex than anyone else�s I know because I come from generations of divorce and remarriage. So, there is my father�s family, ending in my grandmother and in our gift circle there are 14. We do a drawing because among the 14 of us, we live in six different states. My father�s father is dead, which although I miss him, it relieves the complication of that fork of the tree. My mother�s family also does a drawing. There are 19 of us in that gift circle and we live in four different states. My step-father�s family does not do a drawing and they live in four different states. So I purchase gifts for four different people in that family. I of course give gifts to my parents, my maternal grand-mother and probably my father�s younger sister and her family because they gave me a bunch of presents at Thanksgiving. And I usually get together with one of my father�s ex-wives and her daughter around the holidays which involves a small-yet-tasteful gifts. I also participate in Quinn�s family�s holiday exchange and rope her in on just a couple of the gifts from my family. Thankfully my family is not hugely materialistic, but, even with all of these drawings, I still run around and get presents for about 20 people and send them off to ten different states. And that is one of the invisible stresses and strains of divorce. This is not really a complaint, because, I like to give presents to my families. But somewhere, in the midst of all this running, I always loose sight of why we give presents at Christmas. And really, as an agnostic, why I even participate in Christmas at all. Partly because the tradition has shifted for me from being about God and Jesus to being about the celebration of the people we love. It is remembering to get together with friends and with family with the sole purpose of being happy and honoring their gifts and lives. In our complicated world, we need holidays to force us to think about what is important � not getting gifts in the mail on time � but doing something special or nice that is a surprise and is positive for others. Some people in my family do not have a lot and others have quite a bit, but we set a $30 limit. Some years, I have just gotten cookies baked by one of my aunts or other homemade goodies. It doesn�t matter. Something to unwrap and snack on while grandmother hassles with the ham in the kitchen and yells out to the universe about her fate in life at that moment. 9:03 p.m. - 2002-12-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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