Christmas, Santa, and Jesus

As a parent, two stories I would like to tell better are the story of 9/11 and the story of Christmas. With the former, I’m still trying to get it “just right.” Both my children were born after 9/11 (my older one just nine months after). They are also still very young and naïve. People are still “linear beings” to them. There is a distinct line between right and wrong, good and bad -- And good things happen to good people, and bad things to bad people.

The notion always reminds me of this article I read in the UTNE Reader a long time ago. It was called something like “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” It presented interesting thoughts about our perception of good behavior and reward and what happens when the rewards don’t pan out.

I’ve told them about 9/11 but only in vague isolated terms. To them it is just another chapter in a social studies textbook (and in many ways that is OK with me for now). I’ve told them that sometimes people want things so bad that they forget about who gets hurt in the process. And I’ve also told them not to give up so quickly on broken objects, sometimes the pieces can be brought together and put together into something just as great. But getting older, they will need more than my detached philosophizing.

Christmas is the other story I would like to tell better. The recent reaction to a teacher telling her students there is no Santa Claus, got me thinking about the importance people have placed on him as a symbol of What? Giving? Christmas? Innocence? Childhood?

That’s where I hit a snag. When that teacher said there is no Santa Claus, parents rushed to protect the belief they’ve nurtured in their children about Santa Claus – But what does Santa Claus mean? Or what is he supposed to mean to them?

Francis Church’s editorial comes to mind:

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Is this the “Santa” that the parents are protecting?

At the Manataka American Indian Council site there is an essay by Floyd Looks for Buffalo Hand on the history of Christmas among American Indians. It’s an interesting document of how a foreign faith appealed enough to the existing peoples to be adapted into their beliefs and customs.

It’s also a reminder that Christmas is a Christian holiday. It’s the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, who is believed by Christians to be the Son of God. My favorite retelling of the birth of Christ was done by Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas:

I should probably have more issues than I actually do with the “modern spirit” of Christmas. In fact, part of the meaning of Christmas for me is its commercialization. I like the colored lights, mistletoe, and shopping mall Santas.

As for “Christ the Lord,” I’ve decided liking what the religion stands for (charity and goodwill) does not necessarily mean liking its followers and the harm they’ve caused in its name.

Jesus Christ Superstar is streaming on Netflix. Because it is set at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, it’s usually referenced during Easter. I’m going to mention it here because it’s a well written story about a man whose celebrity gets the best of him and because it’s his birthday that inspired the holiday regardless of whether you choose to celebrate it as a religious occasion, a commercial event, or simply as a part of Western custom.

*Originally posted at Cranialgunk.org.

The Santa Cause Repost

For the holidays, Netflix is streaming Miracle on 34th Street with Edmund and Natalie.

With the recent brouhaha over kids being told by a teacher that there is no Santa, it felt OK to repost what I wrote last year around this time on my Cranial Gunk blog.

For the record, I believe in Santa Claus. Not the jolly red-suited man who breaks into homes to leave gifts instead of taking, but the spirit of giving that he represents to children and adults like me.

Two of my favorite holiday movies are Miracle on 34th Street and Bass and Rankin’s The Year Without a Santa Claus because they address questions of belief and faith. Not the religious interpretations of the words but the parental version: What we tell our children they are too old to do and believe in anymore.

My mother – Yes, my Tiger Mother -- once said to me with a sigh: “Don’t make the children grow up too fast.” I made a remark about her coddling my children too much. (A post of Tiger GrandMothers is coming).

Her comment reminded me of a chapter from the child development textbook I used at Bank Street. The chapter described how different cultures and societies had different expectations of their children throughout the process to maturity (from activities as fundamental as when children are expected to walk to when they are considered contributing members of society).

What the chapter didn’t address was imagination. When do other cultures expect their children to “grow up” and tether their imaginations? Is the imagination something other cultures indulge in?

One of my favorite scenes from Miracle on 34th Street is when Edmund Gwenn (Kris Kringle) teaches Natalie Wood (Susan Walker) how to imagine she is a monkey. It’s Susan’s desperate need to interpret the world beyond the realm of the seeable and concrete that is the catalyst for the Miracle story.

Not streaming on Netflix yet, though I wish it would. It’s among my kids and my favorite holiday movies.

In The Year Without a Santa Claus, Santa (Mickey Rooney) is the one who succumbs to the “real world.” After a visit from the doctor, he decides he needs a break from delivering presents panning the decision as: “Nobody really cares anymore.”

There is also a child who is “too grown up” to believe in Santa Claus in this story. His name is Ignatius Thistlewhite and he dismisses Santa as something for the “little kids.” However, he quickly changes his mind when he learns his father still believes. The story continues with Ignatius as Santa’s most enthused advocate.

The imagination is a very powerful resource. Like the song says: “ Imagine all the people sharing all the world.” It is a skill and like any other skill. It requires effort and practice in order to gain proficiency.

The Wright Brothers are a testament to the power of the imagination. They, “working essentially alone and with little formal scientific training,” imagined the possibility of flight and solved a problem that so called experts in their day could not.

This holiday – more so than the past two – it is important to nurture your imagination. The still poor economy has taken its toll on many people’s spirits and fostered among some a self-destructive cynicism. While it is easier said than done, a stab at imagining a solution to current problems must be attempted.

This holiday, Church’s words seem much more meaningful:

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

The Santa Cause: Imagination

Listening to my children play superheroes:

My eldest says to my youngest: You can’t do that! He doesn’t have that power!

My youngest responds: We can pretend he does.

My eldest responds: That’s silly then it wouldn’t be real!

It sort of stabbed me in the heart. I was raised on the Isle of Can’t -

Don’t be silly! You can’t be a writer! Chinese aren’t writers! Be an accountant!

Don’t be stupid! You can’t be a baseball player! Chinese aren’t baseball players! Be smart! Be a lawyer!

I worked hard to instill “possibility” in my children. So where did I fail? When did they move onto the Isle of Can’t?

Two of my favorite holiday movies are Miracle on 34th Street and Bass and Rankin’s The Year Without a Santa Claus because they address issues of the imagination - What we tell our children they are too old to do anymore.

In parenting, because I believe we would rather be safe than sorry, our kids hit a certain age and it seems the very same make believe world that made them adorable makes them frustrating, impractical, and possibly impossible.

Somewhere along the course of our maturity, we devalued a vivid imagination. My favorite example of the power of a great imagination is the Wright Brothers, who without formal scientific training did what the many experts in their time could not – or worse believed was impossible! They flew. Something we take for granted today.

I think this time of year in particular it is important to cherish a really good imagination. In this season it’s easy to get lost at the store or the mall. So many people you need to buy for. It’s easy to confuse what’s really valuable about getting together for the holidays.

Church’s words to Virginia remain poignant despite the progress we’ve made through the years:

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

humbug

[Cross posted at Cranial Gunk]

I remember our first Christmas together. I had gotten her one of those hand-held electric back massagers (which she asked me to return). She had gotten me a DVD player (which we had to buy a new TV to accommodate).

And we had a live tree that we bought from a reformed drug addict who was selling them outside the Rite Aid on Grand Street. He brought it to our apartment in a shopping cart that rattled and jangled across the islands on Delancey. He had a little hatchet he used to trim off the lower branches so the tree would fit into the stand. We didn’t question it at the time but later that night we kicked ourselves for being so naive. We let a self-admitted drug addict into our home with an axe.

There is a picture of the four of us (our youngest just over a month old) with Santa at Macy’s. It was the last time Christmas didn’t feel like a hassle. By “hassle” I mean it was the last time Christmas didn’t feel rushed or contrived. And by “contrived” I mean it was the last time Christmas felt like a celebration rather than an obligation.

I’ve been telling the same joke lately. For many of my friends and acquaintances, it is their babies’ first Christmases (or Hanukkahs). I’ve been telling them (jokingly of course): Enjoy baby’s first Christmas (or Hanukkah) because pretty soon he’ll (or she’ll) be asking for stuff.

I don’t mean it in a mean way. It’s not a cynical statement on the commercialism of Christmas and human greed. It’s more an amusing “circle of life” observation on my part. It’s normal child development for my boys to want specific things. It is also normal for them to want what their friends have. It’s a sign they are becoming self aware and constructing a personal aesthetic. It’s also a sign they are becoming socially aware.

A train set is no longer a train set, it is the Thomas the Tank Engine train set like the one [Insert Child’s Peer’s Name Here] got. A video game is not a video game , it’s a DS like the ones [the ominous] they have at school.

My boys are maturing and asserting themselves. The catalysts determining their desires is inconsequential for now. We will eventually have the “talk” about not mindlessly following peer groups but for now it is enough they are becoming sensitive to the norms of their peer group.

That said. It doesn’t mean I don’t get a little bit sentimental about the days when it was enough that the present was from me. With their newfound desires comes new burdens not to disappoint.

… humbug.

Elizabeth Bernstein writes about disappointing holiday gifts from husbands/boyfriends to wives/girlfriends in her Wall Street Journal article, “The Gift that Needs Forgiving.” It seems the “thought” is not enough.

After recounting several tales of “inappropriate” gifts she has been told, she concludes:

You shouldn't need a gift consultant (or a marriage counselor) to tell you these presents are wrong. They're utilitarian. Unromantic. Ugly. And, in many cases, more suitable for a man, or a cleaning woman, than the love of your life.

I am reminded of Cordelia’s plight in King Lear. She ineffectively expresses her love for her father and is cast out. However, the moral Shakespeare posits is the polar opposite of Bernstein’s. He chooses to show superficial gestures of affection paling in the light of those that are more subtle and genuine.

As I read Bernstein’s article, I felt a swell rise from my gut. It wasn’t the holiday sweets charitably giving me a second taste. It was annoyance. As clever as she was in her article, she (perhaps inadvertently) portrayed women as shallow, demanding princesses whose emotional investments are in tokens of homage instead of more meaningful, potentially sincere gifts.

To illustrate my point, Bernstein includes Tom Valentino’s story among the tales of disappointed wives and girlfriends. He is meant represent the “men’s perspective.” He tells of his upbringing and its influence on his values.

In his parents' house, Christmas was all about religious values—and food. Gifts were an afterthought.

"I started to think, well, we have three kids already, so no need for anything from Victoria's Secret," he says. "And I bought her a fancy watch last year for her birthday. How many of those does she need?"

Then he remembered his wife had said she needed a vacuum and a bigger pasta pot. Off to Macy's he went. "I could almost smell the sauce cooking with meatballs, sausage and braciole," he says. "How could a woman not be happy with these?"

He found out, because the gifts made his wife cry.

What would have been an appropriate gift? For the most part, the true desires of the women included in the story are never revealed. Is it a matter of not knowing what you want but knowing enough that you don’t want what you were given?

I am reminded of “Rosebud” and a little snow globe given by a man to a woman. She rejects the gift and goes on to say he never gave her anything of value.

Bernstein concludes:

Sometimes men aren't listening to their wives. But just as often, women aren't clear about their desires. They want men to pick up on their subtle clues, rather than telling them outright what they'd like. As one woman I know explains, "It means we are special to them if they detect what we want without us telling them."

So what’s a Rice Daddy to do? The Asian side of me says: Gift Cards! The American side of me says: That’s so “utilitarian, unromantic,” and “ugly.”

Jolie in Training

For lil' Sunshine's first Christmas, Mrs. SoulSnax ordered one of those rare Asian dolls, because she wanted Sunshine's first doll to be Asian.

"Too late," I told her, because lil' Sunshine already had a doll, and it's a pretty little black doll in a pink dress.

"Aww... well that's cool, at least she's got some variety in there," Mrs. SoulSnax replied. "All my dolls were blonde and had blue eyes. And I grew up in the Philippines."

"Yeah, well a few more of these, and we can call her Angelina."

UPDATE: We've received a cease and desist order from the Philippine Colonial Ministry. Apparently, in our efforts to bolster the self-esteem of young Filipino children, we have been "complicit in undermining the Philippine media's Cultural Subjugation Programme."

We have been instructed to indoctrinate our daughter in the value of aspiring toward lighter skin and big, round eyes. They recommend that we give our daughter the same blue-eyed blonde-haired dolls that her mother had as a child.

Furthermore, they recommend that she watch any of the telenovelas on The Filipino Channel (TFC), since they feature a lot of mestizo "actors."

The "S" Word Revisted

It's that time of year again, when the existence of that jolly red-shirted fella is called into question. Last year it was a toss-up for me. This year, its been so busy we haven't even had time to think about it. But the kids are getting older and wiser (and asking for cellphones!).

So, ricedaddies and ricemommies, what's your verdict this year: is there a Santa Claus? Or is he just a freak in a velour suit?