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Holiday memories.
Dec. 16th, 2008 06:01 pmI sometimes use Windows' Solitare to answer a Yes/No question.
If there are four or more red cards showing, the answer is "Yes" (It's like flipping a coin, except I don't have to worry about the answer falling off the table and rolling to the other side of the room).
When I asked the Solitaire Oracle if I should post about how I learned to celebrate the Winter Holiday as I was growing up, it showed me: Black, Red, Red, Red, Red, Red, Black. That looks like a pretty emphatic "yes" to me, so:
My dad was an airline pilot; when he was working, he was gone for 3-4 days at a stretch. When he was home, he was fully home, and had time to spend with mother and me, so I probably had a stronger relationship with my father than other kids did, whose dads spent their time commuting to an office every day. But when he was gone, he was gone. So most of my cultural learning I got from Mom, since it was just her and I in the house, doing our thing.
I was raised, culturally, Christain (Quaker), but, in practical terms, my upbringing was secular. I was taught, by my parents, the story of Jesus' birth, and that the star on top of the tree represented the Star of Bethleham.* The music in our Christmas collection was all Traditional as in Folk or Classical-based (a lot of albums by Pete Seeger and Joan Collins and Leadbelly -- the Leadbelly album was one of our favorites). Never any Chimpmunks, or Bing Crosby. Many of the carols on those albums told the story from the human side of things: the social justice angle, focusing on the parents' poverty, and the generousity of strangers, rather than glorifying God and redemption from sin. My mother was about as tone deaf as anyone I've met, but we all, always, sang along with the records-- or danced; passive listening was not an option.
But mother also told me, from the time I was seven or so, that Jesus was not really born in December. That we celebrate Christmas when we do because of the ancient pagans who celebrated the winter solstice, that they would light candles and fires to entice the sun to come back, and bring greenery into the house to encourage life to keep going. And that the main reasons why we give gifts to each other, and have feasts and sing songs because we've got a long, cold winter ahead of us, and things would get very depressing, otherwise.
(I was five when she told me that "Pagan" meant country-dweller, and "Heathan" meant people who lived on the heath-- and that she admired pagan women for being strong; this was in 1969)
In my teens, she started a brief tradition of holding a Winter Solstice potluck party at our house, inviting all the neighbors over. When the sun set, she would try to encourage people to join in a collective cheer, to say good bye to the old sun, and get ready for the new one to come... mostly, people just looked at her like she was weird. But she cheered enthusiastically, anyway.
We always bought a live ball-and-burlap tree; we took off the decorations and moved it to the basement on Twelfth Night (I was also told it was bad luck to keep it up any longer), where it could stay cool-yet-protected until the ground thawed in the spring. Then it would get planted somewhere on the property.
She also told me that it was good luck to have a bird ornament somewhere on the tree, because it represented the continuation of life in the coming new year -- I really do not know which culture she got that from. Our ornaments were always eclectic and folk-arty /homemade -- none of this Martha-Stewart style "Theme" stuff. But nearly every year, we'd buy one new bird ornament to hang in the tree (And it was considered especially auspicious if we found a real bird's nest somewhere in the branches of our tree. I remember that happening a couple of times).
Anyway, that's what I remember. So it's hard for me to really get my head around the apparent conflict some see between celebrating Christmas and celebrating the winter solstice, because I've known all my life that the two are linked, and that both halves are important to people, though each half is more or less important to different people, and that's okay.
For the record, I never really talked to my mother about how she was raised, religiously. I think they went to an Episcipalian church in New York City when they were kids, though I think she and her siblings spent more time running around the church towers, getting into mischief, than actually listening to any of the sermons. She once told me, near the end of her life, that she considered Mathematics to be her religion, and that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were useful metaphors for the Past, Present and Future, respectively-- and that when we die, she thought it could be that we're reincarnated into the daisies that we push up, and that our souls, if souls we have, just become part of the pattern of energy in the universe as a whole. So I guess most "normal" people would call her an atheist. But she was a very spiritual, maybe-believing-in-magic-along-with-science, atheist. She specifically asked to be cremated, and for her ashes to be periodically spread on our compost heap.
I miss her. And I miss having someone else in the house to sing carols with. I have been singing them out loud, myself, but it's not the same.
*It was thin wood, a geometric design, and painted barn-red. My mother bought it at a Danish design store, iirc, for my parents' first Christmas as a married couple. I think we used it every year, at least, until Mom died.
She also bought, at the same time, a wooden Danish "Santa" decoration. It was a nearly two dimensional wooden sculpture of the Winter Gift-Giver, except for a wooden "button" nose, cotton wool beard, and a red wool tassle on the top of his red hat. He was painted with a blue coat, and white mittens, that had an abstract holly design on them, black shoes with buckles, and red-white-striped socks. He stood a little over 18 inches tall, irrc, and his wooden stand was about three inches wide. I miss him. There were also thumb-sized little wooden gnome/troll figures that managed to show up around the start of the season, placed in random spots around the house, on shelves and in odd corners.
Tomorrow is the start of Saturnalia!!
If there are four or more red cards showing, the answer is "Yes" (It's like flipping a coin, except I don't have to worry about the answer falling off the table and rolling to the other side of the room).
When I asked the Solitaire Oracle if I should post about how I learned to celebrate the Winter Holiday as I was growing up, it showed me: Black, Red, Red, Red, Red, Red, Black. That looks like a pretty emphatic "yes" to me, so:
My dad was an airline pilot; when he was working, he was gone for 3-4 days at a stretch. When he was home, he was fully home, and had time to spend with mother and me, so I probably had a stronger relationship with my father than other kids did, whose dads spent their time commuting to an office every day. But when he was gone, he was gone. So most of my cultural learning I got from Mom, since it was just her and I in the house, doing our thing.
I was raised, culturally, Christain (Quaker), but, in practical terms, my upbringing was secular. I was taught, by my parents, the story of Jesus' birth, and that the star on top of the tree represented the Star of Bethleham.* The music in our Christmas collection was all Traditional as in Folk or Classical-based (a lot of albums by Pete Seeger and Joan Collins and Leadbelly -- the Leadbelly album was one of our favorites). Never any Chimpmunks, or Bing Crosby. Many of the carols on those albums told the story from the human side of things: the social justice angle, focusing on the parents' poverty, and the generousity of strangers, rather than glorifying God and redemption from sin. My mother was about as tone deaf as anyone I've met, but we all, always, sang along with the records-- or danced; passive listening was not an option.
But mother also told me, from the time I was seven or so, that Jesus was not really born in December. That we celebrate Christmas when we do because of the ancient pagans who celebrated the winter solstice, that they would light candles and fires to entice the sun to come back, and bring greenery into the house to encourage life to keep going. And that the main reasons why we give gifts to each other, and have feasts and sing songs because we've got a long, cold winter ahead of us, and things would get very depressing, otherwise.
(I was five when she told me that "Pagan" meant country-dweller, and "Heathan" meant people who lived on the heath-- and that she admired pagan women for being strong; this was in 1969)
In my teens, she started a brief tradition of holding a Winter Solstice potluck party at our house, inviting all the neighbors over. When the sun set, she would try to encourage people to join in a collective cheer, to say good bye to the old sun, and get ready for the new one to come... mostly, people just looked at her like she was weird. But she cheered enthusiastically, anyway.
We always bought a live ball-and-burlap tree; we took off the decorations and moved it to the basement on Twelfth Night (I was also told it was bad luck to keep it up any longer), where it could stay cool-yet-protected until the ground thawed in the spring. Then it would get planted somewhere on the property.
She also told me that it was good luck to have a bird ornament somewhere on the tree, because it represented the continuation of life in the coming new year -- I really do not know which culture she got that from. Our ornaments were always eclectic and folk-arty /homemade -- none of this Martha-Stewart style "Theme" stuff. But nearly every year, we'd buy one new bird ornament to hang in the tree (And it was considered especially auspicious if we found a real bird's nest somewhere in the branches of our tree. I remember that happening a couple of times).
Anyway, that's what I remember. So it's hard for me to really get my head around the apparent conflict some see between celebrating Christmas and celebrating the winter solstice, because I've known all my life that the two are linked, and that both halves are important to people, though each half is more or less important to different people, and that's okay.
For the record, I never really talked to my mother about how she was raised, religiously. I think they went to an Episcipalian church in New York City when they were kids, though I think she and her siblings spent more time running around the church towers, getting into mischief, than actually listening to any of the sermons. She once told me, near the end of her life, that she considered Mathematics to be her religion, and that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were useful metaphors for the Past, Present and Future, respectively-- and that when we die, she thought it could be that we're reincarnated into the daisies that we push up, and that our souls, if souls we have, just become part of the pattern of energy in the universe as a whole. So I guess most "normal" people would call her an atheist. But she was a very spiritual, maybe-believing-in-magic-along-with-science, atheist. She specifically asked to be cremated, and for her ashes to be periodically spread on our compost heap.
I miss her. And I miss having someone else in the house to sing carols with. I have been singing them out loud, myself, but it's not the same.
*It was thin wood, a geometric design, and painted barn-red. My mother bought it at a Danish design store, iirc, for my parents' first Christmas as a married couple. I think we used it every year, at least, until Mom died.
She also bought, at the same time, a wooden Danish "Santa" decoration. It was a nearly two dimensional wooden sculpture of the Winter Gift-Giver, except for a wooden "button" nose, cotton wool beard, and a red wool tassle on the top of his red hat. He was painted with a blue coat, and white mittens, that had an abstract holly design on them, black shoes with buckles, and red-white-striped socks. He stood a little over 18 inches tall, irrc, and his wooden stand was about three inches wide. I miss him. There were also thumb-sized little wooden gnome/troll figures that managed to show up around the start of the season, placed in random spots around the house, on shelves and in odd corners.
Tomorrow is the start of Saturnalia!!
