I'm not used to the social pressures of Christmas -- usually I just spend a quiet Winter Solstice at home, maybe volunteer to help out friends with their gift giving/buying, and just order take out for dinner, but this year is the first Christmas without my mother and my aunt... they celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ at this time of year. After someone dies in your family, the holidays become more important and more emotional. I look forward to spending time with my relatives, yet I am stressed that giving gifts isn't enough to really show them I care. Over the last twenty years I spent most of my energy exerting my independence and time away from them, all the while trying to get them to understand why I'm different, expecting them to accept and tolerate what makes me different from them, and then just drifting apart from them because, despite our blood ties, how could they ever accept me? I owe them much more than a trinket or stocking stuffer or whatever -- they are my blood, my life, our connections go deep -- so this holiday season all I really feel like doing is being a shoulder to lean on or asking for one to lean on myself. I haven't always been the perfect daughter, or niece, or cousin. I'm awkward.
I don't ever really fully "fit in" with the crowds of like minds I hang with, too. I forget birthdays, don't always have the money to spend on gifts, and most of the time I'm too self absorbed to remember to wish anyone else anything! And when I do remember it's never in the timely fashion it should be. During the holidays I often find myself apologising to people! I liken this to the way I often have a hard time keeping house -- I just kinda spaz out on the normal social rituals other people practice and I just let too much go til it gets so gone it's nearly impossible to salvage. Ms. Suzy Homemaker I'm not -- and etiquette? What's that? I live in a world where I follow my own flow and, even though I really do care about my friends and family, I'm so used to being alone I lack the "nice" behavior everyone else is clued in on. What stresses me out the most sometimes is when I am invited to a holiday party or family get-together and everyone is expected to "do something" and yet I'm never sure what I'm in for. The last two times I felt so completely inept socially was during a friend's wedding and, most recently, a friend's birthday -- both times I forgot to wrap a gift or present it properly and everyone but me is passing the gifts to the friend-in-honor, taking photos, and handing out gift cards -- I just sit in the sidelines, the only one not following protocol. You would think that it's due to a lack of social training in my family upbringing, but this is not so. You'll see what I mean in a minute...
Christmas with my mother always meant she'd bake a cake and decorate it up for Jesus. We'd sing the "Happy Birthday" song to Jesus and the rest of the night consisted of singing carols or watching films like "The Greatest Story Ever Told", "Spartacus" or "The Ten Comandments". There was always an exchanage of gifts between family members, we'd attend Church, volunteer at homeless shelters or half-way houses, and then Christmas night was spent with friends and another exchange of gifts. It was a time to remember everyone else, never a time to indulge too much in what you wanted. There were Christmases that we went without toys, not because my Mom couldn't afford them, but because we were too busy making sure other people were getting taken care of. My mother was very social, too -- in the house and in church and at work -- busy all hours of the day baking and cooking, keeping and collecting gift cards, always making sure the right people got thanked and were told "I love you" and above all we had to think of God. "The most important things to remember to tell other people is 'I love you' and 'thank you,'" She instructed me from age one, "because you may be the one person in their lives that will ever tell them that." She would also make sure we remembered to wish Jesus a Happy Birthday because He was the reason for the season. It wasn't just a simple well-wishing, it was something very serious. Christmas was fun but mostly, for our little single parent family, it was all about the Jesus. She spent most of my life separated from her family and, when we were reunited with her brothers and sisters after my Aunt Sandy died from breast cancer in 1986, a whole new monthly ritual of birthdays and anniversaries began. The most important of these was Christmas.
Christmases were always spent at my Aunt Madge and Uncle Orley's house. This meant gift giving and cooking became more complicated! There were more people to remember to give gifts to and cook for. I wasn't always prepared to know what exactly to get my relatives for Christmas and oftentimes I was surprised to get a gift I really wanted from an aunt or uncle! My mother made sure she taught me to remember to thank God, but my aunts and uncles and cousins made sure to teach me to remember to appreciate each other. Christmas with my extended family could be just as stressful as the holidays I spent with Mom at church. Gift giving and holiday cooking was like religion. If you didn't do it right or often enough it meant you didn't care, so you had to get going with the ritual to make sure everyone knew they were loved and appreciated. Jesus' birthday was like celebrating everyone else's birthday, too. As an adult looking back on this, I liken it to recognizing God in each other. You saw a desire or need in someone you love and you fill it, pass it on, keep the love flowing... It was hard work to keep up with it! My Aunt Madge was the very matriarch of holiday protocol. While my mother was busy with the religious duties of taking us to church, my aunt was making and keeping a list all year long, both of them always prepared to make sure the kids and everyone else was remembered. Whenever I got gifts for my mom or aunt, I never felt like what I gave them was good enough -- they worked SO HARD to make sure everyone else was having a good time that my efforts to make sure they had a good time seemed so small.
It wasn't like they were hugely strict, it was because they were so powerful in my mind, how could I ever carry on what they did? Even at age 39 I feel like a child. I never was all that interested in the Christian religion like my mother was. I had other ideas and experiences. I don't like to cook or bake. I just wanted to be left alone. I experienced an epic fail one Thanksgiving day in the year 1990 -- it was my turn to cook the turkey and prepare a meal for my mother and brother and I -- but, not being all that talented in the cooking department, I forgot to thaw the turkey! So, no turkey dinner! And Mom was so unhappy she cried and cried and screamed and screamed at me for being so thoughtless. It was not long after that I lost interest in participating in family holiday celebrations altogether. Not because I didn't love my family, it was because I just didn't feel like my contributions would be good enough and that I would no longer be accepted because, after a lifetime of being forced to follow along with Christianity, I found a religion that perfectly fit in with who I am and didn't expect me to be anything I wasn't. I turned my back on my mother's religion, NOT on my mother, but rejecting something that was very important to her, something she believed in with her whole heart and soul, was like me turning my back on her forever. I always felt I failed her, but I would never lie to her. I always made sure to share with her who I am. I wanted to make sure she knew that what she taught me made me the woman I am today and that she was a good mother. But religion would be the one thing that kept us separate.
No matter the tolerance I maintain, I still find it difficult to forgive Christians for convincing my mother that I was going to Hell. The Christian religion separated us. After telling her I was a Witch, there was nothing I could do to make it up to her. She hit a brick wall whenever I shared with her what I believed and why I believed what I believed. For a couple Christmases after "coming out of the broom closet" to my Mom, the ritual of Christmas itself became more stressful. Every Christmas I found myself explaining and feeling obligated to educate, enlighten, and take all the fun out of celebrating the holidays with Christians. I eventually found it far less stressful to spend more time with other pagans and witches. Eventually it was harder to even visit with my mother altogether. It wasn't that I was rejecting her, in fact I had complete respect and perfect love for her and NEVER expected her to believe what I believed. I accepted her for who she was, my mother, and that acceptance went beyond religion. Simple matters of religious rituals aren't that imporant to the God(s), the Divine doesn't care what we call Them, what matters most is that we be excellent to each other!
Every Christmas I am reminded of the "silent night" carol -- the whole peace on earth theme -- and what that really means for us all, regardless of our individual religious affiliations. If we spend too much time focusing on "being right" we forget how to treat each other right. I hate having religious debates, especially when no one can seem to reach a common ground. The key to having world peace is to understand and tolerate our differences and still practice what we believe is right. With that said, I don't feel now that I failed my mother, but I still feel guilty every Christmas because now, after she's dead, I can't get all the holidays I missed with her back. Not just the holidays, but the days and nights we could've been better friends... if only her religion had permitted her to let go of that horrible belief that everyone is going to suffer eternal damnation if they aren't "saved" by letting Jesus into their heart. The last few years I've spent with my mother I did everything I could to please her and make her feel comfortable. This meant having to bite my lip and "wish Jesus a happy birthday" like we used to when I was a child. She could share with me what she believed, but I dared not share what I believed or practiced (even though she would repeatedly tell me she wanted to know more about me). Whenever I did share, she would cut me off, my brother would tell me to shut-up, and so for the last five Christmases I've had to constantly police myself and make sure all the Christians around me were respected. I "turned the other cheek" more times than perhaps they ever have. And every Christmas I would get depressed.
On the other hand, for the last two Winter Solstices I've had a loyal group of friends to celebrate with. While Christmases remained blue ones for me, Yule has become this explosion of social happiness -- the good kind of stress -- ! But now that my mother has died, my holiday stress isn't over... I'm hoping that this Christmas will be an emotional uplifting of the restrictions I felt I had to comply to with my mother. And yet... I feel the burden of her loss, made all the more intense because my aunt passed away this year, too. Will my little gifts wrapped with care be enough to soothe the hearts of my relatives? Gathering with them for Thanksgiving was a nice welcome after so many years being apart. I think this Christmas will be the same, but... there is still a nagging hurt in my heart.
I'm rediscovering that my family loves me (it's something I should've never forgotten). That makes this season more special than ever before. The emotional separation I had with my mother is gone, but now dealing with the physical separation is made easier reconnecting with the rest of the family. Yet I can't help still feeling like an insensitive dork when it comes to not contributing food I hand-cooked and giving only small, inexpensive gifts (some of them I hand made) -- yet do I really have to "go all out" to show I care? Would my Aunt Madge approve of the way I saved money or spent money or whatever? I remember one thing she told me after my Uncle Orley died when I expressed to her how sorry I was for not being around enough to help out. She said, "You're here now, that's what counts." Maybe that is the answer I've been asking for: just "being there" is the gift my family needs.
No matter what the holiday or differences in religion or lifestyle, WE are the GIFTS our family really needs.
I smile after writing that line. Thank you, Madge. Thank you, Mom. I'm here now.
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