jenk

From the 3rd-season Buffy episode Amends:

Xander:	So, you doing anything special?
Buffy:	Tree. Nog. Roast beast. Just me and Mom and hopefully an excess of gifts. What are you doing for Christmas?
Willow:	Being Jewish. Remember, people? Not everybody worships Santa.
Buffy:	(smiles) I just meant for vacation.
Willow:	Mm. Nothing fun.

What I like about this the honesty. Christmas is a vacation. Tree. Nog. Roast beast. Gifts. If anyone or anything is worshipped, it's Santa.

Which can make it hard for those who have actual, you know, religions that do not include tree, nog, roast beast, and gifts. It emphasizes the difference from the majority.

Growing up, the family that did not hand out candy on Halloween were "weirdos". They were also Jehovah's Witnesses. (Of course, now that the fundies are deciding Halloween is bad, maybe the JW's will have company.)

With Christmas, some who observe the holiday consider themselves Christians. Some might actually try to convert you or I, given the chance; others have proselyphobia. But there are also a lot of people for whom it's family tradition, or fun, or a folk tale (though they probably wouldn't call it that). I have uncles who can go from singing carols to bitching about how Jesus is a fairy tale and the preachers should get the hell of out Christmas in 2 seconds flat. Do they call themselves Christian? No. But they celebrate Christmas.

Of course, Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate Christmas. Neither did the Puritans. Actually, most protestants tossed it out during the Reformation ... so of course the Roman Catholics increased their celebrations.

Back in 1970, a novel recounted two flight attendants attempting to flee Christmas by hopping a flight to the officially Atheist Soviet Union. They were greeted with tinsel, garland, and trees. "Merry Christmas!" Now Christmas - and other Hallmark holidays - are catching on in China, too. The Manila Standard runs articles comparing the Laughing Buddha and Santa. ("Who looks fat, has a big tummy, wears a red cloak, carries a big sack, is surrounded by children, is loved by one and all and is always laughing heartily? "Santa Claus!" say those from the West. "Laughing Buddha" say the Chinese.")

And for those who aren't celebrating, especially those who are tired of correcting the majority presumption of "well you may not be RELIGIOUS but everyone celebrates Christmas", there probably isn't any difference.

Maybe I'm jaded. Maybe I spent too many years as a "show me where the Bible has Christmas trees, it doesn't, so why do we say the Puritans were wrong?" fundie. Or maybe I've had too many lectures about how Christmas resulted from early Christianity's using the "embrace and extend" strategy to various pagan celebrations. To me, there's nothing religious or Christian about tree, nog, or roast beast. Yet to those who view those things as trappings of Christianity, they are ... and who is to say whose view is correct?

(Now, the Eucharist, Baptism, and prayer, those are religious, yes. And I'm glad they aren't being celebrated hourly in Bellevue Square.)

I told him I’d been raised a Pentecostal but mellowed into Methodism as an adult.

Who me?

James Baldwin said being black in America is like walking around with a pebble in your shoe. Sometimes it scarcely registers and sometimes it shifts and becomes uncomfortable and sometimes it can even serve as a kind of Buddhist mindfulness bell, keeping you present, making you pay attention.

It sounds like a good metaphor to me.

Quotes from Kim McLarin, writing for The New York Times.

The Bash, which we attended, overlapped a bit with the Lifestyles con, which we didn't. They were both at The Stardust.

Difference between a bash and con? A bash has more parties. Cons have more programming. :)

Various impressions....

• Vegas is Vegas: hot, dry, smokey. Lots going on, lots to see, lots you can do. Don't forget your preferred headache remedies.
• Oh, and don't walk all day in loose-fitting sandals. My blisters are finally healing...after two days of sitting in a car.
• Lots of big women, but then, there were over 1300 attendees. There were plenty of women bigger than I & also plenty that were smaller.*
• There were quite a few men attending the event as well. Most of them were not large, which I found a bit surprising. Not that I'm unacquainted with fat admirers, but it was interesting how few BBM there were.
• People were really into the event. The costume party had quite a few different outfits, and Saturday night had a LOT of people in formals.
• I understand why the pool parties went from midnight to four AM...I also understand why I didn't bother...
• I heard several women talking about how they met their best friends through the BBWNetwork and the Bashes.
• I can understand that meeting fat accepting folk, fat admirers, and other people of size can be a huge revelation. So can seeing a fashion show, or a dance full of happy fat chicks.** And that's cool.
• A few of the men at the bash chatted me up - or tried to. I was polite & friendly, but I got the impression they expecting me to be a lot more pleased at male attention than I was. Hm. Do I look desperate?
• jw1776 & I helped out at cyberangel_'s booth in the vendor fair. Some people asked if cyberangel_ "thought she was bigger than she is". The impression I got was that cyberangel_ wasn't seen as being "fat enough". I'd joked about lending the booth "street cred" but this didn't exactly make me happy.
• There was a certain amount of jockeying between the plus-size and supersize, the singles and the partnered, the apples and the pears.
• There was also an interesting mix of let's-be-racy-but-stay-tame. The bash aims at being PG-13, but I don't just mean the bash. All the push on the topless shows or the "gentleman's clubs", showgirls...but it's all done with a wink, a tease, a let's-go-only-so-far limit. Mass marketing requires certain limits.
• I also got some funny looks while dancing, both alone and with jw1776. I've had people express surprise at how we dance before, so that may be it.***
• Yes, I got clothes at the vendor fair - mostly from Big on Batik. I'm glad I was able to try things on and not go by catalog. Yummy natural-fiber clothes that look good on me, yay.
• I also enjoyed hanging out with friends and catching up. The Seattle-area contingent included jw1776, sirenscry, & cyberangel_. I also got to see scubachik & divaprime again, meet lenniersd in person, and a few other folks :)

Overall, I'm glad I went. I'm also glad my new Celtic Butterfly dress from Holy Clothing showed up before we left!

*If you don't know me in real life, my proportions are: 59"-57"-67" around, 5'9" tall. This puts me in the "supersize" category of bigger-than-plus-size-departments in department stores.
**I first encountered fat acceptance in the 80s through the original BBW Magazine, published by Carole Shaw, who came up with the term "BBW" for "Big Beautiful Woman". With usenet came camaraderie (hi firecat!) and more information. The first BBW fashion show I went to was at the Seattle Bon Marche (now Macy's) in 90 or 91, hosted by Carole Shaw.
***It is apparently surprising that jw1776 & I are large, limber and not afraid to move. Or to spin. :)

Bruce Springsteen has categorized this song as being about how you can't really know another human being. There's always some piece of them that you can't touch.

She'll lead you down a path
There'll be tenderness in the air
She'll let you come just far enough
So you know she's really there
She'll look at you and smile
And her eyes will say
She's got a secret garden
Where everything you want
Where everything you need
Will always stay
A million miles away
- full lyrics

... I think I'm finally getting it.

Working Mother Magazine addressed how sex and race affect corporate life. It also puts things in terms I can easily understand...I've had the joyful experience of being seen as representing all women, or all fat people, so I can get that being seen as representing all black women would suck.

The P-I carried a story on black men striving to appear benign. All those little split-second decisions that can mean life or death.

Granny talks about "mundane stress" in Louisiana.

And Alas, A Blog comes up with a great description of "Othering and Centering", aka, the problems created not just by vilifying the other, but by assuming that all normal people are ______________ ....

I found this to be a good reminder...writing on surveys showing that people are rude everywhere:

What bothers [Miss Manners] is that encouraging people to condemn the rudeness of others relieves them of responsibility for the state of things. It's all those awful people out there who are making life so unpleasant for us. Tsk, tsk.

Miss Manners would like to add some questions to that survey:

How much leeway do you allow yourself to disobey etiquette rules because you are in a hurry or have work to do or are upset about something else?

When you encounter rudeness, do you feel justified in retaliating in kind?

Are you willing to contribute to a more polite society by forgoing behavior that others find offensive?

Personally I would change the "forgoing behavior that others find offensive" to "forgoing the pleasure of treating others rudely". And it can be a pleasure to let oneself be Queen of one's little universe...at least, until you discover that the Queen is rather solitary, as the subjects all run off to form their own little Queendoms.

From a WSJ article on the CDC's new guidelines "encouraging doctors of all specialties to ask women about their reproductive plans, and consider all treatments, procedures and medications in terms of what impact they would have on a possible pregnancy" comes this little factoid:

A study of 2001 birth data published this month in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health estimates that half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned, with about a quarter of pregnancies in college graduates coming as a surprise.

The implication is that college grads, being better educated, plan their lives more. I can't help but wonder if some of those college grads ARE college grads because they took action to not have a baby while they were in college.

I also wonder about their definition of "unplanned". I've known people who "just did it once"; I've known birth control failures; I've known people to have "well, we decided to skip the birth control and see if it happened, but we weren't really TRYING". The first two are definitely unplanned; the last, well, isn't.

(More on the CDC guidelines at the Washington Post. While I like that my doc asks what I'm doing about birth control, I think that blocking women's access to treatments that are non-pregnancy-friendly is a mistake too.)

From "Money Changes Everything" in the New York Times:

[A former lawyer working on] her M.F.A. in creative writing at Columbia [found] her diamond engagement ring attracted particular attention from her new group of friends. "When I was working," she said, "I never thought about the ring, it seemed unremarkable."

But at school, she said, "People said things like, 'That's a really big diamond,' and not necessarily in a complimentary way." So she began taking off the ring before class.

( -o- )

"We are allegedly a classless society, and that's obviously completely untrue, but people don't want to acknowledge that those differences exist," said Jamie Johnson, a 26-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune.

-o-

"The real issue is not money itself, but the power money gives you," said Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University, who studies issues of wealth and class. "Money makes explicit the inequalities in a relationship, so we work hard to minimize it as a form of tact."

( -o- )

"I call them 'money pods,' " [said Suze Orman]. "Look at a group of female friends walking down the street. They're often all dressed identically: the same shoes, the same belts, the same handbag."

But what is not easily apparent, Ms. Orman said, is that one of the women may have saved for months to buy her one expensive handbag, or more likely, put it on her credit card. Her identically dressed friends, meanwhile, may have the salary or the family money to afford a closet full of designer purses.

"That is how we get in trouble," Ms. Orman said. "We think our friends are just like us, and if our friend can afford something, we fool ourselves into thinking we can afford it, too."

( -o- )

It's so much easier to support freedom of religion when you don't recognize religious practices other than your own. And remember: "You need Jesus in your life!"

Wake school district policy prohibits students from wearing head coverings of any kind. But the policy says schools should make "reasonable accommodations on the basis of students' religious beliefs or medical conditions."

So when a 16-year-old student wears a yarmulke to class,

Assistant Principal Scott Brouthers questioned him about the yarmulke and told him "he needed Jesus in his life." [...] Not wanting to stand out, Brad said he chose to wear a baseball cap, with his name emblazoned on it, over the yarmulke. Even though Brad said he explained to Brouthers that he was wearing the cap for religious reasons, he said the assistant principal would daily tell him to take off the cap. At least twice more, Brad said, Brouthers spoke to him about needing Jesus.

Toss in that some students told the kid he was going to hell for being Jewish, and gee, he doesn't want to wear the yarmulke visibly. The school's reaction? Suspension.

[His father Paul] Seelig, who has a master's degree in Hebrew education, said administrators wouldn't believe him when he said that Jewish law doesn't specify the kind of head covering.
[...]
Superintendent Bill McNeal contacted Judah Segal, executive director of the Raleigh-Cary Jewish Federation, who backed the Seeligs' position on head coverings. At a meeting Thursday among Seelig, Segal and school officials, they worked out the compromise.

The compromise? Spend $100 on nicer hats for the teen to wear to school.

God forbid those asswipes end up with a Sikh student....

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering you own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew.

- Saint Francis de Sales by way of motivationquote

I like this for several reasons. One, it acknowledges that mistakes are human. Two, it puts the focus on getting things done, not on assigning blame. Three, the reminder that each day we start fresh :)

snippy posted an overview, with link to more information, of how neuroscience supports avoiding, or at least being careful, around angry and negative people. A few excerpts:

There is now strong evidence to suggest that humans have the same type of "mirror neurons" found in monkeys. It's what these neurons do that's amazing--they activate in the same way when you're watching someone else do something as they do when you're doing it yourself! This mirroring process/capability is thought to be behind our ability to empathize, but you can imagine the role these neurons have played in keeping us alive as a species. We learn from watching others. We learn from imitating (mirroring) others. The potential problem, though, is that these neurons go happily about their business of imitating others without our conscious intention.
[...]
...social scientific research has largely confirmed the thesis that affect, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour can indeed spread through populations as if they were somehow infectious. Simple exposure sometimes appears to be a sufficient condition for social transmission to occur. This is the social contagion thesis; that sociocultural phenomena can spread through, and leap between, populations more like outbreaks of measels or chicken pox than through a process of rational choice.

I'm still reading through the various links in this, but it's interesting.

A final thought:

It is easy to be negative about past mistakes and unhappiness. But it is much more healing to look at ourselves and our past in the light of experience, acceptance, and growth.

Our past is a series of lessons that advance us to higher levels of living and loving. The relationships we entered, stayed in, or ended taught us necessary lessons.

Some of us have emerged from the most painful circumstances with strong insights about who we are and what we want. Our mistakes? Necessary. Our frustrations, failures, and sometimes stumbling attempts at growth and progress? Necessary too. Each step of the way, we learned.

- from Appreciating Our Past