Holidays for all
Dec. 24th, 2005 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonantThe last weeks of December are to time what Jerusalem is to space: they're sacred to almost everybody. The result is that whatever your preferences are, somewhere in the history of human culture there's a holiday to suit them. Unless, of course, your preference is not to have a holiday this time of year at all but just go on with your ordinary life -- that's generally not an option, at least in America.
Me myself, I mostly celebrate Saturnalia. Friends, overindulgence, laziness, material goods. One Saturnalia element I don't have very much of is Misrule, but then Misrule sort of requires both largish groups of people and defined roles to reverse, and neither of those is much part of my life these days. Maybe when the kidlet gets too old for Santa Claus, we'll start having a day of family Misrule, where they get to make all the decisions but also have to do all the chores. One day they will have enough contact with the outside world to realize how deeply odd their family is.
The Feast of the Nativity is a quiet, contemplative sort of observance, and I find it easier to capture the proper attitude during the empty days of January and February than now, when it would have to compete with so much food and music and greetings from distant friends, so much purely human pleasure. Though now that I think of it, part of the meaning of the Incarnation story is that all human things are blessed and sacred -- not just big things like justice and kindness but little things like our pleasure in food and warmth.
I don't have a sense of the spirit of other winter-solstice-related holidays -- Hanukkah, Yule, Sunreturn. I'd like to know more about them, not the history of them but how they feel, what sort of spirit is at the heart of them.
I wish you all warmth and light, and a holiday merry or sacred or quiet or raucous or whatever suits you best.
edited 2020 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns
Me myself, I mostly celebrate Saturnalia. Friends, overindulgence, laziness, material goods. One Saturnalia element I don't have very much of is Misrule, but then Misrule sort of requires both largish groups of people and defined roles to reverse, and neither of those is much part of my life these days. Maybe when the kidlet gets too old for Santa Claus, we'll start having a day of family Misrule, where they get to make all the decisions but also have to do all the chores. One day they will have enough contact with the outside world to realize how deeply odd their family is.
The Feast of the Nativity is a quiet, contemplative sort of observance, and I find it easier to capture the proper attitude during the empty days of January and February than now, when it would have to compete with so much food and music and greetings from distant friends, so much purely human pleasure. Though now that I think of it, part of the meaning of the Incarnation story is that all human things are blessed and sacred -- not just big things like justice and kindness but little things like our pleasure in food and warmth.
I don't have a sense of the spirit of other winter-solstice-related holidays -- Hanukkah, Yule, Sunreturn. I'd like to know more about them, not the history of them but how they feel, what sort of spirit is at the heart of them.
I wish you all warmth and light, and a holiday merry or sacred or quiet or raucous or whatever suits you best.
edited 2020 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns