Christmas, belief, and political correctness

I got a lot for Christmas this year: an Inuit sculpture and the complete series of Barney Miller from my sister, a sketchbook from my parents, as well as a few other CDs, DVDs, books and things.  Christmas dinner was exceptional: the traditional turkey, potatoes, squash, carrots, beans and gravy.

This is the time of year where people wish each other “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Holidays”, and “Season’s Greetings”.  More and more, especially in the opinion pages of the news people, some people are fighting against political correctness and saying things to the effect of “I don’t care if I offend people, I’m celebrating CHRISTmas, not Holidays”.   That whole line of posturing  just comes off as extremely defensive and condescending to me.  Wishing people well is not a competition.  Some people believe and some people don’t, and I have no problem with people saying either.  A simple “Merry Christmas” is fine: the process of adding those other words about fighting the political correctness and secularization seems to add the implication of “I couldn’t care less if your Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Yule is good or bad”.   You’re not going to know who celebrates Christmas just by looking at them.  I’m fine with Happy Holidays because not only is it inclusive of other beliefs, “holidays” can be the entire Thanksgiving to Epiphany timeframe: either way, Christmas is included.  The whole idea of a “war on Christmas” makes less sense when the holiday as it is celebrated today is largely comprised of re-appropriated traditions.  It’s not like athiests are forbidding a private celebration in the home or completely outlawing the sale of anything that actually says “Christmas”.  The Puritans were more opposed to Christmas than whatever the most vocal of the right-wing evangelicals say is opposing it these days.

I have a problem with some forms of political correctness, particularly when it ends up being more patronizing than anything (“handi-capable” or “differently abled” come to mind), or when it ends up making a concept so abstract with its over-deliberate choice of words.  I don’t doubt the whole concept was noble in intention, but with so many things, it gets corrupted by our own shitty human nature.

Assorted updates from the frontier

I’m a late night person, and I’m a boy who needs his time alone.  When I don’t have anything to do the next day, I stay up until most people are asleep, and don’t wake up until the day’s over halfway over.  In a city where the bus service runs only once an hour and never past early evening, most of my days are being wasted by my usual habits.  This has to change.  I think of the shifts I need to make in my life, at the risk of sounding all self help-y, and see where I come up short.  How many of my habits are reflections of weakness and laziness?  Is there an underlying issue beneath them all?  I tell myself discipline and persistance is all I really need to make the jump.  But do I need something else?

I need time to just lose myself in music and books.  It will be good once this Christmas season is over and done with, and I can get  on with living.  I feel a little scattered these days, with so many things I’m trying to accomplish but with a distractability that catches up with me before I get anything done.  I had a chat with a friend online who tried to help me connect to my imagination, and look for signs in the universe.  I’m looking for the quick routes all over again, not taking time to listen to myself, or dig deeper when I get a clue.  The quick routes are what got me stuck before.

I get nostalgic about the past, or at least an alternate version of the past stripped of all the mundane shit we wade through every day.  I get these images in my mind that I get the impression are an unattainable reality.  Perhaps it’s just an indication I’ve been conditioned to settle for less.  Was it me doing the conditioning?  How much of life is something I can truly fashion for myself, and how much is at the mercy of other people, time, chance, and luck?

Some good blog posts I’ve read lately:

Losing My Identity: Only Gay When I’m Not Iranian – Yashar Ali wrote about after he came out to his parents, they gave him the order not to disclose his sexuality to fellow Stateside Iranians or his extended family in Iran.  He discusses how having to hide himself was suffocating him, making him “a prisoner of [his parents’] shame.”  Ali writes about how trying to accommodate this shame had a negative effect on his identity, until he decided that he was tired of living an inauthentic life.

A Letter To Christians From A Gay Man – Chad writes of the issues that he, as a gay man, has with a Christian culture that has no empathy for GLBT people.  He illustrates how there are rigid norms the cultures enforce with regard to mens’ and womens’ roles, as well as a fear towards anything outside of the bubble it creates, the end result being him not feeling welcome.

I’m Christian, unless you’re gay – Dan Pearce of Single Dad Laughing writes about how so many self-proclaimed Christians end up treating others like dirt, deeming them unworthy of their love or friendship, and using self-righteousness and “concern” as a way to blanket their disdain.  “Why is it that sometimes the most Christlike people are they who have no religion at all?”.  I also recommend checking out the follow-up post where he shares some of the responses he got to the original post.  The first two were negative; the second letter is particularly noxious, and only serves to prove his point about how such hatred is usually cloaked in a rationalization that it somehow is “love”.   But for all the negative response he got, there are so many powerful responses about how his post has really opened minds and hearts.  There’s a second group of letters that are just amazing as well.