Sunday, December 09, 2007

'Tis the Season

Our usual Saturday night routine of dinner and a movie was interrupted by holiday cheer last night. A family that lives close by that we know through our middle child's Montessori school had a party. They're really sweet people. I've always been able to speak very openly and easily with Julio, pronounced with a hard J. They had a full house but it was easy to find a spot in the play room and relax. We didn't know anyone aside from the hosts, which was a blessed respite from small-talk. As I gathered some plates of goodies for the kids downstairs in the adult zone of the party I overheard a long conversation comparing Volvo repairs, various Volvo dealer service departments and so on. I was scornful in my judgment for a brief moment but somewhat effortlessly shifted to a different frame of mind. Which mostly had to do with trying to balance sweets with carrot sticks and apple slices for the kids, my own boring middle class concerns. I bring this up because I just felt sort of all right about things. Often in that sort of situation I want to scoff or feel insecure. I want to feel less than that I don't own a late model Volvo and then make myself feel better than by embellishing my own freewheeling creative career as a "Film Director!" But I was just a guy filling two animal shaped paper plates with food for my children at a Christmas party. What kind of car I drive or what I do for work didn't come into play in my own mind let alone in some sort of anxious conversation. That's freedom.
I surprised my wife with La Vie en Rose on DVD when we came home, but after getting the over-tired children to bed we only made it through the first half hour before crashing ourselves. So there's no movie reviewing today.
In a correspondence with an actor friend about a project we worked on together, he referred to one of the characters as having had Elijah come and gone from her life. The reference gave me an earworm that is still with me. But what do you call an earworm that's all wrong? Like I initially thought the GoGo's song Our Lips Are Sealed was Honest On Tuesday. I know, I know. In my head this morning I'm hearing Hank William's Kaw-Liga as Eli-Jah. It strikes me that this deserves a post of its own or maybe is just totally irrelevant emphemera.
Back to the holidays for a moment. My children's schools celebrate as many Winter celebrations as possible - Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, La Posada, Kwaanza, Diwali, Martinmas, et cetera. My daughter is full speed ahead in her embrace of all of it. She announces what day of Hanukkah it is at dinner each day. I'm glad that they know of the various cultural celebrations and I don't dispute the validity of any however suspect I think it is that Jesus happened to be born so near the Solstice. But hey, God is powerful. A Greek Orthodox priest explained away my skepticism of the virgin birth that God, being all powerful, made that happen to get people's attention. All facile liturgical explanations aside, knowing about various celebrations and celebrating all of them is another story. I'll hang all the collage Stars of David that they bring home, but we're not Jewish. The open-minded inclusiveness seems as if it could be an affront somehow. Like we're playing around with centuries-old symbols, images and rituals to show how tolerant we are. On the other hand my son is harumphing about all the Hanukkah talk this last week. He actually said, This is America. I have no idea where he heard that. It wasn't me and I haven't let him hang around my ex-Skinhead cousins for years. I'm pretty sure if anyone else hears him spouting his xenophobia, it'll be assumed that I'm the culprit. Oh well.
Krishnamuurti said, "Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay”. Even so, I like to say Merry Christmas. But as I write this I am uncomfortable. I don't want my mind to decay nor do I want to offend anyone. Not to be PC, but to break out of the security of the privileges of the dominant culture. I suppose that's a fine line. Maybe I could dance around it semantically for a few sentences, but I won't.
At the end of the day I don't want to assume what holiday someone celebrates. Nor do I want to assert that the holiday I celebrate is the more valid. Especially since I don't believe in Jesus Christ as a savior. I just like Christmas trees and all the other Santa stuff. Which has a lot of corporate and commercial influence. It's easy to get lost in all this stuff. This is part of Nietzsche's assertion that God is Dead -- we no longer have a state mandate telling us how to believe, celebrate and worship. We're on our own, and as Nietzsche pointed out, most of us aren't up to the task of managing our own religion. I'm just as lost as the next guy in all this cultural and religious freedom.
In the meantime, I'll be getting a Christmas tree and buying presents and accepting invitations to holiday parties. I'm even going to go cook latkes tomorrow at my son's school.

Ho, ho, ho,*
Signore Direttore

*Oh yeah, even that has become suspect

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