~ Ahh, the Holidays

Kerry Evans, OP Contributor

 

y daughter said to me the other
| \ day, “I really want to know if
Santa is real, but don’t tell me.

No, do tell me. No, don’t tell me.’ She’s
already found out this year, through a
close examination of handwriting, that
the Tooth fairy and Easter Bunny are less
than real.

So, now it’s Christmas and I know she
will be comparing the wrapping paper that
was used for gifts from Santa with that
used for gifts from Mom. She will be
holding the tags up to the light for ink
comparison. And furthermore, she will be
waiting to see if she got the presents she
asked Santa for. Here’s the problem: she
whispered her requests in Santa’s ear and
is refusing to tell me. Now I have the next
few weeks to convince her how naughty

she is so I can fill her stocking with coal
and be done with it.

I always think I love the holidays until
they arrive. I don’t sit around baking and
decorating my home and animals like
Miss. Aikman does. I put up the tree after
the 5th, I bake one horrid batch of sugar
cookies, I buy too many presents and give
them to people who give me ugly knit
scarves in return, and I mostly wallow that
I am spending another holiday season
mate-less. Ahh, the holidays. Grand, aren’t
they?

Gosh, T’m a little grinchy, aren’t I?
Well, don’t pray for my soul yet. This
morning I listened to Celine Dion’s
Christmas album and the result was that I
didn’t yell at my kid once. Not even when
she locked both bathroom doors so we

couldn’t get in. Not even when she left the
syrup bottle open and on its side on the
counter so that little drops are now splat-
tered all over the kitchen floor and
cupboards. And not even when she threw
the hairbrush at me blaming me for the
poor genetics that caused her hair to be
unbrushable. No, I just turned up Celine
and went about my business.

Yes, Santa’s sleigh will fly a little high-
er this year, thanks to my overwhelming
holiday joy. You’re welcome. Happy holi-
days. Oh, and please, don’t drink and
drive, not only during the Christmas sea-
son, but ever. Call a cab, because let’s face
it, wouldn’t you rather throw up in a cab
than in your own car?

 

SH TSITH:

Matters

David Suzuki,

  

David Suzuki

Christmas Complaints
Miss the Point

It started over a month ago—even before
Halloween. The television commercials,
the flyers in the mail, the decorations in
the mall. Christmas is now a two-month
event—one long blowout sale.

But there’s also no shortage of people
decrying the commercialization of the
holidays. The criticism itself is nothing
new. People have been complaining about
it for decades. Every year, the Christmas
season gets a little longer; every year, peo-
ple complain about it a little more.

It’s certainly a valid criticism, one that
I can’t help but make myself. As the holi-
day hype escalates, so too does our
accumulated waste. The roads become
packed with anxious shoppers, driving
from mall to mall in search of the right
gifts. The malls become stuffed with
Christmas goods and trinkets, all vying to
catch the shoppet’s eye. And the shoppers
themselves become stuffed with holiday
sweets and extra-large gingerbread lattes.
The whole enterprise is a monument to
excess.

For some, this excess typifies every-
thing that is wrong with the developed
world. We consume far more than our
share of the world’s resources. We create
huge amounts of waste. We obsess with
fads and fancy while species die out, pol-
lutants seep into the food chain, and the
climate changes. Christmas is the pinnacle
of our hyper-consumptive lifestyles, so it’s
easy to point a finger and condemn the
whole stressful, chaotic, overindulgent
experience.

But the real question is why? Why do
people put themselves through all the
stress and pressure? Why do they go into
debt so they can give gifts that the receiv-
er probably doesn’t even need? Why do
they complain about the excesses of
Christmas and then fall for it again every
year?

I believe they are trying to fill a void.
With fewer and fewer people taking part
in the religious aspects of the holidays,
many are looking for other rituals to take
their place. Humans have an innate need
to connect to their families, their commu-
nities, and to the rhythms and cycles of
nature. Throughout human history, we’ve
done that with celebrations and rituals to
reflect the changing seasons, the lunar
cycles, and important stages in our lives.

But today’s world is very different,
very new and in many ways runs against
millennia of the human experience. This
new world runs 24/7. This world is built
on consistency and uniformity, rather
than reflecting natural rhythms, local cul-
tural, or geographic differences. This
world has few rituals to reflect the stages
of out lives, the changing of the seasons,
and the passage of time. It doesn’t matter

 

if it’s dark outside. We just turn on a light.
It doesn’t matter if it’s cold outside. We
just turn up the heat. The seasons may
change, but our work schedules stay the
same. Fresh vegetables and fruits are
available year-round, regardless of
whether or not they are in season or
grown anywhere nearby. A Big Mac is a
Big Mac, here or in Turkey.

This world we’ve created is hard on
the planet and it’s hard on ourselves.
We've tried to isolate the human experi-
ence from the rest of nature, but it’s an
impossible task. Humans are a part of
nature. Whether we like it or not, our bod-
ies respond to changes in the natural
world. The more we try to deny who we
are, the less connected we will feel and the
more damage we will do to the planet.

In the absence of God or spirituality,

in the absence of a capacity to respond to
seasonal patterns and natural rhythms,
and in the absence of meaningful social
rituals, people are grasping onto whatever
they can to help ground them in their
communities. If that means spending days
at a time in a crowded mall, then that’s
what we do. That becomes the ritual. That
becomes Christmas.

I think people are hungry for change,
but feel trapped. We are yearning for
meaning, but accepting baubles and trin-
kets instead. Until we stop denying our
biological roots and embrace our human-
ity, we will never find the meaning we
seek. It’s just not something you can pick
up at the mall.

Take the Nature Challenge and learn

more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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