idea was it to make having a tooth fall out in the middle of the day something to get excited about?)
So I told my mother I was not going to do the whole North Pole, Santa thing with Ava. I mean, we spend so much time and money getting our kids all wound up about Santa and the Easter Bunny, making them think these fake apparitions are going to appear and make life magical, when everyday human kindness can really do the same thing.
“Are you crazy ?” my mom said. As soon as Ava could hold the phone to her ear, my mom could barely wait to shriek, “Santa Claus is married to Mrs. Claus, and they live at the North Pole, and their reindeer are Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen! And the elves make all the presents! Santa’s very modern now, you can e-mail him!” Last year she even topped herself, convinced this would be one of the last years when Ava would believe in Santa. She literally bought Ava a copy of The Night Before Christmas that came with a voice recorder into which she’d programmed herself reading the text aloud. Ava is a pre-tween at this point, and my mom’s still trying to give her one last hit of Christ-mess!
Why have we all been suckered into celebrating a holiday that very few of us actually believe in?
Wouldn’t it be great if we all just decided we didn’t want to do Christmas one year? What if, instead, we found things that do matter to us to celebrate, or at the very least just took a really great vacation? I want to go on record as saying that if you have children, Christmas is possibly something you should do. And don’t get me wrong; there must be a few Christians out there who actually believe Christmas is Jesus’s birthday, and by all means they too should celebrate it. If Christ is your guru, throw him a party and get down with it. But he’s not my guru, and I resent the fact that I’m still supposed to spend $8,000 on presents for everyone I know each December, including vendors, business acquaintances, and my trainer. There’s so much pressure to buy gifts and plane tickets and go home to our families and be intimate, but then we do, and no one even talks about real things or has real conversations! I mean, even Jewish families are being pressured by the Christmas complex; they’re buying blue Hanukah bushes at Target, because their kids feel bad Santa’s not coming to see them !
We don’t have to go along with this. Remember, normal gets you nowhere—you don’t have to celebrate the normal holidays, especially when they get you stuck in an airport on December 23 with a bunch of angry, violent people. Why not make your own holidays, just as I’ve urged you to make your own religion? Merriam-Webster defines “holiday” as “a day on which one is exempt from work; specifically, a day marked by a general suspension of work in commemoration of an event.” I hate to tell you this, but as a single mother I spend the Christmas “holiday” running around like Mrs. Brady on crack. I get off work at nine or ten at night, fly up to Times Square in a cab, work my way through Toys ’R Us, then try in vain to cram my bags into another cab in the freezing cold before giving up and opting for delivery. I mean, there’s nothing restful about it. Frankly, anyone who tells you it’s restful is either lying or on meds.
Instead of these fake holidays commemorating things that didn’t even happen (Most scholars don’t even think Jesus’s actual birthday was in December!), I propose all employers give their employees at least five to ten personal days per year in addition to their sick and vacation days. This way, we could take a day off work anytime we think something is holy. If you want your self-made holiday to be January 5—which I highly recommend, since travel is cheaper than ever and everything’s 50 to 90 percent off—then go for it! If you’d rather celebrate the Navajo Sing Festival in February or the Hindu Ganesh Chaturthi
So I told my mother I was not going to do the whole North Pole, Santa thing with Ava. I mean, we spend so much time and money getting our kids all wound up about Santa and the Easter Bunny, making them think these fake apparitions are going to appear and make life magical, when everyday human kindness can really do the same thing.
“Are you crazy ?” my mom said. As soon as Ava could hold the phone to her ear, my mom could barely wait to shriek, “Santa Claus is married to Mrs. Claus, and they live at the North Pole, and their reindeer are Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen! And the elves make all the presents! Santa’s very modern now, you can e-mail him!” Last year she even topped herself, convinced this would be one of the last years when Ava would believe in Santa. She literally bought Ava a copy of The Night Before Christmas that came with a voice recorder into which she’d programmed herself reading the text aloud. Ava is a pre-tween at this point, and my mom’s still trying to give her one last hit of Christ-mess!
Why have we all been suckered into celebrating a holiday that very few of us actually believe in?
Wouldn’t it be great if we all just decided we didn’t want to do Christmas one year? What if, instead, we found things that do matter to us to celebrate, or at the very least just took a really great vacation? I want to go on record as saying that if you have children, Christmas is possibly something you should do. And don’t get me wrong; there must be a few Christians out there who actually believe Christmas is Jesus’s birthday, and by all means they too should celebrate it. If Christ is your guru, throw him a party and get down with it. But he’s not my guru, and I resent the fact that I’m still supposed to spend $8,000 on presents for everyone I know each December, including vendors, business acquaintances, and my trainer. There’s so much pressure to buy gifts and plane tickets and go home to our families and be intimate, but then we do, and no one even talks about real things or has real conversations! I mean, even Jewish families are being pressured by the Christmas complex; they’re buying blue Hanukah bushes at Target, because their kids feel bad Santa’s not coming to see them !
We don’t have to go along with this. Remember, normal gets you nowhere—you don’t have to celebrate the normal holidays, especially when they get you stuck in an airport on December 23 with a bunch of angry, violent people. Why not make your own holidays, just as I’ve urged you to make your own religion? Merriam-Webster defines “holiday” as “a day on which one is exempt from work; specifically, a day marked by a general suspension of work in commemoration of an event.” I hate to tell you this, but as a single mother I spend the Christmas “holiday” running around like Mrs. Brady on crack. I get off work at nine or ten at night, fly up to Times Square in a cab, work my way through Toys ’R Us, then try in vain to cram my bags into another cab in the freezing cold before giving up and opting for delivery. I mean, there’s nothing restful about it. Frankly, anyone who tells you it’s restful is either lying or on meds.
Instead of these fake holidays commemorating things that didn’t even happen (Most scholars don’t even think Jesus’s actual birthday was in December!), I propose all employers give their employees at least five to ten personal days per year in addition to their sick and vacation days. This way, we could take a day off work anytime we think something is holy. If you want your self-made holiday to be January 5—which I highly recommend, since travel is cheaper than ever and everything’s 50 to 90 percent off—then go for it! If you’d rather celebrate the Navajo Sing Festival in February or the Hindu Ganesh Chaturthi
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