Eccentric Flower talk:201012/No Christmas
From Eccentric Flower
Comments on Eccentric Flower:201012/No Christmas
*How* little is your nephew-thing? They make the "Playskool Little People" style "you cannot choke on this" sets in rocketships with a lighter-brown skinned astronaut and a darker-brown skinned astronaut. I don't know if the current set also has the green-skinned alien and the astronaut dog. But Moo loved hers when she was *quite* small and is still apparently defending it with shrieks from her older brother, who is *really* too old to display any interest in it, and yet.
We have also gotten a giant, nearly spherical stuffed hedgehog for the younger niecelet, which pleased me, as she is still in the gum-and-babble phase of life.
And Mo Willems books are for all ages, I find.
-- 21:34, 6 December 2010 (GMT)
Robert, Christmas trees are a crop, just like, say, corn or soybeans. A full-grown corn stalk is very pretty, but I wouldn't hesitate to cut it down to get the food value. "Finding something beautiful and killing it" is lame. Christmas tree farms are beautiful, as well as lucrative. Those of us who can't get to the incomparable aroma of fir trees any other way are very grateful to those who are willing to raise the trees as a cash crop. Win-win.
I have to make my own holiday festivities, because I come from a family of Scrooges, who would just as soon sleep through the whole thing. Every year I'm more and more convinced I'm adopted. I have a stack of Christmas CDs, which I happily inflict on whomever is within range; I put up my tree, I decorate with outdoor lights, I have Santas everywhere. I bake and I give gifts and I send the odd Christmas card. I even make it a point to visit the mall on Christmas Eve, just to experience the lights and the sounds.
And I do it all alone... 8-( Not as much fun as it used to be, but I refuse to capitulate.
-- 21:41, 6 December 2010 (GMT)
Bunny, I have no doubt it's a lucrative cash crop. So's marijuana. Doesn't make it right to do it. "They're grown to be chopped down" also is irrelevant; they should be grown, period. As for corn, that's inapposite; you eat the corn. If you're actually eating your Christmas tree, then I'd say, sure go ahead and do it. But Christmas trees are not food, clothing, shelter or fuel, or any other necessity of life. If you want the smell, just get one of those pine-scented car air fresheners and hang it on a reusable metal tree.
Admittedly, I'm less worked up about personal trees than I am about the giant, corporate trees. Take a look at this story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/nyregion/30trees.html A fifty-year-old tree that had been planted by the owner's father. What a horrible waste of beauty and grandeur -- I hope he choked on this thirty pieces of silver.
-- 00:03, 7 December 2010 (GMT)
The nephew was a year old in August so he is mostly still in the soft-toy phase. He has access to gigantic Legos and blocks and such but mostly still wants to chew them. I will think of something, although frankly he is at the age where the whole world is his toy.
-- 00:19, 7 December 2010 (GMT)
Robert, we shall agree to disagree. Okay, corn was a bad example, food-wise. But trees are plants, and I don't see why they're any different than any other plant, if they are seeded and raised for the specific purpose of Christmas trees. I'm a lot more upset about using corn for fuel instead of food than I am about farmers who can't raise anything else, because of the land or whatever, making a living providing something beloved by millions. And I do love my tree, year after year. No paper air freshener will ever be the same, and you know it. That's like saying Pine Sol will fill the bill. Get real. (Actually, yeah, that's exactly what I do.)
I agree that a fifty-year-old tree is gorgeous, but if the family wished to donate it for the enjoyment of millions, if that makes them happy, then more power to them. I saw old growth trees in WA, the ones with the spotted owls in 'em, and those would be the only ones I would agree need to be preserved, not cut up into lumber for Japanese coffee tables. Any others, most especially those grown for a purpose, are fair game, to me. We'll never agree on this point, I can see that. But then, there's lots of stuff we don't agree on. I'm currently reading Decision Points, f'rinstance. 8-)
-- 05:36, 7 December 2010 (GMT)
ProfRobert: I tried that argument once upon a time on someone, who likened the concept of Christmas trees to flowers for commercial bouquets. Both customs involve merely decorative plants that are otherwise useless.
Columbina: I understand that one can get a plush Companion Cube. Everyone needs a Companion Cube.
-- 15:18, 7 December 2010 (GMT)
I like the comparison with flowers.
If we can do it right, maybe we can convince people that deciduous trees are "in", and get a Christmas tree bubble that'll rival the tulip boom?
-- 16:00, 7 December 2010 (GMT)
But y'see, one of the reasons Jews get punchy about secular observance of Christmas is that the whole Chanukah story begins as a cautionary tale about adopting secular traditions of others' religions. (No doubt Clio wrote about this once upon a time...) After all, the Hellenized Syrians didn't just swoop in and outlaw Jewish practice like an invading horde. They'd been in the middle East for a hundred years already (thanks to the armies of Alexander the Great), spreading the Hellenic culture, which the Jews and everyone else in the area adopted gladly. The Jews were the only ones who kept their own religion and identity instead of adopting the Greek pantheon (which is why you never hear of the Midianites anymore). But after a hundred years of just doing whatever the Greeks were doing, when the Jewish Temple got turned into a Greek temple, most of the fashionable folks just didn't care. That's why the Chanukah story is about a few old-fashioned hardliners sneaking up to the hills to form a guerrilla army, instead of the whole city rising up in revolt.
So the whole idea of "oh, put up a Christmas tree next to the menorah because it's pretty" ""in the middle of Chanukah, no less"" just makes me wonder whether anyone pays attention in Sunday school anymore.
Mind you, for mixed-heritage households I consider it a matter of mutual respect. I know lots of families where the non-Jewish spouse agrees to bring the kids up Jewish and schleps them to religious school, helps make the seder at Passover, and goes to Shabbat and High Holidays services. To deny him or her a Christmas tree would be churlish, I think. (No offense, ProfRobert.)
Even my mom puts one up to honor my non-Jewish stepdad's heritage. (My understanding is that when my stepdad nearly died right after they were married, she made one of those bedside bargains to the effect of, "If he gets better he can have all the Christmas celebration he wants!" So she's keeping up her end of that bargain, and he comes with her to all the Jewish services, so everyone's happy.) Mirth could certainly have one if he wanted, but I think he just enjoys not doing the work.
-- 17:24, 7 December 2010 (GMT)
Clio never wrote much about Chanukah, probably because she was convinced it was actually a very minor Jewish holiday that had grown out of proportion to its importance because of its proximity to you-know-what.
(Clio was nothing if not opinionated, but coincidentally, that is also the opinion of my main reference source on the Jewish holidays, which gives Chanukah very little air time.)
ETA: I could certainly have a Christmas tree if I wanted, but I just enjoy not doing the work. Besides, the cat would try to climb it and knock it over. I have lost more Christmas ornaments to cat-based structural collapse in my lifetime than any other cause.
-- 17:30, 7 December 2010 (GMT)
Christmas just knots up my stomach these days. I am feeling sorry we didn't plan to just up and fly out to a Caribbean island or something for the Christmas holidays. The combination of having a family whose Christmas causes me a lot of stress and unhappiness, plus a Jewish husband, combined with a fondness for some of the nicer and low-key parts of Christmas (ornaments, carols heard sparingly) makes it all very difficult for me.
My favorite recent Christmas tradition is that Chip and I always go to Alamo Drafthouse to watch "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" and eat sliders, which Alamo shows as part of its High for the Holidays series. It's not at all Christmas-y but we do feel all warm and fuzzy inside (and a little queasy from all the sliders).
-- 17:35, 7 December 2010 (GMT)
ProfRobert:
I actually do hate Christmas. I have a fight every year with my wife over a Christmas tree. She's not religious, but likes the cultural aspect of the holiday. As I think I said over in my journal recently, I simply do not get why goyim like to celebrate the birth of their saviour by finding something beautiful and killing it. The only thing I can think of is that it's some sort of revenge on trees for the Cross being made of wood, but you'd think that would be more appropriate around Easter.
I also hate gift giving and getting. Pretty much anything I want, I have or could get easily. I'm also lazy and cheap, and hate feeling like I have to go buy something for another adult. Kids, as you note, are different. I have no issue with getting stuff for the little ones.
ETA: Oh, I almost forgot the punchline to this year's tree debate. Clare and Nathan are going to leave Christmas Eve to visit my in-laws for 2 1/2 weeks, and the quid pro quo was no tree this year. :-)
-- 18:07, 6 December 2010 (GMT)