Dear Cary,
So, this is a boring question but a timely one. It's That Time of Year again, when the secular and religious Christians descend upon the homes of their relatives to give gifts no one wants or can afford, and to torment each other emotionally.
I am dealing with the Ghost of Christmas Past That Won't Go Away. My childhood was horrible. The holidays generally involved going to my paternal grandmother's house for the obligatory exercise in guilt and the giving of gifts that no one ever liked and which were always wrong and not good enough. My family didn't like me, and they had severe problems that I won't go into, but suffice it to say that these gatherings were damning, draining, discouraging and demoralizing. So much so, that once I got into my 20s I quit talking to my relatives for seven years and moved 3,000 miles away. They were not invited to my wedding. They never met my children.
Anyway, my grandparents, uncles and father have long since died. I have abandoned any semblance of Christianity -- no trees, no Easter eggs for me -- and have instead become interested in the religious tradition of my mother's family. I still have a cousin from my father's side who lives about 40 minutes from me. Every year, she invites me and my husband and kids over to her place for Christmas Eve. She is one of those highly repressed, chronically nice yet inwardly seething people who always tries to do the right thing and resents the hell out of the world for not appreciating her, but she's too polite to go on direct attack. I feel she wants to go through the motions of maintaining the myth of family connection, as if that group were less horrible than they really were. She's a very nice, good person who has been generous with my kids, and is reliable. She's done a lot of stuff for me over the years, but I never felt like it was for free, thus I don't feel safe with her emotionally. It doesn't feel like an emotionally honest relationship. There is a subtext, but I don't know what it is.
None of us can afford to spend a lot of money on gifts. She can't, and I can't. Nobody can. But I am afraid that we will be invited, and my kids will want to go, and I will feel obligated to go over there, even though I am probably not wanted anyway, and we will all give in to the pressure to shop in order to go through the ritual of giving gifts nobody wants or needs.
What is the deal with the competitive gift-giving thing, anyway? In my family of origin, it was supposed to prove that people cared because they couldn't express caring in any other way but through money or gifts. They couldn't say anything nice, they couldn't be affectionate or warm -- they were all bundles of grudges, resentment, suspicion, insecurity and bitterness.
Miss Manners would be appalled, so I'm not asking her, I'm asking you: How can I get out of this event? Is there any nice way to say to my cousin, to acknowledge, that none of us can afford to go through this charade? And then just not do it? Because what I wish is that anything anyone would spend on me they would simply take for themselves and buy something they really want and enjoy rather than give me something I don't need or want and resent me for it. Do you get that receiving anything from anyone in my extended family carries the burden of resentments and unmet needs and accusations? It's a drag. Why do we keep doing it?
You may wonder why I don't invite my cousin to my house, which could be an option if my place were not such a dump -- broken plumbing, holes in the wall, non-working electricity, a neighborhood eyesore, broken oven, rotting doors, chunks of house falling off, etc. Far from the Better Homes & Gardens image our grandmother lived by. No dining room, no place to sit. I hate the Holiday Season and wish I didn't have to do this stuff anymore. Frankly, it would not surprise me if she really doesn't want to do it, either -- but how to address the issue? Or just make other plans?
Dreading It
Dear Dreading It,
Here we go again.
I was at Salon's panel discussion last night about the meaning of the Occupy movement and, more broadly, this moment in our social and political history.
Every now and then what we all know and have been repressing becomes visible. Someone does something and it catches on and things change. It is hard to know when such a moment is at hand.
But certainly now is such a moment. The moment is at hand to make courageous changes both public and private.
It is especially hard to make changes in family practices when there is no larger context for them. One risks being labeled an eccentric or a troublemaker. But when a large social context appears -- such as when the feminist movement happened, or during the era of civil rights protests -- then individuals in families have an opening. It is as though taboos are lifted and people may speak. That is when we may make changes -- particularly when everyone has known the change needed to be made but no one had the courage or the opportunity to speak up.
Your critique of how your family celebrates Christmas is nicely linked to the larger critique of our general economic arrangements. If we can speak of the unfairness of our current system, and its waste and destructiveness, we can also speak of the unfairness of our individual practices, and how wasteful they are. We can do this with a clear conscience. We can do it in context.
It is a time to make changes, some large, some small. These changes may be "political" in certain ways. But what is great about the current moment is that when "political" movements take hold they always touch individual lives in important ways.
One interesting thing about the panel discussion last night was that those of us who have lived through previous social and political movements were able to acknowledge what we learned from those past attempts to change our society. One thing we learned was that a nonhierarchical, consensus-based approach leads to a more durable -- if messier -- group process.
It was refreshing to consider afterward the wonderful benefits of just leveling with people, of just telling the truth and being heard.
So I hope that in some way this holiday season you can tell the truth to those who matter to you, and that you can be heard, and that you can be yourself and be loved for who you are. My guess is that you are indeed loved for who you are. My guess is that this relative of yours who has invited you over has a real appreciation for you. But, like you, she must struggle to find an "appropriate" way to put her appreciation into practice.
There are many dangers in trying to "fix your family"! But there are ways to simply be present in it, and there are ways to appreciate the flawed but sincere ways that people come together this time of year and try to share what is in their hearts. That is what many people are trying to do, however imperfectly they are doing it.
One idea that comes to mind is for you to give each person an envelope with a personal letter in it; make it a card, as a nod to holiday convention, but put a longer letter in it, too, telling that person the truth about your experience, and inviting that person to confide in you, if he or she wishes, about his or her real experience of the world and of your family.
This could be done quietly.
You might have to give these cards at the end, as you are leaving. Or you might write them in such a way that you are comfortable with each person reading what is in it. If you write what you truly believe and are comfortable with each person reading it -- that is, if you refrain from slander and venting -- then it might indeed be an empowering act by which you cease this compulsive and harmful thing everyone has been doing for years while acknowledging the universal drive to connect with others at this time of year and celebrate our humanity, such as it is.
Shares