A holiday for the rest of us. At least, that’s how George Costanza explained it on Seinfeld.
Look it is the Lord Jesus Christ’s Birthday and all that (if you are a believer. Some heathens just aren’t.)
And I know Festivus is “officially” celebrated on December 23.
Whatever. My blog. My rules.
Seriously, this is too funny. Besides, it’s Christmas Day. For some of us. Have you got nothing better to do than read blog posts? (Even though this one is pretty funny and worthwhile.)
If you don’t well, forgive me for being an insensitive lout. The holidays are a pretty complicated time of year for a whole lot of folks I know. Maybe you are one of them? So have a chuckle on Seinfeld’s dime.
I prefer to celebrate sanctity and spirituality as and when Spirit moves me to.
Here’s the article cribbed from CNN about how to best “ring in” this – if not august – then alternate holiday celebration. It’s funny. Because I say so. (But hope you agree.) Enjoy!!
Happy holidays, ya’ll.
If you hate tinsel and love “Seinfeld,” Festivus is already the perfect holiday for you.
Popularized by the show in 1997, the anti-consumerism holiday is celebrated by “Seinfeld” fans every December 23.
And it doesn’t take much to get into the Festivus mood. Just follow these five steps.
1. Get a Festivus pole
Search your home for an aluminum pole. It has to be aluminum because you want it to have “very high strength-to-weight ratio” as Frank Costanza says. Decorations are distracting, so leave the pole in its plain and unadorned beauty.
Sure, you can buy your own Festivus pole, from places such as FestivusPoles.com, but it’s really better if you make your own. Non-commercial is the true spirit of Festivus.
Jason Kravarik
2. Prepare a Festivus dinner
Meatloaf is key to stay true to the “Seinfeld” episode. It should rest on top of a bed of lettuce to celebrate Festivus in the appropriate fashion.
3. Air your grievances
At the beginning of the Festivus dinner, force all your guests to listen to all the times they’ve disappointed you this year. It’s a really healthy ritual. Even Sen. Rand Paul has tried it.
4. Join in the Feats of Strength
As the host, you’ll want to test your strength and wrestle one of your guests. After all, the two of you did just enjoy a very protein-filled dinner.
Festivus is not considered over until the host is pinned to the floor. A guest can only decline the challenge if he or she has something more important to do, such as working a double shift.
5. Call all slightly non-routine events ‘Festivus miracles’
You carried all your groceries into the house in one trip. You took the subway for the first time, and it didn’t smell. You ran into your friend you’ve been meaning to call at a local coffee shop.
All these are excellent examples of “Festivus miracles.” Be sure to exclaim loudly and proudly when you realize it is such.
I firmly believe we create happiness and today I have outdone myself.
I am at the oceanside in a houseboat in the Florida Keys. A gentle breeze is blowing off the water. The vibe is super chill and laid back. The biggest noises around me are water lapping on the edges of other houseboats, a floatplane passing by overhead and squawking seabirds.
I may take a boat ride today. Or not. Frankly, sitting out here on a mini-dock with a cup of coffee may be as much activity as I need to make this a perfect day.
Earlier, an earnest Chinese man with his young daughter strapped in the front of a kayak emerged from a stand of seagrass not far from me. He made his way into our area in the distance. He was clearly struggling. He paddled this way and the boat went that way.
He would dip the paddle in the water again and bumped up against another houseboat. This went on for quite some time.
The whole time his tiny little girl sat upfront in the boat completely relaxed. Dad grinned and struggled to get the strokes right. Eventually they disappeared back into the seagrass alley from which they emerged after about fifteen minutes in our little cove. The expression of Buddha-like calm on the little girl’s face never changed throughout.
A pelican just flew overhead. Yesterday driving down here to the Keys on the Tamiami Trail, I saw a flock of about twenty pure white pelicans roosting together in a tree. Very few pelicans where I live in Florida. No ocean nearby, you see. So these seabirds are a visual treat.
Sitting on my tiny deck to write, it has started to rain. Just a sprinkle but enough to send me back inside and freshen the air outside.
I brought with me the fixings for a nice Christmas Eve dinner. A tenderloin wrapped in bacon. A long russet potato to bake and have with sour cream. I’ll gently fry a serving of gourmet mixed mushrooms with sliced onions to complete the side dish.
For dessert, a fancified gourmet caramel apple.
A houseboat does not have much space to spare. The listing says it sleeps four but didn’t actually say comfortably. There is evidence of careful space planning aboard and an economy of amenities.
It reminds me of a much simpler time in my life when I was a regular traveler. With only a backpack and a pair of good hiking boots, I lit out for all sorts of places even less well equipped.
Places where the only potable water was in the fast running streams along the trail. Where I made coffee by throwing the grounds in an empty tin can over a thrown together fire of twigs and larger pieces of hardwood.
This houseboat reminds ever so slightly of those bygone days. Turns out I forgot the bag of coffee and teabags I thought I’d packed. I made do by breaking into a couple of Keurig coffee pods I liberated from the hotel I stayed in last night.
My Swiss Rosti breakfast was so generous it made a fine leftover breakfast this morning. The roll I couldn’t eat yesterday will be a mid-afternoon snack with the sliced ham and Swiss cheese the breakfast came with.
What I feel overall is safe, satisfied and self-sufficient. I often feel this way while traveling. There is aught to worry about except finding a safe place to sleep and meeting your basic needs. In my daily life, there is much too much busywork. The trick will be to transport the peaceful vibe here to my life at home.
It will start with lowering expectations. I have some fantasy in my head generated by fancy magazines of how life is supposed to look and be. I forget that those “ideal” environments are created by people whose entire focus – indeed their livelihood – is to make those places look as perfect as possible.
So others of us – okay, me – writhe in shame and feelings of insufficiency when a spoon is out of place in the cutlery drawer. Poppycock, say I.
I once thought I could happily live permanently in something like an RV or a houseboat or a boat, boat. I no longer think that is realistic. What I long for, I realize, is the simplicity and uncluttered surroundings that tight quarters require. I’ve learned that stuff expands to fill the amount of space available.
In truth, we don’t need all that much to live a happy life. Not as much as we think we do anyway. And by no means as much as the marketing geniuses in Manhattan and elsewhere want us to believe we do.
This morning, I made a camp coffee equivalent out of the two Keurig coffee pods, relished my leftover potato pancake with ham and eggs, listened to (and I am listening to) sweet South American flute music on my computer.
The birds glide continually and effortlessly overhead. Another party of houseboat renters across the cover have what appears to be about five dogs in tow. They are frolicking with abandon on the dock outside the floating houseboat.
I can feel the built-up stress of the past few months seeping out of the end of my toes and my body gently collapsing in relief. Happiness is this simple to achieve, my friends.
It is an important reminder on this Christmas Eve that the life and lifestyle you seek may only be a potent wish, some elbow grease and a few hundred miles away.
Or right on your own doorstep. It is all a question of attitude and perspective to achieve..
2024 will be a year of “deaccumulation” for me. A commitment to getting rid of excess to get back to the basics of happiness the hides underneath it.
Merry Christmas, ya’ll from the mostly sunny (but sometimes rainy) Florida Keys. Happiness on a houseboat for me this holiday.
I awoke this morning enveloped in dead silence. Aaaah. So lovely.
I am in a hotel miles away from home in Osprey, Florida. At home, I realize, electronics run perpetually about me. The ceiling fan. The bathroom fan. The outdoor heater. The air purifier.
In this here hotel, there is none of that. My ears awoke this morning to nothing and I was struck by how different that is from my normal.
I am abed and luxuriating in this simple and peaceful environment. I am headed for a Christmas weekend adventure to stay in a houseboat overnight. Florida is unquestionably an odd state in the union.
Known for its weirdness and tackiness and Disney World. But Florida affords travelers unique water-based experiences that you would be unlikely to find, say, in Nebraska.
No doubt Nebraska has its own unique charms and surprises to discover. Houseboats on the ocean is definitely not one of them.
Isn’t odd how we end up living where we live? The possibilities are endless but eventually we must all decide on somewhere. Maybe we were born where we live. Most unusual these days but still, possible.
Or we transferred jobs or got a promotion. That planted us somewhere across the country to a place we have become deeply attached to and now call home. Or we retired, and deliberately sought out sun, sea and sand and zero personal income tax. Maybe John and Susan moved here first, talked it up, had you visit and now you live here, too.
I know people whose whole extended family has pulled up stakes and moved several thousand miles across the country to live around each other in retirement. I consider them lucky to have family relationships strong enough to merit that move.
So my intent this weekend is to see a little more of the surrounding countryside in the place I temporarily call home. Gathering me rosebuds while I may and all that.
There is something mentally refreshing about simply seeing different signage along the road or as you pass through small towns. Meandering down highways that are bordered by different landscapes than you are used to is visually interesting snd stimulating.
Last night, I ordered take-out from a Mexican food chain called Tomatillo’s that I had never heard of before. Mighty tasty steak tacos.
So soon I shall rise, eat a hearty breakfast and get back on the road. My chosen route is through a backcountry route where I hear alligators laze up on the side of the road. You can’t get a more extreme than that for a change of scenery.
What I like about travel is what awaits me when I go back home. I always see my home with fresh eyes after an outing, regardless if it is long or short.
We never travel any distance in reality in the long run. Wherever we go, there we are. But travel does stretch and educate us, if we’re lucky. I used to regard people with disdain who travelled in developing countries and spent little time outside their hotel and constantly complained and made disparaging comparisons to their living conditions at home. So why did they bother to leave home at all, I often wondered?
I have only another day of wandering around before I head back to my “permanent address” and pay my respects to the biggest day of the Christian calendar. Meanwhile, I am going to milk this day and tomorrow for all they are worth.
I hope to return home with a new perspective. And if I’m lucky, pictures and tales of alligators I encountered lying along the road.
Eventually we all come home again. To a physical one here on Earth or to our spiritual home. It’s just a matter of time. My responsibility on this planet is to suck as much of the marrow out of this earthly experience before I light off for a purely spiritual one.
At that point, I will live each timeless moment in all the silence I ever longed for.
I believe I have solved my Christmas ennui. This holiday comes after a very rocky and tumultuous pre-season. For the world at large and for me.
I honestly don’t think I can handle one more story about Gaza. Every time humanity survives a major global fiasco and declares “Never Again,” a new set of horrors rise up again.
I shake with mortification about the assumptions of younger me. To be fair, I think every 21 year old believes they can save the world. It is probably designed that way so we can continually relight the internal fires of ambition and hope as we struggle to get a toehold in life and on our feet.
Life changes us. All of us. One way or the other. Our ambitions don’t necessarily change but they narrow. We trade in our ambitions to save the world and focus on saving ourselves. We shift our focus away from helping faceless masses to supporting the individuals who are born or led to us.
I am not saying we should or do move away from sharing our wealth with causes that deserve our attention. It is just that it becomes necessary to make sure our own boat is solid and floating before we try to save the ill-fated Titanic.
I have done nothing for Christmas this year. And I want nothing. As I was dithering about this and wrestling with my old inner compulsions at this time of year, I came across a most helpful blog post.
Beloved writer Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion on PBS fame published a post that popped up at just the right time for me. His stories about Christmases past resonated deeply with me as he recounted the fruitless hours he spent on finding “perfect gifts” that received an at-best lukewarm reception from the recipients.
He made a most convincing argument for escaping the commercial allure of the season. In his case, he will spend Christmas at sea with his wife and daughter and no presents. He is right about one thing.
At a certain stage we are all going to declutter the accumulated possessions of a lifetime. Either we take charge and see to that process while we are still able. Or, as many do, we leave the planet and foist the unwelcome task on obligated family members.
That lacks grace and consideration. A truly loving legacy is to leave behind clean closets and organized photo albums. Not shoeboxes full of unidentifiable and unwanted keepsakes that only you wanted to keep.
I took a page from Keillor’s blog post. Today we depart for parts south on a holiday road trip to places I have long wanted to see. Not a long holiday. Just the weekend and Christmas Day. But long enough and far away enough to temporarily sever ties with the weight of holiday expectations.
That’s good enough for me. It pleases me to consider that thousands and thousands of young families with small children out there to pick up the slack. Most children still shake with anticipation and excitement about Santa’s upcoming visit. It is a joyous, fleeting and delightful life stage. Until one day it isn’t.
Your kids choose to spend holidays with their lover’s family. Pals elect to get together and make Christmas their own way. Soon, you are planning a Christmas cruise with other girlfriends. Christmas, as we once knew it, is over.
It is not necessarily a bad thing. Christmas is a loaded season emotionally precisely for its history and traditions. I have newly widowed girlfriends facing their first Christmas without their husbands. Estranged parents make excuses or lie outright to peers about the amount of contact they have with their adult children.
I have one searingly honest friend who has never enjoyed the Christmas holidays and cannot wait until this “joyous” season is over. That joy is not universally shared by a long shot. Having to keep up appearances and fake feelings of joy at a difficult and emotional time of year can make it even worse.
So I am planting a new stake as a way to “celebrate” Christmas this year. Taking care of those nearest and dearest to me without much fanfare at all. Their company and outreach is all I hope for. I can say emphatically as I get older that truly is all that matters.
At the end of the day, holiday celebration is a deeply personal and individual choice. Rebel that I am I will be celebrating my own version of “holiday cheer” with my husband by leaving town.
Santa Claus is coming and, now that I’m all grown up, I don’t think there is room for both of us. If you’re lucky enough to have little ones in your life at this time of year, then enjoy them with gusto. It is a fleeting phase.
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. Happy holidays to those who celebrate other mid-winter traditions.
Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, and however you choose to do it, focus on making it yours.
Ten days until the BIG day. And I am utterly unprepared.
The true spirit of Christmas is weighed down by incessant messages of commercialism and self-interest. We may have to dig down a few layers to find Christmas spirit. I am personally convinced it is still out there. Opinions vary on how to access it.
A combination of worldly and picayune preoccupations can obscure the true message and meaning of the season.
Finding complete addresses and stamps to send Christmas cards or packages to friends and acquaintances. And before the mailing deadlines.
The mad rushing around to make sure every designated loved one has a gift under the tree. The laying in of food and baking supplies to create sweet seasonal offerings.
I am trying to do Christmas differently this year. I am doing this by not doing much of anything. If there is a key gift I wish to share with loved ones this year, it is me being calm and present.
Whatever other messages Jesus Christ was trying to convey, I am pretty sure running yourself ragged and inviting near bankruptcy wasn’t one of them. It all circles back to how we have been trained to express love and appreciation.
For my Dad, it was with money. You could tell how much he loved you or how good he felt about himself by the size of the Christmas check.
For my mother, it was the little elements that signified a “real” Christmas was underway: barley toys, and special Christmas baking. Bought not made. We’d lay in fruitcake (dark AND light) even if no one really liked it or ate it. Throwing out fruitcake after the New Year was another part of our regular holiday traditions.
And chicken bones – not actual chicken bones but a confection of chocolate and cinnamon produced by a homegrown candy shop back where I grew up in Canada.
This year, I hope to find my Christmas spirit in contemplation and prayer. Or at the very least, peace and quiet. There are Christmas traditions I enjoy but none more than having nothing to do and nowhere to go. And nowhere else I would rather be.
There will likely be a Christmas Eve church service we attend this year. The sheer beauty and enjoyment of singing old Christmas standards within a community of others has always been a surefire path to loving and peaceful feelings. A revival of the spirit at the very least.
These days, I am not in a place where I can lay my hands on chicken bones or barley toys. Just as well. No one should eat that much sugar.
This year, we will create our own Christmas. All of us always do but it varies from year to year.
The traditional Christmas fir tree is replaced by a tabletop rosemary tree with ribbons instead of ornaments.
I used to be hard on myself for not living up to all of the Christmas expectations. There is a flutter of guilt I recognize for deliberately abandoning traditions that feel more like obligations.
Choosing to celebrate Christmas quietly luxuriating in the peacefulness and joy of the season seems like a much more authentic response.
And possibly what JC would advise. I mean, he just hung around being idolized on Christmas Day. And I bet he didn’t feel even a little bit guilty.
Getting up and on with it every day is a choice. Even raising the question may baffle some people. “Of course, we have to get up every morning and face the day.”
No we don’t. Not really. And therein lies the miracle and mystery of our lives.
It has been a long time since I heard the phrase “will to live.” We have not been actively and daily engaged in close-to-home wars or other mass traumas that provide us with examples. Yet I believe it is still very much a thing. How else does staying alive make any sense after heart shredding and gut-wrenching losses?
I watch in wonder at beautiful young men and women whose limbs have been blown off in foreign lands. They come home to recover and rehabilitate. What they have to recover from defies understanding. How they manage to go through the rehabilitation required to re-engage in their lives stupefies me.
These young men and women are lucky enough – if you can call it that – to have well-supported systems in place to aid in their recovery. And they go through recovery with fellow travelers dealing with similar injuries. They help each other find a reason to keep on living and moving forward.
War has always been riddled with stories of hope and recovery even in the most miserable and bleak conditions imaginable. I recently finished watching the mini-series The Pacific on Netflix. Not only did I not know much about the skirmishes that took place in the Forties in that part of the world, the story unfolds unsparingly episode by episode in reflecting the horrors of war.
I winced (as did any others who watched the series, I am sure) during a scene where an American Marine tosses rocks into the open skull and exposed brain of a recently killed Japanese soldier, sitting upright with his rifle still in his hands.
I did come away from that series with a better understanding of why veterans share such a deep and intractable bond. Sharing extreme experiences can do that.
Parents whose children were murdered in mass shootings. Victims of natural disasters. They likely use the same god-given techniques to get through and live with it. That experience was and would always be “theirs.”
Opportunities for extreme bonding generally diminish as we get older. Gone is the fresh blush and deep impact of first experiences (reflect on your first kiss or lover). We are more open and malleable in youth.
In fact, a key part of staying “young at heart” is remaining open. Which can be quite a challenge. Many people don’t even bother.
I recently attended a high school reunion where it was exciting and fun to catch up with our remaining high school buddies. The telling part was the stories of those who are still around and didn’t come. They hated high school then and saw no good reason to relive it now in their dotage.
Fair enough. But that attitude comes at a cost to everyone. Both themselves and those of us who missed seeing them again. It is very likely now that we never will.
We eventually learn to roll with life’s punches. We realize loss is a constant as life continually renews itself. “Out with the old, in with the new.” Like leaves in autumn, our friends start falling from the tree of our lives. Celebrities who defined our adulthood start to leave, too. Ryan O’Neal most recently.
Even political stalwarts like Henry Kissinger and the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor have recently died. (I recall trying to reach her by telephone for the better part of a day for an interview on CBC-Radio when she was first appointed back in the Eighties. My calls were not returned. A missed journalistic coup.)
So this morning (if it wasn’t obvious), I didn’t wanna get up and face the day. No harm would have been done by me whiling the day away in bed. I’ve done it before. But, no. There is a “to-do” list to face. And a husband to make coffee for. And a blog post to write. And Christmas looming.
We may never fully understand and appreciate what external and internal forces get us up and moving forward every day. But I’m sure our will to live has something to do with it. And our tacitly held expectation of pleasant and happy surprises. Especially around Christmas.
This season of light and miracles practically demands we engage with or at least acknowledge the beautiful mysteries and possibilities of life. That’s enough to get me up and going on most days even as I balance less beautiful challenges with utterly no mystery.
It is all part of the whole that we eventually learn to accept as life. Both the astonishingly good and the horrifically bad.
A line from the poem Desiderata sums it up: “With all of its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”
On it – even if somewhat sleepily and reluctantly this particular morning.
Christmas doesn’t fuss me much. Not these days at least.
What a production it was earlier in my life though. The tree and its trimming and laying in special Christmas goodies like mincemeat tarts and shortbread cookies and cranberry/orange relish and fruitcake if it was good enough. It was quite the process.
I get that mincemeat is not to everyone’s taste and that there is no meat involved. Still, to me, it was a delicious annual treat, if one with a confusing name.
Obviously Christmas intensified when children arrived on the planet. Not in their early years, of course. But by about four or five years old, they were beside themselves in the weeks leading up to Christ’s so-called birthday, to say nothing of Christmas morning.
Such memories I have. I took the kids to a ski hill one Christmas and we rented a cabin for the weekend. Truth was that by early evening, I was bushed. I couldn’t haul myself back to the car in the parking lot to grab the wrapped presents from “Santa Claus.”
No worries, I thought, I’ll get out and get them before the kids wake up. Every right-thinking parent knows – and prepares for – kids being up before the sun cracks the horizon.
I was confronted by two teary-eyed children, bleating: “Santa didn’t find us!!!” My heart sank into my boots. I’m still not sure how I managed to retrieve the gifts and get them back into the cabin. Maybe I said Santa left them in the car? I expect the kids treated all of their Christmas gifts and Santa Claus with well-deserved skepticism after that.
An indelible Christmas memory was getting together at my sister’s house to make Indian food as the celebratory dinner. We had travelled in Asia back in the day and had fallen in love with Indian food. Masala dosas became my favorite breakfast food for a time.
I am convinced we discovered butter chicken long before the North American marketplace did. Butter chicken everything – sauce, frozen dinner, “ready to cook” kits – is now ubiquitous in grocery stores everywhere. But we found it first! (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)
The Indian feast had as many elements we could replicate of the fabulous dishes we discovered in India. Butter chicken (of course). Saag paneer (spinach and Indian cheese.) Chickpea curry. Vegetable curry (for my vegetarian sister.) Pappadum. My own handmade puri.
That simple fried bread is a miracle of cookery. Three ingredients. Throw them together. Roll the dough into hand sized rounds, flatten them and throw them into heated oil. And voila! The puri puff up and look like mini-footballs to sop up butter chicken and all the assorted dishes and pickles and chutneys. Delicious mini-footballs, I might add.
Over the years, we experimented by trying on many different Christmas traditions. I bought a book called the $100 Christmas and tried to pull off the demands of the season on a strict budget. Another time, it was a baking-focussed Christmas.
One year, I made shortbread cookies – my absolute favorite – and boxed them up to send to my father. I was so proud to have actually finished the project, packed them up and got them in the mail well before Christmas Day.
When they finally arrived, Dad expressed his appreciation for my thoughtful gift. He said he was going to really enjoy the box of shortbread crumbs I had sent him.
As the years rolled on, Christmas traditions fluctuated based on a number of things. Who of our friends or family was around for Christmas. Cost of travel. Our ability to meet those travel costs. Work deadlines or school deadlines. Romantic interests who preferred we spend Christmas on our own. Whether the kids were expected to spend that Christmas with me or with their Eastern family.
These days, Christmas is pared down to the basics. A two foot rosemary tree is the Christmas tree now and sits on the coffee table. The heat of short candles powers traditional metal angel chimes which adds some festive ambience. There is a fresh evergreen wreath on the front door. That’s about it.
Adult children make their holiday plans now with friends and family. I’ve even stopped giving them the traditional fine chocolate-filled Advent calendars that I gave them every year since they were little.
We make Christmas. Individually and collectively. Ours will be a little toned down from years past but no matter. It works perfectly well for me and mine.
That seems the best way to honor the meaning of the season in this house. Hope JC and his family approve.
I’m going to go to church today. It’s been awhile.
With all the stresses and strains of the past few months, I am deliberately seeking sanctuary. I have tried to create it in my home environment. That has helped some but it is not enough.
I need people. I need community. After living in a new place for such a short period of time, church beckons me back. Attending church was once central to my life.
In the Christian tradition, today is the first day of Advent. It is the first of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas Day. On each consecutive Sunday, we celebrate getting closer to the blessed birthday of Christ the Lord. It is such an enduring and compelling story.
Do I buy the whole Christ the Savior story 110%? Not really. He was undoubtedly a wise and good man. Deeply wise like many others who had come before him. Confucius. Buddha. Mohamed. All great humanitarians who contributed great wisdom and advice for how to live a good and godly life.
I have always been impressed by the consistency in their messages. Delivered and interpreted within vastly different cultural contexts and languages and eras. But the basics seem similar.
Love is a big one. Love one another. Help one another. The greatest value we can offer to life is our time and talents. That is how love is actualized. Pretty simple script. Pretty difficult to stick to.
There’s all those pesky ego desires and physical and emotional demands and limitations on whatever we do or want to do. So life is an ongoing struggle between selflessness and self-preservation.
It is disheartening to see how highly evolved spiritual visionaries have fared in history. The messages of peace and love the greatest humanitarians – starting with Jesus Christ – are contrary to the more common and baser human interests of power and control.
Assassination seems an alarmingly common fate for many visionaries that walked among us. Abraham Lincoln. John F. Kennedy. Robert Kennedy. Martin Luther King.
Preaching the gospel of love and peace is clearly in conflict with the more worldly interests of those who believe that glory and salvation are only achievable here on Planet Earth.
As the Advent season begins, Christians collectively gather to focus and reflect on this monthlong journey towards the biggest birthday party in their annual calendar. We can try to stiff the incessant material come-ons, difficult as this may be.
Same story every year. We are reminded to put “Christ back into Christmas.” “Remember the true meaning of the season.” Hard to argue with that logic. A debate over the inconsistency of those sentiments is for another time.
Personally, I am happy for the inherent annual reminders in this season that aren’t about buying stuff. Reminders about the importance of love, magic, unity and harmony.
My thoughts turn to Christmases past and present. I especially like memories when the elements of love, family, sharing and joy came together and were there in abundance.
I am craving a baked potato with butter and sour cream and chives. Sure sign I’m stressed. Special food cravings are one of the happier signs of stress in my life. And in my experience, food cravings beat booze cravings by a country mile.
I have a list of favorite foods. (Doesn’t everyone?) Pumpkin pie, which is timely. Molasses cookies (no one made them better or more often than my Nanny). My girlfriend Diane’s amazing trifle filled with fresh fruit (usually raspberries), fresh whipped cream, a cake base filled with something boozy and delicious but non-intoxicating and topped with slivered almonds. (And maraschino cherries? Or did I just add them in my mind’s eye?)
Special but sad as Diane’s trifle is usually only served at Christmas and other super special occasions during the year. Serving it more often would likely diminish the cachet. Sigh.
Then there is any kind of Chinese dim sum. Barbeque pork buns. Shrimp dumplings. Potstickers. If I was on a desert island with room service, my daily food order would be taken from an authentic Chinese food menu. No doughy sweet and sour chicken balls for this gal.
Or Indian. Anything cooked with curry and coconut milk gets high marks. That can be chicken, beef, goat, or vegetables. Some of the most delicious dishes I’ve ever tasted were some variety of vegetarian curry with nary a shred of meat.
Back here on the North American continent, a grilled cheese sandwich made with perennial, plastic, waxy, orange American cheese slices and bread and butter pickles on the side is my version of gastronomic heaven. I did say comfort food, not healthy food.
With American Thanksgiving tomorrow, I’ve been overwhelmed this past couple of weeks by unrelenting food come-ons. The allure of a scrumptious turkey dinner with all the trimmings is offered everywhere.
Images abound on TV, in store flyers, on store shelves of perfectly roasted golden brown turkey, bright red cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes (as opposed to mashed potatoes for a pop of color I believe) and sides. Apparently an American side favorite is green bean casserole. Never tried it so I don’t get it. Maybe one day.
My must-have, go-to, absolutely favorite turkey dinner side is stuffing. I would almost eat that as my Thanksgiving entree. I’ve rarely met a stuffing I didn’t love. It is a very hard dish to screw up.
Yet again, like Diane’s trifle, stuffing is best reserved for special occasions. Even I can see that too frequent consumption of a butter soaked, high carb, and high cholesterol dish isn’t medically advisable.
Grocery stores offer everything you need to celebrate Thanksgiving at home. Our favorite local restaurants offer an array of turkey dinner specials with all the trimmings.
We are lucky to have the choice. If we don’t want the hustle and hassle of making a turkey dinner that saddles us with three days worth of dirty dishes and leftover turkey until January, eat out.
Thanksgiving seems way too close to Christmas in the US anyway. Thanksgiving decorations sit side by side on the shelves with miniature Christmas trees. The marketing tsunami seems relentless from late September when the Halloween hype starts until we get through Thanksgiving and then Christmas.
Christmas is the one special day that shuts down our collective consumerism for about 24 hours. That’s just long enough to enjoy some sacred space and time with friends and loved ones before we hit the Boxing Day sales.
Make it through the festive New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day dinners and voila!! Valentine’s Day is just around the corner.
If there is consolation to be found in bracing ourselves to prepare for all these non-stop fall celebrations, it is that food is usually abundant and delicious. I’ll take comfort in that.
I’ve often used the analogy of Diderot’s Robe to describe the odd sense of frustration I felt when I was renovating old houses.
A similar sense of dissatisfaction ensued when I acquired a snazzy new something – an appliance, a jazzy new piece of furniture, or even a new clothing item. When is enough?
Buying new things can make old things look bad by comparison. It is difficult to buy one new appliance without wanting to change them all to match. New furniture can make your old furniture look shabby. New clothing usually needs new accessories, like shoes or a piece of jewelry or a bright scarf to “go with it.” Maybe a new coat or jacket, too?
The phrase Diderot effect was coined in reference to French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713-1784) who bemoaned the gift he received of a new housecoat.
The effect was first described in Diderot’s essay “Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown”. Here he tells how the gift of a beautiful scarlet dressing gown leads to unexpected results, eventually plunging him into debt. Initially pleased with the gift, Diderot came to rue his new garment. Compared to his elegant new dressing gown, the rest of his possessions began to seem tawdry and he became dissatisfied that they did not live up to the elegance and style of his new possession. He replaced his old straw chair, for example, with an armchair covered in Moroccan leather; his old desk was replaced with an expensive new writing table; his formerly beloved prints were replaced with more costly prints, and so on.
The term Diderot effect is commonly heard in discussions of sustainable consumption and green consumerism. A purchase or gift can create dissatisfaction with one’s existing possessions and environment. This can start a pattern of consumption with negative environmental, psychological, and social impacts.
I have lived this effect and continue to struggle with it. I have a pretty good idea where it started.
My comfortable and financially secure childhood – while unstable – was ripped away from me at 11 years old. The transition from a life of comfortable middle class privilege to a life of poverty was gradual when I look back at it now.
I mostly recall that what had formerly been easy to acquire or take part in no longer was. There used to be riding lessons and swimming lessons and dance lessons and summer camp. New clothes to start every school year. At Christmas, we counted on the new cotton nighties and slippers from my grandmother. After I turned 11, these all went away.
My Dad moved us to another province. My mother was no longer in my life, except nominally. By sixteen, I was living on my own in a big city. My father moved an hour and half away to his own new home in the country.
I used to watch my peers in amazement who never seemed overly troubled by money issues. They needed something, asked their parents for it and got it. I remember asking my father for anything new or necessary made me feel I had deeply insulted him. I was – by even asking – doing something horribly wrong. What exactly I didn’t know.
I found myself in harm’s way when I didn’t have – or wouldn’t spend – the money for taxi fare. I was occasionally trapped in a dicey situation where booze and drugs were flowing much too freely. The boys at those parties could be presumptuous and opportunistic.
Sorting out my relationship with money has been a lifelong struggle and continues. As I look around, I don’t believe I am alone in this troubled relationship with money and things. Cumulative credit card debt is staggering. Indeed the debt burden of the USA is staggering itself.
A storage company in my Canadian hometown is erecting building after building as people seek out a place to keep their excess goods. I am one of them. They are doing a land office business. Think about that. Paying huge sums of money to store items because we don’t have space or a use for them in our present environment? Sounds pretty crazy, doesn’t it?
Our way of life and consuming is wildly out of balance. I chuckle at the allure of “big box stores.” I once read Costco and Sam’s and Wal-Mart give consumers the dual psychological satisfaction of “thrift” and “abundance.” Local grocery stores offer so many BOGO items that I may soon need to rent a storage locker for my excess canned goods.
I once longed to win the lottery., Who wouldn’t want a magical solution to their money problems? Who wouldn’t want guaranteed financial security? Who wouldn’t want the joy and satisfaction of taking care of friends and loved ones who would benefit from the help? And who hasn’t seen or heard the common stories of lottery winners whose lives spiraled downward and out of control just a few short years after their windfall?
I so get Diderot’s dilemma. I have lived it. It is hard to answer the question, “When is enough?” Like so many other of life’s big questions (and money, given its central role in our health, comfort and well-being is certainly one of them), it is time to make a truce with money.
To befriend it but not make it my master. To acquire what we need without being showy or arrogant (tell that to a Leo!!). To get off the credit card merry-go-round. Diderot knew why.
“I was absolute master of my old dressing gown”, Diderot writes, “but I have become a slave to my new one … Beware of the contamination of sudden wealth. The poor man may take his ease without thinking of appearances, but the rich man is always under a strain”.
Expressive Compulsive 