seryn

I've been toeing the line of holiday expectations, but I'm tired of it.

I hate buying gifts for people who never speak to me and who actively dislike me personally, just because they're Simon's family. When I admitted that I haven't been feeling well, due to the extreme pressure, so I had no idea what I might enjoy... I didn't get anything. Obviously the joy of giving trumps the pain of receiving something unwanted, but really? Couldn't they have heard me being crushed and miserable and said, "Call us on our holiday and don't worry about going out shopping for us and making special trips to the post office."?

It was better this year because I spent the whole week before Christmas doing social things in the evenings. Of course I feel horrendously guilty for leaving Simon home alone when he's unable to care for himself. Or demonstrably unwilling to do so, and it's difficult to discern the difference. I received two social invitations for the actual Christmas day as well. I stayed home after begging off both of them, but it was really nice to have an option or two.

Holiday weekends usually suck for me. Everyone has family to do things with on weekends and no one has time for friends. Holiday weekends just mean the weekend drags on longer and fewer things are open, so the rare places that are open are even more crowded. It's one of the disadvantages of not working, to not be able to appreciate time off. Simon never wants to do things on weekends. I dragged him out for brunch on Saturday after he protested for an hour that I should get out of bed and cook breakfast. When I did get out of bed, I just jumped in the shower and indicated that I was getting ready to leave and he reluctantly accompanied me. My breakfast was awesome. I really enjoyed it. I had a fluffy mocha in honor of a DW friend's birthday-- since she suggested our imaginary playdate should include hot chocolate.

So far I've read some fic, finished three "books" on my Kindle, played about a hundred games of Kindle Yahtzee, slept a bunch, watched the entire first season of the 1995 version of Hardy Boys, started wearing the slippers I bought myself during the sale, and heated up frozen dinners for to feed us. It really hasn't sucked as much as it might have, but I still wish there were more people in my life.

ps. subject line chosen after icon, for the punnerific value.

Jeopardy referred to Spiro Agnew as a "Greek-American". I paused and asked, "Shouldn't that make him ineligible to be vice president?"

He wasn't born in Greece, he was born in Maryland. His parents were from Greece.

I'm pretty sure we shouldn't have words for Americans with a pureblood other heritage. It should always be linguistically awkward and specific, "My parents were born here but my grandparents both came from [other country]." Or "My mother was born here, but my father is from [other country]." Or "My mother and father were from [other country(ies)]." Then it would be obviously a question you shouldn't ask a stranger.

I would never ask someone in a queue where their grandparents were born, because it's obviously none of my business and since a lot of people have dead grandparents, it's likely to be hurtful.

When there is no word for something and I have to talk around the concept to get at the point I was trying to make, it's too much work to put my foot in my mouth. (Which is probably such a horrible take on the Sapir-Whorf concept that they'd be outraged.)

This also came up in my own real life recently. One woman said she was busy because it was Chinese New Year. I hadn't had any clue what her background was. Visibly she was non-caucasian of one of the non-Indian kinds of Asian. But audibly she has no accent and told us about her Christmas plans and her cooking of Euro-American foods (I'm not quite sure where the division is sometimes. If it's got sauerkraut, it's still European. If it's got fake cheese, it's all American now. Most recipes of European origin cooked by Americans end up being somewhere between those extremes.) in the past. It honestly never occurred to me that she was Chinese.

I actually said, "Oh. Well, I'm sorry we missed you, but sure, I can see why you'd choose that over being here! ....... I don't think there's a polite way to ask about that." And it's really true. If she'd been Korean or Cambodian or a mixture of ethnicities, she probably wouldn't celebrate Chinese New Year.

Last year thistleingrey tried to educate people with a post about it being the "lunar new year" because not everyone who celebrates it is Chinese, but you can't even ask people if they celebrate that because no one who doesn't look Asian gets asked.

My ancestors came to America relatively recently, but not so recently that any of them were alive when I was born. But I only had one living grandparent during my lifetime. I don't particularly like most European food and I certainly don't celebrate any of the standard European holidays. We don't even do Christmas except toeing the line of family gift expectations.

I do sort of keep track of Chinese New Year / lunar new year in that I endeavor not to visit any Asian restaurants for several weeks surrounding the date (which I usually remember only nebulously). It's like not going to Mexican restaurants on Cinco de Mayo. (You only make that mistake once; they were really upset to have us there although the restaurant was open.) And, although I screwed it up last year, never going to Middle Eastern food stores during Ramadan during the day.

I guess what I'm saying is, "I can't quite manage culturally-sensitive because I'm an American with mixed heritage that I blatantly ignore so I really have no comprehension as to why other people would want to honor their distant heritage that their ancestors moved thousands of miles to escape. But sure, if I'm reminded, I'll try not to step on people's dearly held rituals. I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just ignorant and oblivious. And I am oblivious even when you're being subtextually obvious because I want you to not make assumptions about me."

I do sort of wonder how many generations they live in America before people want to drop their hyphenated aspect. Maybe it's until they have more than one thing before the hyphen? But maybe it's just that regular people who want a sense of connection to family identify themselves with their ancestors' origins. I'm kind of offended when people whose families have been here longer than mine still consider themselves a hyphenated kind of American, where the other always comes first. But that doesn't apply to holidays. If my ancestors had had good holidays I wouldn't ignore them out of spiteful pseudo-individuality.

I usually celebrate on Groundhog's Day, not under that name. That was the day before the lunar new year this year. But I don't expect anyone I encounter in real life to be aware of it because it's weird and personal to me and uncommon. I don't want to be expected to know that some people who look different from me all celebrate the lunar new year. But she seemed really surprised that I didn't know better. I don't want people to look at me and know what holidays I celebrate and it seems really odd that anyone else would want that.

I got an explanation as to today's holiday.

I complained that Veterans' Day is about veterans and now Memorial Day is about veterans.

"No, Memorial Day is about dead veterans."

Somehow, there really isn't a way I can argue against that. Even if it seems ridiculous that we don't have any days to honor dead anyone else. I guess we did end up with some residual Viking flavors in our culture after all.

Have you seen the people who are saying that if you're not going to honor veterans then you shouldn't get the day off? I would actually like that. Most companies offer some number of holidays or exchange them for other time off if someone is covering (except corrvin's employer; I got better benefits working fast food than they get in a responsible adult job.) so I would be quite pleased to go in when the traffic toward work is nil (but the traffic to fun things is excessive.) I would be thrilled if I could have another day as a holiday. Say, some random Tuesday. Or if it has to be a holiday, something like Flag Day or last week's Towel Day.

Happy New Year everyone. May 2010 be full of all the things that make us happy and fewer of the things that don't.

I don't make resolutions, everyone says that but most of them lie, but I would like to think a clean slate will stop me from regretting past failures.

Tomorrow, and throughout the year, I plan to spin, maybe dye, and to find a knitting project I want to be working on.

Tomorrow I will also be reading the new Valdemar anthology and reminding myself to go look for fanfic in that universe. I'd like to read more book books this year and to actually annotate that effort here.

Hopefully I will make progress on my learning of all the US Presidents this year.

But the only goal I really have is to stop feeling like I've hit my expiration date and should be finding homes for all my stuff.

Considering the sudden advent (heh) of Christmas excitement, I don't think I thought there would be post-Christmas blah. If things don't build up to unmanageable expectations, there shouldn't be a huge let-down, right?

We're not big Christians. Or any sort of Christian at all. But we're the first generation that escaped, so there are residual obligations. That means, to me, Christmas is a duty that requires months of advance preparation and shopping and lots of queuing and an enormous amount of money just to kowtow to best forgotten mythology. Lately we've managed to minimize this by not going for the big holiday visit. But there are still gifts to buy and ship.

The people we exchange with are not people who know or like me. Even after 15 years, my SO's family gives me generic gifts. (Not in the unbranded sense, but in the "things you can give any adult woman" sense.)

Now it's all over. Most of the thank yous have even gone out.

I got some useful stuff. A tiny notebook with a cover. An umbrella. They are not, neither one of them, purple. It's not a huge thing, but you'd think, after more than a decade, that generic gifts could be chosen in my colors. Most of my SO's family likes red. I haven't liked red since I was in preschool. But still, all my gifts are red and covered in flowers because all women like flowers. Since the biggest problem with umbrellas is that they get lost, I suppose a red floral one is not a bad choice. If I lose it, I'll get a non-red one, but of course this one's lurid-ness virtually prevents loss. Thou shalt buy thyself the world's ugliest umbrella and no one will steal it.

I have pictures I need to take of yarn I've spun and various new things I bought myself. I just can't be bothered.

Some of the lethargy is because my gift to my SO failed. I bought him a watch and it arrived dead. I thought about it and realized I wouldn't want people to be able to ship something that ticked, so probably all the shippers have a way to disable batteries. It seems like they shouldn't bother selling quartz watches online then though, so maybe this was just a lemon. At least it will be easy to return... always easier to return something that's defective.

[This is not an ad.]
A proto-friend is teaching a workshop between Solstice and Christmas. It's relatively expensive and targeted toward children. I was not surprised that there weren't a lot of takers, but she was.

Money is worth a lot less than it was when I was a kid. (I have to continually double my mental price expectations or I cannot buy anything.) But I cannot imagine my parents spending even $5/day for me to attend a workshop, let alone the $25 this would have cost in the old money. Certainly it would never ever happen in December.

My parents were annually surprised that Christmas and winter and the end of the year were all in December. I think some of the reason behind my break from my parents ne'er discussed beliefs is due to the fundamental understanding that buying presents might mean days without food if things don't come out right with the money. It certainly means putting on extra socks because heat is too expensive to use for comfort. The heat's only on to keep the pipes from freezing.

I hate this time of year. I see all the lights and decorations overlaid with memories of vicious arguments and blame and guilt and deprivation. If it looks good and plasticky on the outside, then no one will know it's all hollow on the inside.

I think we should ban Christmas entirely until people learn to be nice. Anyone who assaults someone else in order to grab a popular item should be forced to do community service weekly in a soup kitchen for a year, so they understand what it is they're supposedly celebrating. It's not about who can spend the most in electricity costs. It's not about whose child gets the most expensive toys. If putting up the tree causes a fight, don't have a tree. If you cannot afford tape and milk in the same week, then put presents inside t-shirts and let everyone have milk with Santa.

I'm really tired of everyone who claims to be Christian celebrating Christmas by living the intent of the innkeepers of Bethlehem and being proud of themselves for doing so. Christmas is supposed to be about the inside feelings, not the outside appearances.