Just surrender already

[sonia]

I've been thinking about surrender, assimilation, resistance, and pain. A voice in my head says it's ridiculous to get worked up about Christmas trees, and I'm just generating my own unhappiness. Something in me squawks at that, and it's good to know I'm not the only one. "Hegemony" expresses some of what I'm squawking against.

My Xmas Kvetch by Arlene Goldbard

I get that this is my problem (although I may share it with a few million other Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and many others lightly trampled by the Xmas hegemony). [...] I want to feel less lonely at this time of year, and I think that entails the opposite of hegemony. I want the world to extend itself to me and others like me with a kind of radical acceptance that embraces my experience, my difference, rather than stigmatizing it.

the juggernaut cometh: Or: How Not To Be A Christmas Asshole! by gyzym

In my view, there are three variations on the theme of Being An Asshole To People You Know Who Don’t Celebrate Christmas. Let’s lay ‘em out, nice and simple-like.

I grind my teeth every time I hear "But Christmas is a secular holiday!"

Simply from being born in a Jewish family I know that my ancestors were powerfully disinclined to assimilate despite much stronger incentives than I see.

Comments

[laughingrat]

I hear you. Every year I think about how I have the luxury of just sighing and rolling my eyes when the Christmas hullaballoo gets to be too much, and even then not feeling too motivated to do that. Why? Because I was brought up Christian, so even though I'm ambivalent about religion now, and creeped out by the overwhelming presence of the religion in our public discourse (is that the right term?), I'm still *comfortable* with it. It's a kind of privilege, really. The whole situation must be alienating and othering for people without that privilege.

[sonia]

Thank you for understanding.

Being Jewish carries an awkward kind of lack of privilege. It feels like I'm complaining about "small" things, when racism, sexism, etc. carry much more drastic penalties in the modern US. But it is an Othering all the same, and Jews have a history with Othering.

[laughingrat]

Othering's a big deal. And hegemony's hegemony. It's always gross, for sure.