Deconstructing Christmas (with accompanying rant)

[mellicious]

I'm working on getting Christmas stuff down, still - I never like to be one of those people who takes it down the minute Christmas is over. If I'm in the mood I leave everything up til Epiphany (which of course is today). A lot of the time I end up gradually taking stuff down starting around New Year's. I took the porch trees down days ago, and later the wreath from the front door - the only thing left outside is the twinkly wreath on the balcony, and that's because I really like it and I don't want to take it down. Also, it has the batteries in it from last year, and I'm really curious to see how long they are going to last. (I think they are going to outlast me though - I'll probably take it down tonight or tomorrow. It's starting to feel silly.)

Indoors, the tree is down (although it's still sitting in the living room at the moment, partially disassembled). The ornaments are packed up, but there are still various holiday tchochkes sitting around that I still have to collect and get put away. I have a rather large collection of holiday junk which has sentimental attachments or which I just like. A lot of it, nowadays, is stuff that was my mother's, but not all of it.


Pause for rant:
Writing the above makes me really, really pissed off at the "Put Christ Back in Christmas" crowd. Because I guess their really annoying campaign is working, sort of - it is no longer possible for me to comfortably look at Christmas a secular holiday and largely ignore the religious aspects of it, which is what I have historically done. I don't have any problem with you celebrating your own holidays however you please, but leave mine alone. 

/rant


(Now I'm mad. This may have something to do with the fact that my back is hurting. I'm leaving the rant, though.)

Comments

[iko.livejournal.com]

I think it's very easy for me to not think about the religious aspects of the holiday because my family never saw it as a religious event (and since the Christian cult that I grew up in didn't celebrate Christmas, it's a non-issue).

It also helps that for the past 16 years, my partner and I have never spent Christmas together because we both love our respective family get-togethers so much that we didn't want to sacrifice. So, we've adopted our own holiday traditions that are JUST ours. No amount of ranting can change them, and I love that.

By the way, that is a really beautiful sock. Although my sister and I had Christmas stockings, the tradition of filling them that is present in my partner's celebrations is absent from mine. They were just decoration when I grew up and they remain so. Because of this, my partner takes extra effort to fill my stocking (no, that is NOT a euphemism!) before he leaves to visit his family. It's very sweet and I miss him less because I have chocolate. Hee!

[mellificent.livejournal.com]

This is actually a little tiny stocking - it wouldn't hold more than a couple of pieces of candy. I think it's about 4" high. (We do have some bigger ones.)

[peebles.livejournal.com]

I think you're good so long as you keep using Yiddish to call your Christmas decorations "tchotchkes." Put Kvetch back in Christmas!

[mellificent.livejournal.com]

But it's so much more descriptive than "junk"!