The Grinch Woman's Family

I'm a Grinch. I fully admit to, and have no shame about the fact. Generally, I just plain don't LIKE Christmas. I suppose I could blame it on the fact that I never had Christmases as I was growing up, so instead of catching the feeling of the 'Magic' of the Season, instead I simply observed the materialism, artifical joy, and artifical trees.

This year though - it's been worse. I remember the odd agony of going back to school after Christmas break, and having no exciting news (or gifts) to talk about and prattle over. No visits from family, no big dinner - Christmas was just a chance to not go to school. And suddenly, I'm aware of the fact that - oh my god! I'm starting a FAMILY - me and Corey are about to join together and be a family - including kids...and I don't want those children to have to experience the outsiderness that I felt after Christmas. But at the same time - I just can't get into it. I want to start a tradition - something that we do as a family and that will be carried on to our children - and I just can't think of anything that doesn't feel either patently false or that doesn't feed into the American Xmass excess.

Kwanzaa - I simply can't get into. It's more of a made-up holiday than Christmas is, and heaven knows that if I felt false doing Christmas stuff, I would feel even MORE of an artifical person doing Kwanza stuff.

Solstice - That I can do - could do, with ease. It's roughly the same time of year (which is no accident), it's ancient, and it's all about honoring and being grateful for something OUTSIDE of yourself. It's almost anti-materialistic, and it can incorporate many of the more common aspects of Christmas (once again, no accident). The interesting part might be getting Corey to come along - he understands that I'm more pagan than anything else, but would he be willing to roll with me and to incorporate such a distinctly pagan holiday into our family tradition?? :) And then I feel rather guilty doing it - because heaven knows that I am, at best, an erratic pagan. :) But I feel that if there is any tradition I could accept (in both spirit and action) it would be Solstice.

I've been tossing around the thought since Thanksgiving with his family...because I realized that there was no way that we would be spending many holidays of any sort with them. Thankfully, Corey is NOTHING like the rest of his family - and we have agreed that we want our childrens exposure to them limited and strictly supervised. It's a matter of the young being so innocent and open - and us not wanting them to soak up any of the poison that floats about that house.

We talked about it - in a rather general and vague manner on our way back that night. And ever since I've been thinking about it - I mean it's not like you can AVOID thinking about Christmas from Halloween until the middle of January (when the 'post' Christmas sales finally die down). I've been debating wheter or not to buy a tree...to put up my lights...to burn some candles. And I haven't yet come to a real state of serenity about any of it.

Our conversation about Christmas then morphed into a conversation about religion. I've experienced two of the Big Three (Islam and Christianity) and I have absolutely no intention of indoctrinating my children into either one (and plan on attempting to limit their exposure as well) until they are old enough to truly understand. Corey - who grew up as a nominal Baptist - agress with me. Church will have little to no place in our home, nor will Jesus. But at the same time, I want to expose our children to religion - explain it - without expecting them to follow it...or to believe.

It's interesting how many little things I've started to notice that are missing from what I do today, and what I want to do (and have always planned on doing) once I have a family. As the wedding creeps closer (270 days!) I'm slowly becoming more and more aware that I'm part of my own Family now. That's almost as scary as realizing that I plan on binding myself to one man for the rest of my life. Actually - it's a little scarier, because I'm starting to feel ALL grown up. And I'm still too young for that. :)

jasmyn