Still musing about capitalism and holidays. I was at Cubs, and Christmas music was blaring from the overhead speaker. In November. No. Just–no. I mean, it’s better than the year I saw a Christmas ad in the first week of October, but not by much. Here is my post from yesterday.
I used to hate Christmas. I find it amusing that I wrote an article about the commercialism of Christmas when I was in high school–which was nearly forty years ago. I got some flak for that back then, and I still get it periodically throughout the years.
I don’t think I was ever really into Christmas. I liked the presents, of course, but the holiday itself was pretty fraught. I remember when I was seven or eight, I woke up fairly early and raced to my stocking. There was nothing in it, which crushed me. I went to my mother and told her about it. She told me to go back to bed and Santa would be there soon. A half hour later, the stocking was filled, and that’s when I realized that my mother was Santa. I didn’t believe after that.
My issues with Christmas didn’t really have to do with that, though. Nor with the fact that it’s a Christian holiday trying to masquerade as a secular one. I do have issues with that bit, but more because some Christians take such offense at ‘happy holiday’ and try so hard to feel persecuted as a majority.
My main issue was with tradition itself. This is a constant battle I have with my mother. She is Taiwanese by birth and it runs in her veins. In addition, her mother was really rigid as to what she thought was The Right Way To Be, and those ways were deeply, deeply sexist. DEEPLY. So much so, it’s embedded in my mother’s DNA. Here’s the irony. Both my grandmother and my mother were untraditional women. My grandmother was the first woman to attend a certain college in Japan and to be the equivalent of a senator in her prefecture in Taipei. At the same time, she espoused that women should stay home, have children, and always hyped up the men in her husband’s family.
Here’s the other irony. She had eight children–four boys and four girls. Of the four boys, only two weren’t completely screwed up. And only one made what you could arguably call a success of himself (the oldest). Of the girls, all of them have done well for themselves.
My mother continued the tradition of trumpeting traditional gender roles for boys and girls*. My brother was allowed to run around and be energetic. Granted, he was also on the spectrum, but that wasn’t well-known at the time so my mother didn’t know what to do about it.
I was supposed to sit quietly in the dresses my mother made for me with my legs crossed and not make a peep. I did read voraciously, which kept me quiet, but I also liked to climb trees and be active. This was a weird spot for my mother because while she admonished me for being too rambunctious, she also pushed me to play sports. I started dance lessons when I was two, playing ping-pong when I was four or five, softball when I was six, and tennis and volleyball a few years later. I also learned the piano at five or six and the cello at eight. In this way, my mother was the typical Tiger Mom. My brother and I always had to be learning something. My brother learned five or six different instruments, including the sax, the piano, and the guitar.
I have battled with myself for decades over whether I was like the way I was naturally or out of spite. I’m being tongue-in-cheek, but not that’s not far from the truth. Would I be the way I am to such an extent if my mother hadn’t pushed me so hard to be stereotypically feminine?
It’s hard to say yes or no, but I think it’s a mixture of both. Because of my many sensitivities, I lean more masculine, anyway. What I mean is that I’m allergic to almost everything and am highly sensory sensitive. Back when I was in my twenties, I tried to wear makeup and earrings, and it was agony. It was so bad for my skin because there was no thought to allergies, and I got rashes all the time. By the time the hypoallergenic stuff became standard, I just did not care enough to pick it up again. Basically, why should I suffer through it for very little benefit? Even if it wsas better than the old stuff, it’s still something additive.
This is my philosophy in general. Anything I add to my life has to make it better. Otherwise, why bother? I’m at a place in my life where I do not need extraneous things, so if I’m going to add anything to my life, it’s going to be something I really want.
I don’t like any scents because I’m allergic to most. I don’t like most clothing because it irritates my skin. I have several food intolerances, so my menu is not very varied. I’m lucky that East Asian food in general is good for my food issues. Since East Asians are lactose-intolerance, very few recipes call for dairy. Gluten is triciker, but there are plenty of rice noodle dishes and rice dishes. Pho is made of rice noodles, so that is good for me, too. That’s Southeast Asian, but they also don’t use dairy very much.
My mother would say to me in exasperation, “Just because it’s tradition, it doesn’t mean it’s bad!” My immediate retort was, “Just because it’s tradition, it doesn’t mean it’s good!”
Because of this, I hated holidays for a long time–Christmas especially. All the emphasis on faaaamily and making it perfect is so stressful. In adidtion, I had a father who could not care less about family or traditions or Christmas. He would sit there with a sour face if he showed up at all. I have to give my mother credit because she really did try to do Christmas for my brother and me. It was not her fault that she did not know much about it because she was from Taiwan.
The older I get, the more compassion I can have for my young mother. She did not know how to be a good mother, and in addition, she was self-absorbed and wounded. I’ll write more about it tomorrow.
*That was all we had back in the seventies.