This week I’m disgusted and frustrated after spending hours shopping for clothing. Ted and I in recent months have needed to add to our wardrobes. This need for new clothes was in part driven by the appearances we are making at conferences and meetings. I also hadn’t bothered to buy many outfits during my years of pregnancy and nursing and the clothes I’ve had for a while are revealing their age. I’ll confess that some of the shopping has been fun.
The cycle of consuming clothing
Yet after weeks of trying to find clothes for our family to wear, I suddenly see how much clothing has become consumable and disposable. Even if we can find clothes that fit the first two qualifications [ we like it and it fits us] the items only last two or three years (or less than that, for my kids) before we have to go shopping all over again. Clothing lacks durability. Some items seem to begin unraveling after a round or two in the wash. It only took me a few months of diaper changes on my knees to rip holes in jeans. Quality construction seems lacking. And then there are stains that remain, even after treatments with OxyClean or bleach. Clothes are made to be consumed, used for a short time and then discarded. I think I heard once that bras are made to last six months. It’s a constant cycle of spending and disposing.
If I wanted to make my own clothes, I couldn’t. I haven’t studied sewing long enough to be efficient at it. Yes, I can sew. I can make simple skirts and pants. Once I made Ted a fleece jacket. I made us matching pajamas too. But I am slow enough at sewing that it would be a full-time job for me to clothe all our family. I spent much of my youth in school, studying, not sewing.
Few people I know would be able to make their own clothes. We have to buy our garments. We’re stuck in this cycle, going round and round. Clothes are disposable. It feels wasteful to me, a waste of time, money and fabric, a cycle I wish I could stop or slow.
No more Mom with the sewing machine
I imagined I would sew for my kids when I became a mom. When Ted got his first job and we moved to California, one of the first things I did was to buy a sewing machine and start lessons. But as soon as the kids arrived I realized that my sewing utopia would not happen for a number of reasons. First of all, it was no longer practical to sew for my babies. The pants, booties and diaper covers I made weren’t comfortable for them. Store-bought onesies were better. Plus, with all the hand-me-downs and gifts we received, I didn’t need to make clothes. It didn’t make sense to spend time and money on clothes when I could get them for free or low-cost. Fabric is expensive. Often it costs less to buy an item that someone in another country has sewn, rather than trying to sew it myself.
When I shopped for clothes years ago, I used to go to the mall and compare every possible option before choosing one. Now I don’t have that kind of time to spend in a brick and mortar store. The other night, I walked into the first store I could and made purchases then and there.
Of course, the Internet offers numerous choices I can browse from my home. i’ve spent hours this week comparing one site to another, wondering which socks or coat I would prefer, staring at the screen and scrutinizing the data before clicking on the shopping cart button. It’s not necessarily more efficient.
Short term relationship
Even if we find clothing we like, the relationship doesn’t last. By the time we need to buy another item, the designer has changed the line or cut of the clothing. Ted used to be able to find jeans at the Gap that fit him, until they changed their sizing. For years I’ve worn the same winter coat: each time I needed a new coat, I’d pick up another one in the same line. Yet now this coat has been discontinued and I have to search from scratch to find a new one.
Size is another issue. Ted’s had trouble finding smaller sizes now that clothes have accommodated the obesity in America. Depending on the fit and cut, I can wear anything from a S to L. Many times I have to chose a larger size simply because my arms are long.
Fashion sometimes feels like yet another system where I don’t fit. Clothes are manufactured based on a certain body size and shape, predicted dimensions. But what if you don’t fit that mold?
I’ve begun to recognize brand loyalty. For example I know that clothes at Children’s Place usually fit my daughters well (and I know what sizes they are) so purchases at that store are usually a safe bet.
Consignment stores are not the bargain I had hoped they would be. I find that when I shop at thrift stores in this area, I am only saving a few dollars on each item if at all, compared finding the same items at sale prices. Plus second-hand stores don’t have return policies, so if the pieces don’t fit or work out, money is lost.
It seems silly to say, as some sort of suburban American blight, but it is stressful at times, trying to buy outfits for five people and keeping each one of us in the appropriate and necessary clothes for the season. I suppose it would take time to make the outfits too. Yet shopping seems wasteful to me. I’m amazed at the amount of resources it takes, the assumed cos in time, money and energy, simply to keep oneself from being naked. Nevermind the futility of laundry…
Life would be easier if we were nudists. 😉
[Editors note:
Although the holiday season has passed, I thought I would publish this post in retrospect, as a reminder to myself, as a result of the effort I have already put into the piece, and as preparation for ten months from now when I may re-post portions of it!…]
I try to ignore it, and sometimes I think I’m doing a pretty good job, and then I decide that this year, I will find the courage to take the X’s skates to Goodwill. The skates I once bought him for Christmas. And then I go into a Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up a few necessities, and I hear The Chipmunks Christmas song, and am reduced to tears.
I hate Christmas because it sucks to be alone. It sucks to be alone all the time, but never so much as when I’m surrounded by my family on Christmas Eve. And this year it sucks doubly, because the one person I want to not be alone with — no, wait, I mean I want to be alone with. Oh, you know what I mean — would rather be alone.
–Postmodern Sass
Because I’m not motivated by material things, I find the rampant orgy of commercialism which abounds at this time of year, frankly, disgusting. Because I absolutely respect the right of others to hold whatever religious beliefs they choose, I feel ashamed at what the society I live in has turned this season into (even bearing in mind the point of view which says that the timing and motivation of this season has more to do with pagan celebrations such as Yule and Saturnalia than it does with alleged events of two millennia ago). I have no happy memories of childhood Christmases; and vivid memories of particularly unpleasant personal events which have occurred at this time of year, especially in adult life. So, all told, this period is a dead loss for me.
-Koan Bremner
I had a good half hour to think about this while I waited. I thought to myself, you know I’m a pretty friendly guy, and that’s 365 days a year, and most of these people are bastards most of the time, but could they really be this nice for a few days a year?
[…]
I’ve had the privilege of being inside on a few of these Christian Christmases, with shicksa women I was dating, and let me tell you, if you haven’t had a chance to see the inside of the holiday, it’s pretty pissy and angry, you know, like people really are, not like they pretend they are. So I guess I don’t like it because it’s basically dishonest and because Christianity, in my eye, has gotten a bad rep.
–Dave Winer
When I read posts like Dave Winer’s or Koan Bremner’s or Postmodern Sass’s I see the hypocrisy of the holiday season and feel the pains. I wish I could give them all hugs (and hugs to the blogger friends Betsy Devine linked too). They have been on my mind this past month. I wish there was something I could do. I remember why I hate the holidays too, or at least what they do to people. And I hope each of these bloggers is doing okay now that we’re into the new year.
I used to hate Christmas. The month made me sick with its commercialism and emptiness. It seemed deceptive and false, like a hollow box wrapped with bows and shiny paper. There’s the stressful search for the elusive “perfect gift” for each person on the list. Plus there are heavy emotional obligations for many as well as financial burdens, combined with the pretense of perfection, doing all we can to find that Norman Rockwell-picture-perfect-moment to confirm our family happiness and camouflage the dysfunction with another year’s worth of holiday cheer. Smile for the camera!
As a young girl, I soon learned that Christmas morning meant disappointment. I remember a letter “Santa” wrote me at age seven, explaining why my requested dollhouse was not there under the tree. With each year I realized that what I wanted would not be there on Christmas Day. It wasn’t just that my family had a budget. What I wanted most – my parents’ marriage, my brother’s health, healed relationships – wouldn’t fit in Santa’s sack and slide down the chimney. The season was all an illusion, like the man wearing the fat red suit and wig at the mall.
The heaviness followed me into our marriage. One year, 1996, I decided to take a break from giving gifts. It all seemed too much for me. The season felt like a game of expectations I couldn’t fulfill. How to make everyone happy? I couldn’t.
In a spiritual sense I felt discontent with Christmas. If the holiday was really about Jesus, then why did we spend days consumed by consuming? Why was Christmas Day focussed on food and gifts? Was I really a Christian if I felt stressed by Christmas? Shouldn’t a spiritual holiday center on simplicity, meditation and prayer? And why is December 25th such a big deal? Can’t we celebrate Jesus every day?
In recent years I made decisions that have helped me survive the holiday season, lowered my stress, and have even helped me find happiness in the midst of the mess. Here are some summaries and ideas I’ve implemented.
Cultivate contentment
Ted and I have tried in our family to cultivate contentment. In general neither one of us needs many things. Our children in turn don’t seem to need many things. If they need clothes or shoes, we buy them. Throughout the year the girls get gifts, not only Christmas and birthdays. We don’t ask them what they want for Christmas or have them make a list for Santa. I don’t know what they would say if we did ask them. See Amanda Witt’s wonderful A Small Family Oddity. Going through the dot-com crash, I confess, helped me cultivate contentment better.
Live Christmas 365 days of the year
I see myself living Christmas year-round in many ways.
First, it means keeping routines despite the busyness of the season. It helps to preserve some sanity if I continue to exercise, eat healthy and take quiet time for prayer and meditation throughout December. This year, due to my own compulsion combined with unexpected events and an overstuffed schedule, I didn’t practice this principle every day, but I wish I had.
It also means keeping presents in perspective, planning and giving throughout the year, lessening the emphasis and pressure on the short holiday season.
I plan my gifts throughout the year, not just in November and December. As Elisa Camahort recommends (see her excellent The Secrets of a Savvy Seasonal Shopper), if I see something that would fit someone well, I buy it and often save it for Christmas. I also spend some time each summer making gifts. Yes, I’ve already begun to plan what we will be giving in 2006.
Ted and I don’t wait until Christmas to get something we need. We give gifts to the children multiple times in the twelve months, rather than giving them lots of presents on two days. We give – and receive! – throughout the year. Many people in our lives share their generosity with us across the calendar – thanks!
Our kids are our example. Throughout the year, they are constantly cutting paper and fashioning it into presents. This weekend, the older two have decided to sew secret gifts for each other.
Living Christmas every day means putting time into my faith every day. Jesus is more than the Reason for the Season. He’s the reason for life. What we do for one day of the year or a few weeks, doesn’t matter much compared to the other 364 days. Jesus was born and that event impacts who I am and how I live, what I say every day.
Living Christmas every day means giving love and whatever I can give, every day, to God and to people in my life.
Decide what Christmas and the holiday season mean to you
I used to feel guilty feeling exhausted by Christmas, wondering how fake and frail my faith must be if this holiday made me miserable. But Jesus never declared December 25th to be a special day. He never commissioned Christmas. There’s nothing about it in the Bible. So Christmas, in a sense, especially our American idea of it, has nothing to do with Jesus. [From what I’ve written, I think my opinion on this debate should be obvious.]
The month of December is a time though when people want to show each other care and affection through presents and parties. The Christmas season is a time to let people know you are thinking of them and caring about them. It’s a great time to express gratitude. so I’ve decided to make the most of that opportunity. I’ve felt happier once I took the freedom to decide what Christmas meant to me, to write my own definition independent of culture or even church.
Keep it simple
We keep our celebration simple. We don’t usually have a Christmas tree: we’ve only had a tree two or three times in our fourteen years of marriage. ( I don’t know how other families find the time to decorate!) It seems a bit ridiculous, this tradition of chopping down a perfectly good tree, dragging it indoors, hanging things on it, and taking care of it for weeks, vacuuming needles and watering the cut trunk. Then again, Althea Paulson’s article on The sacred Christmas tree nearly made me reconsider. Still I like our tree-less Christmas. We don’t have stockings. “Santa” doesn’t stop at our house, either, although we’ve told the kids not to broadcast Santa’s secret to others.
I used to worry about creating traditions but now I realize we still have plenty of years to make traditions as a family, when the kids are older and able to contribute better to the holiday. Why create more complications? We make cookies (although only two batches this year, not the six to ten I once did). We make Jesus a birthday cake. We give gifts. We get together with family and friends. We put out the nativity sets. Those have been our constants from year to year.
Some people have expectations for cards, as my friend Ernie and Brian Bailey each explained in their blogs this December. As our list of contacts and friends has grown, and so has the number of children in our family (and their activities), each year I find myself wrestling a bit with Christmas cards, trying to find balance, the ability to satisfy everyone in the equation. Since we’ve become parents, I know many on our list would like to see a picture of our kids and I like to share a picture too, especially since I don’t post them on this blog. Also, since I started writing a blog, I have felt less of a need to write a letter and have only sent a photo card the past two years. A lengthy missive seemed redundant in light of my blog, and perhaps excessive and insensitive to those with busy schedules at holiday time who don’t need my mini-novel to read. I am considering sending out cards via email next year, to reduce paper and time, yet I know the girls and I also enjoy finding greetings in our mailbox and holding the photos and cards in our hands. Year round I try to take pictures of the girls so that I have a photo ready when the time comes to make cards. This practice is also helpful for taking advantage of the discounts that come early in the fall.
Homemade gifts can be fun and personal, perhaps saving time and money (not always). Making gifts also reduces some of the commercialism and encourages our creativity. I recommend avoiding edible gifts. You never know what someone’s dietary needs are, and also edible gifts have other constraints (the ones I made this year – jars of jam – grew mold in the months between summer and November!). The girls and I usually spend a day or two in the summer time working on presents for Christmas. Gifts can also be simple, if not something homemade, then something to encourage others to create at home. This year I gave our closest homeschooling friends a bag filled with items such as pipe cleaners, modeling clay and a representation of the brain, along with a printout of a web site with activities, recipes and ideas.
For our family I do buy one or two gifts, usually books. This year the girls got a robot toy and a book each. But I also make something for them too. Two years ago I gave them homemade teddy bears. This year, keeping it simple, I made each girl a few bookmarks, with special stickers and colors, using initials, names and favorite animals, since they are always looking for bookmarks.
Last year I gave the girls fleece bags for Christmas, and this year I used those same bags to wrap their presents. I think I’ll continue that tradition!
I wince as I take out the trash on December 26th, collecting the piles of garbage generated by the holiday, and I wish I could reduce waste. This year, I’ve read a number of great ideas such as Cathy Nickum’s Shop locally, give globally and Nancy Blakey’s “Non-toys” for kids this holiday. Giving experiences, such as tickets or a trip or even a meal are all wonderful thoughts. We try to do these year-round too, and I see these as gifts we receive and give year round also, even if they aren’t wrapped up in paper on December 25th.
Give grace, gratitude and flexibility to yourself and others
The best gifts to give are grace, gratitude and flexibility. Let go of expectations and obligations for yourself and others. Give lots of hugs, understanding and love! I’ve found that this freedom allows me to enjoy the holidays and accept whatever others give me, and whatever the season brings with it that year, although I constantly discover new expectations I need to release (such as electricity on Christmas!).
I have to accept the limitations. I can’t do everything and I do need to sleep. I can’t pretend everything will be perfect suddenly for one day on December 25th. And I can’t ask others to make me happy or buy me the perfect gift. There’s no Norman Rockwell painting in my living room, only people. People who love me. And I love them. Whether or not we look or act perfect.
No matter what the calendar says, you don’t know what will happen. For example this holiday season was impacted by a number of unpredicted and unusual events including three colds (I had two, Ted had one), Ted’s ten day trip, a water heater leak (small but big enough to impact a day of plans), and a power outage Christmas morning.
We live in a time of perfection and pressure. It’s an era of microwaves and Martha Stewart, fast food and credit cards, media tempting us with airbrushed versions of reality (or McCormick commercials that imply a woman’s identity and acceptance comes from her perfect holiday cooking!). We want it all now. And we want it done right. As a culture, we are accustomed to comfort. We expect to feel good. We have expectations for everyone in our lives and become angry when they aren’t who we want them to be. Hey, I was even angry at the electricity for not being there for me on Christmas this year!
But Christmas is more about mess than perfection. It’s about grace, the opposite of obligation.
Why did I title this post A hypocrite’s guide to surviving the holiday season? First of all, it seems a bit hypocritical to post a survival guide when the season has passed. Also if you were in our home during these holidays, you would have seen me barely surviving at times, in tears, exhausted, licking envelopes at 3 am, finding flexibility elusive, overwhelmed by the little crises I didn’t predict for December. So why I am writing a survival guide? To remind myself.
I see myself as a hypocrite. I feel I am one during the holidays, believing Jesus has nothing to do with Christmas, yet celebrating the holiday with a birthday cake for Him and presents for everyone else. Or is it the other way around?
And I know I’m a hypocrite every day. Not that I’m trying to be one. But I don’t live everything I believe. I criticize others, forgetting my own failures. I lack humility and think the world of myself, or rather the world revolves around me and my needs.
But Christmas is for hypocrites. It’s about grace. It’s about getting gifts we don’t deserve. And through one gift, that was first seen in a stable thousands of years ago, this hypocrite has found hope for the holidays.
I have a confession to make. I probably have quite a few things to confess. But the one I was planning to describe today involves this weblog. I have cultivated a bad habit of writing posts in draft form and then failing to publish them. When I have an idea, I like to play with it, put the words on the page, weave my thoughts into an ordered tapestry, carve my conceptions into life. However, for various reasons, many posts are not published. Often I feel I don’t have time then and there to edit the piece or add the needed links, and then the post disappears into my pile of drafts.
Watch out for the writing!
To start the new year, I’d like to polish and publish some of the drafts that have been sitting in my ecto folder for a while. So please expect an abundance of posts this week as I present some thoughts that have been incubating for a while.
Thanks to Ted’s help, in the past week this blog has now been updated to Movable Type 3.2. I rejoiced to see the following message accompany my first spam comment:
An unapproved comment has been posted on your blog Julie Leung: Seedlings & Sprouts, …You need to approve this comment before it will appear on your site.
I’m grateful for the help with comment moderation. Many nights my allotted “blogging time” has been spent eliminating the ceaseless spam, leaving me with little energy for creativity. Often I’ve been so frustrated by this bane of blogging, I’ve considered quitting. But now, thanks to Ted and MT, I hope to have more resources to put into posts.
Starting 2006
I’m not one to make many new year’s resolutions. I figure that one can make a change any time of the year – why force it on the first of January? As 2006 came into view however, I realized I would like to focus on two changes.
1. Make better choices
Vague, I know, but these three words capture the essence of my failures and encourage me with their simplicity. As I examine my bad habits and lack of discipline in certain areas of my life, I know change easily reduces to making better choices, one moment at a time, being wiser with each minute. I can be more efficient and accomplish big goals but they break down into little decisions I make constantly. This first week has been a roller coaster ride – perhaps due to my determination to change – but I feel I am making better choices little by little.
2. Preserve Saturdays (rest)
When I was a kid I remember Saturday mornings were filled with all kinds of animated creatures and most of all a sense of freedom, relaxation and fun. Sometimes we’d finish breakfast at 11 am, in our pajamas, chomping pancakes while Smurfs squeaked and Wiley Coyote schemed. Saturday mornings were for cartoons and play time. Not that I’m advocating TV time for my family, but recently I’ve missed that sense of relaxation and fun on the weekends. During my childhood, I don’t remember having any obligations on Saturdays until high school, when I participated in athletics and held a part-time job. Now I think it’s a rare child who escapes into adolescence knowing how to rest and enjoy weekends. I know I need time to rest, I realized as I crashed during the weeks after Christmas, sleeping long hours each night. I want to do what I can to help our family have Saturdays and to know the essential ability to rest. Yesterday we only had one event on the calendar. I felt guilty for taking a slower weekend, but I also felt great with the extra time I had to organize and rest.
Hope you are having a restful first weekend of the New Year! Thank you for taking the time to read, comment and care.
