Undercover Agnostic (Update 27): A Sensory Overload Christmas

Sheldon's note: This will be a bit of a long rant, bear with me. ;)

I had been planning Christmas party with mom and dad at my house for the Sunday School class, and anyone else from the church I am "undercover" in (at least until next month, I'm planning to come out then, I've already come out to my sister). Mom had told me that she was going to help set up most everything Friday during the day, while I was work on a 12 hour shift, and then she would either be gone by the time I got home about 5:30, or shortly after.

She had said that she was going to take my 85 pound dog, "Happy Horse", a Black Lab/hound mix with her when she left. Imagine my surprise when I come home and not only is everything set up, but Happy Horse is still there, barking at me when I come in the back door, and she's still there with my dad. I hadn't suggested the idea of her leaving before the party started, that was her idea, but I was rather annoyed that she wasn't keeping her word about that

The party was due to start at 7, and they are both still there while people are showing up. Oh, and did the people show up. Everyone I invited came, along with some of their friends.

In all, it was around 18 people at it's highest point in a house that's only 763 square feet upstairs, bigger than my mom and dad's house, but still too small for that many people, especially considering that you can't go outside

(It was around 30 degrees and sleet/snow coming down). The living room and kitchen where every one was gathered is only about half of that space, and for some reason, people didn't want to spend time down in the basement, where I have essentially a second living room, and a kitchen style table set up.

It was really getting to my issues with sensory overload, the mass of people gathered, too many people having too many different conversations at once, which in me, leads to it all blending into an overwhelming cacophony of intelligible noise. I stayed to the edges of the crowd, talking to a few people, letting the crowd do it's thing, generally staying to the room where I felt the least suffocated.

My mom, however, didn't find that acceptable, she denies that I have depression, forced me off of medication when I came back home after my nervous breakdown, so the idea that I could possibly be autistic is beyond her limited comprehension.

 She starts working the crowd herself, her massive ego kicks in, and she starts overriding her normal aversion to crowds showing every the house, and acting like she owns the place so much that a few people who didn't know me (the friends of friends), actually asked her if we all lived there together.

My Christmas Wishes

I'm sure as that I am typing this, most of my North American readers won't even be reading it until later. Right now, they are either asleep, or getting ready to start the day. Plenty of food, family, and presents to go around. I got my Christmas celebrating done yesterday due to scheduling issues, and it went much better than I thought.

You have probably read my past grumpiness about Christmas, but I do celebrate it anyway, mostly due to family and the fact that you just can't escape from Christmas in the US, it's deeply embedded in the culture. It turned out better than I expected.

For some reason, the family hasn't stressed as much their mixing of fundamentalism with Christmas, and this year was the least mixing of the two that I have ever seen.

A Lack of Enthusiasm About Christmas

I'm not as bad as Grumpy Cat here, but I'm finding that it's hard for me to get excited about Christmas. I see all the decorations going up in people homes, the Christmas themed signs, and the store sales, but it all doesn't move me anymore.

I guess you can say that I have lost "the Christmas spirit". It all seems kind of empty, meaningless anymore, like it's just a senseless cultural tradition.

I wonder if my feelings will change as Christmas comes closer. I can't really pinpoint why it is exactly, but there may be a few factors contributing to it:


Maybe I'm associating Christmas too much with Christianity....

All for but about 2 and a half years of my life now, I was a Christian, a fundamentalist Christian at that. The connection between Christmas and Christianity was always stressed, and people were always stressing about keeping "Christ in Christmas", and complaining about stores saying Happy Holidays instead. Though few people were fans of Bill O' Reilly, (that I know of), it sounds like his griping in years past about his idea of the "war on Christmas".

Besides the griping about that, it was generally regarded as an important holiday, the most important of the year, because it was a holy day. Since it was an observance honoring Jesus' birth, it should be the most important day for Christians. Now, with all this religious meaning gone for me now that I am an agnostic, it seems kind of hollow. Not to mention it all seems also hypocritical, because many of the fundamentalists that attach such a religious meaning to Christmas often don't celebrate Halloween because of its origins in ancient polytheistic religions (which they often call "pagan" religions as an insult), yet don't know (or care) that Christmas was meant to be a replacement for a pagan holiday itself.

From WIkipedia:

In the early 4th century, the church calendar in Rome contained Christmas on December 25 and other holidays placed on solar dates: "It is cosmic symbolism...which inspired the Church leadership in Rome to elect the southern solstice, December 25, as the birthday of Christ, and the northern solstice as that of John the Baptist, supplemented by the equinoxes as their respective dates of conception. While they were aware that pagans called this day the 'birthday' of Sol Invictus, this did not concern them and it did not play any role in their choice of date for Christmas," according to modern scholar S.E. Hijmans.^[88]

For fundamentalists who love to quote I Thessalonians 5:22 "Avoid all appearances of evil", and believe me, as I talk about in one of my past posts, they consider the old European religions, and their modern equivalents, Wicca and Neo-Paganism evil, they don't seem to care about the pagan origins of Christmas.

Not only is the date itself from paganism, but so are many of the traditions of Christmas are as well, such as the Christmas tree:

While it is clear that the modern Christmas tree originates in Renaissance and early modern Germany, there are a number of speculative theories as to its ultimate origin. Its 16th-century origins are sometimes associated with Martin Luther.^[4][5] 

It is frequently traced to the symbolism of evergreen trees in pre-Christian winter rites, especially with the story of the Donar Oak and Saint Boniface.^[6] 

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "The use of evergreen trees, wreaths, and garlands to symbolize eternal life was a custom of the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews. Tree worship was common among the pagan Europeans and survived their conversion to Christianity in the Scandinavian customs of decorating the house and barn with evergreens at the New Year to scare away the devil and of setting up a tree for the birds during Christmastime."^[7]

Actually, the hypocrisy doesn't bother me all that much, I just find it ironic and funny, but since Christmas was for me so much of a religious holiday, traditions and beliefs that I no longer share, it feels kind of hollow to me. There's little meaning to me now, it's not who I am anymore.


The over hyping of Christmas, and the rampant commercialism....

Doesn't this woman look, well, psychotic?

I have heard that Christmas is not as commercialized in other nations, and I think I would enjoy that. Don't get me wrong, I'm no enemy of capitalism, I'm a libertarian (though more moderate on economics than most libertarians), but this commercialism is getting to me.

I especially find the US tradition of Black Friday sales, and the resulting chaos, and even occasional violence accompanying it to be rather disturbing.

All this talk of buy this, buy that, creates an unnatural frenzy, it makes shopping into an extreme sport where one has to wait hours in line (sometimes pitching tents overnight), to push past everyone in a frenzy to get through the door (which sometimes causes stampedes that have cause deaths and serious injuries), to get a limited supply of the hottest item on sale, usually an electronic device, and get in fist fights with people if they take the last one (trust me, my non-US readers, it happens).I t runs counter to what I think a holiday like Christmas should be.

This commercialization also causes over hyping of Christmas. I'm sorry, but just because stores want us to get into the Christmas season early to jump start their sales, doesn't mean I should have to hear about Christmas in early November, or see Christmas store displays going up just after Halloween. The all Christmas radio stations really drive me insane, Christmas music is fine, but it isn't when it takes over a good radio station for several months, to play it 24 hours a day.

That's my rant for today, I don't know, maybe I should consider it disturbing that I'm starting to identify with Grumpy Cat....