Author Topic: Holiday Dread  (Read 5117 times)

Hopalong

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Re: Holiday Dread
« Reply #30 on: November 10, 2007, 06:47:50 PM »
Sure. My NishM came from a large religious family with skeletons in the closets, and she always approached holidays with a kind of fretful whiny attitude with many comments about Family...when I was drowning in loneliness and anxiety and knew, intuitively then if not why...that she didn't get the whole Jesus thing anyway. So we did a lot of anxious entertaining and anxious shopping and it was all so scripted and what for many folks is joyful ritual was for me, suffocating rite.

I've always loved the sacred music, still do.

My daughter decided some years back not to celebrate Xmas. At all. So I was stuck alone with Mom, fending off her constant relentless questions about my D's absence. And I was very hurt by it myself. It all added up to loathing the whole season. The consumerism being the worst part. It's begun already. Not even Thanksgiving.

There are only so many Christmasses you can go through that way until either your feelings about it change, or the situation does. My feelings have changed. I don't care any more.

love
Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Leah

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Re: Holiday Dread
« Reply #31 on: November 11, 2007, 05:12:05 PM »

Dear Hops,

Thought of you this afternoon, when my friend emailed to let me know of an innovative idea, in the area she lives, during the period leading up to Christmas.

They are having lights on the trees in the local church area (which has an abundance of trees) and charitable fundraising events.

One tree is going to have notices placed upon it for many charities .....such as Darfur and India's out 'caste' children
... plus many many more.  Fund raising activities and events are planned.  I think it is an absolutely wonderful idea.

As I don't have children, the money I would spend on having a xmas tree in my front room, is going there instead!

Love, Leah
Jun 2006 voiceless seeking

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Ami

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Re: Holiday Dread
« Reply #32 on: November 11, 2007, 05:19:03 PM »
Dear Hops,
  I understand.It is the associations. It is like a "brainwashing". It just "sticks". I am sorry.I bet that you were the sweetest little girl. These N M's often have such great D's.                Love   Ami


((((((((((((((Hops)))))))))))))))))))))))0
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.        Eleanor Roosevelt

Most of our problems come from losing contact with our instincts,with the age old wisdom stored within us.
   Carl Jung

Hopalong

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Re: Holiday Dread
« Reply #33 on: November 11, 2007, 06:11:28 PM »
thanks, guys.
Right after Xmas I'll be spending a week with my daughter, so that should be good.
She'll be moving farther away in January to go to grad school, so I'll savor that time.

Meanwhile, suspended animation here.
Very slow winding toward the new year.

I'm looking forward to doing a service together with a good friend at church.
She's the one who also has an Nmother. We're about the same age.

No idea what we'll do, but it'll mean a lot to me to plan it with her.
I will angle for it to be something anti-relentless-holiday. A serious inner kind of thing.

I was worship associate today and it was a UU sermon on miracles (the Loaves and Fishes
story for the kids). I found a reading from Charlotte's Web, and that was fun to do.

My mother will be 97 on Tuesday.  :shock:  I took her out yesterday for dinner and
then we went to a poncy shop and found her 2 gorgeous sweaters. She was happy.

love,
Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Ami

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Re: Holiday Dread
« Reply #34 on: November 11, 2007, 06:47:54 PM »
Eear Hops,
  Charlotte's Web is one of my favorite books. What part did you use and what did you speak about,if you care to say?        Ami
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.        Eleanor Roosevelt

Most of our problems come from losing contact with our instincts,with the age old wisdom stored within us.
   Carl Jung

Hopalong

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Re: Holiday Dread
« Reply #35 on: November 11, 2007, 09:44:49 PM »
Mr. Zuckerman has gone back to the house, shaken, to tell Mrs. Zuckerman what he saw at the barn.
It's a miracle, he tells her. We have a very unusual pig. She's alarmed at first but then just listens.
And he tells her about seeing on the spider's web: SOME PIG.
He keeps going on and on about what an amazing pig they have, and how the sign is a miracle,
and it is clear that this momentous thing is that they really have an extraordinary pig.
Mrs. Zuckerman says, I think you're off, I think we have an extraordinary spider.  :D

(It was a Words of Welcome just to greet the congregation, have a laugh, and we had the children
for the first half. I was involved in handing out baskets of mysteriously multiplying goldfish crackers.)

This was more serious stuff I gave the minister, but he said it was too close to what he was
saying in his sermon so I found a poem instead...

[from a blog]

"If God was going to reveal himself to me I would hope it was through something better than finding my [lost] keys. God covering up for my ineptitude doesn’t exactly move me to worship. "[emphasis mine']
 
In what I've been reading about miracles, this is the only thing that has made the idea break out of the confusion for me. If it works for you two, I'd like to read a little bit from that blog/forum discussion. It was very helpful to me. Even as an agnostic, I worship. Even our secular humanists and atheists and every zebra stripe among us, when we gather together here, we are engaged in worship. The vocabulary for the object of our worship is for some of us debatable (I believe that faith is not found in the objects of sentences, but in their verbs). But not the gathering. Most all of us would agree, at least hypothetically, that we are really here this morning!
 
I don't think it's so much quibbling over what is or is not a miracle, or is any good thing that suspends the order of nature a miracle, or is everything everywhere all the time miraculous simply because it exists. I think what makes a miracle is the capacity within us to respond with worship. Or gratitude. Or presentness. Or love. Or right action.
 
[...etc.] That's kind of what I do in this role. The two years are over in January, and I'm relieved. I loved doing it but I'm tired.

thanks for your interest, Ami,
Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Iphi

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Re: Holiday Dread
« Reply #36 on: November 12, 2007, 10:27:37 AM »
I can tell you are a very inspiring worship associate Hops.  I am in awe of your detached and dutiful care of your mom.  You look after her with great constancy.  This is no small thing or mere knack, but must be the result of evolution and gaining in wisdom - and this is where I stand in awe and appreciation of what you have accomplished.  I strove constantly to reach that kind of place when I was caretaking (in such a rainbow of senses of that word) my dad; it was completely out of reach for me.    But somehow I like to have an idea of you kicking up your heels on a beach somewhere (say, Aruba), wearing one of Uli's creations from Project Runway last year.   Maybe that could be a plan for a future holiday. 

Well, this topic definitely made me think of our holidays.  I don't have any especial feelings about the consumerism (distaste) or the outward trappings (sometimes we did them, sometimes not).  Our holidays were relatively okay as long as I did not mind my dad getting me what he thought I should have.  This does make creating an xmas wish list perplexing because it is not so simple as listing what you want, but is an exercise in listing what your best guess your dad thinks you should have is.  What a good little mirror!  The Role is clear for a holiday like that and it means you work up genuine enthusiasm for receiving what your NP thinks you should have, just as if you really wanted it. 

The next part of xmas I always found the hardest though.  After the presents were open and "The Girls" (that's me and my sister) cleaned up - then the whole day was like Simon Says.  The whole day was about absolute obedience to my dad's wishes and commands.  Usually it was warm enough that we would wash his car.  This is not a simple process where we go out and do it.  No.  My dad 'managed and supervised.'  He sat and directed our every move, from how the wheels were soaped (thoroughly and copiously) to how the rinsing was to be accomplished (with sheeting action).  If we were cooking, then he managed that.  Don't get me wrong, normal weekends had a fair bit of this, but holidays for some reason were particularly intense.  I think it was that he could extract extra in return for presents or something.  It's hard to convey the total commitment of time and self to the will of another person, without any thought at all of what you want to do, would rather do, might like to do.  I know sometimes, before I learned, I had the foolish temerity to verbalize what I would rather do, suggest something to do - ha ha, what a betrayal, how selfish.

One year when I was dating my H, he and I went up to visit for turkey day.  As 'tradition' dictated, after dinner we (that is my sister and me, not my future H as an outsider) were available for the complete convenience of my dad.  He had my sister and I catalog part of his book collection.  He 'managed and supervised.'  He had invented an exacting, multi-step process that involved him sitting at a computer from where he directed me to pick up a book and recite bibliographical information, for my sister to write in the number he assigned to the book and place it on the shelf or in a box according to his specifications. Then we would wait while he made an entry to the special database he had created.  Oh my, what a jolly time was had by all.  My future H was sitting out of everyone's sight line, except for me, and was silently laughing uproariously.  Of course, as usual, I asked my dad why he did not use an existing database (Access) or existing catalog system (Dewey Decimal), but with the force of a thousand repetitions, my dad waved away my whinging complaints as female foolishness.  Because Iphi still didn't get it, that it was not about that.  I really liked it that my H laughed at my predicament. It was freeing that he saw the absurdity in it, and as Mr. Bennet says in Pride & Prejudice - "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?" 

The punch line, to me, is that ND was planning to give away some part of his collection but he wanted to catalog it before he did that so he could have a record of what he had previously owned.  Mmmmmmmhmmmmmmm.

(Iphi, you just don't understand.  These high, abstract things are too far above your venal, low mind.)

Holidays!

My idea of a holiday is to lie around doing very little (and certainly no car washing, intensive house cleaning, errand running for imaginary items from closed stores, or library cataloging(!)) other than reading several books at once, eating chocolate and dozing at will.  Fortunately my H shares this view point.  Ideally I would like to plan fun excursions for holidays and maybe as a parent I will so that my child doesn't climb the walls with boredom.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2007, 10:52:27 AM by Iphi »
Character, which has nothing to do with intellect or skill, can evolve only by increasing our capacity to love, and to become lovable. - Joan Grant

Hopalong

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Re: Holiday Dread
« Reply #37 on: November 12, 2007, 01:02:26 PM »
Ohhh, Iphi.  :shock:

Your Dad was no jolly farting Santa.
On top of the Nishness, he sounds awfully OCD.
Nasty, child-sucking mix! Ewww.

I am SOOOOOOOOO glad you now have an H who understands what's absurd. Wonderful.
Has that been very healing for you? How long have you been married to him?

Thank you for the gift of me sauntering about the Caribbean in an Uli dress...she was my favorite!
And that IS the future holiday dream. Bliss!

hugs,
Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Iphi

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Re: Holiday Dread
« Reply #38 on: November 12, 2007, 05:19:16 PM »

Hiyas Hops.  I am tickled you liked Uli and also picture yourself on a beach.  Must be an accurate vision then!  You will confine your holiday decorations to, say, a plastic christmas tree swizzle stick. 

Yes OCD PD was the first PD I wondered about with regard to my dad, but although it seemed to fit somewhat, it didn't satisfy all the mysteries in his behavior and motivations.

I see I didn't say though that we always had really good christmas stockings.  It is actually a consideration that makes me wonder if my dad is wholly N.  Could he be just N-ish?  Anyway, he did always unfavorably compare his own childhood stockings as boring and he did tend to re-vision his childhood through us, so I'm not sure. 

Yes I am profoundly grateful for my H's company.  We met at the start of 98 and have been married since early 02.  We both feel that we have grown a lot in positive ways through our relationship.  We each felt that we were cynical and on the 'hard' side before we got together.  It means so much to me that he accepts me, no fuss no muss and I strive to bring the most I can to the relationship. 
Character, which has nothing to do with intellect or skill, can evolve only by increasing our capacity to love, and to become lovable. - Joan Grant