A 2-Dimensional Christmas and Other Ways to Yank the Rug Out From Under the Holidaze

From melissadesa.wordpress.com

With none of my household being Christian, Christmas is an odd holiday to celebrate.  But as my daughter so aptly observed, “I like getting presents!”  Yes, tis the season!  Commerce has packaged December as the month of buying, whether you be Christian, Jewish, or African-American, or none of these.  Who wants to be left out of the present-getting?  (A lot of people, but…)  I most likely would not celebrate Christmas at all, if it were not for my daughter’s desire to eat sugar, get presents, and do fun creative stuff while cooped up in the house.  As a mystic reveler, it is my challenge to turn Christmas on its head.

Goodbye, Baby Jesus.  Hello, 2-dimensional Christmas.

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GIFTS OF A FINITE PLANET: From symbiotic relationships to baby showers

You received gifts from me; they were accepted.
But you don’t understand how to think about the dead.
The smell of winter apples, of hoarfrost, and of linen.
There are nothing but gifts on this poor, poor Earth.
—Czeslaw Milosz

My cousin’s baby shower is this weekend. I scan the registry looking for a gift. Plastic toys, plastic baby carriers, plastic bibs, plastic bottles. It all looks like useful gear, but none of it has anything to do with me, my cousin, or even this particular new baby. I can’t help but feel that it all has a lot more to do with the companies that make these products, their advertising campaigns and the money flowing into and out of their factories. Nothing strikes me as a “gift.” I see no items for sale that have to do with the smell of winter apples or this poor, poor Earth.

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