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You haven't had much contact with Jews, have you? As a habit and custom, I do not spell out the G word, common with many Jews. We find it disrespectful. Get your mind out of the gutter.
Why would it be disrespectful to spell it out when you don't even believe in God?
Jewish people don't celebrate Christmas anyhow, so the Santa thing isn't an issue either way to Jews. Hannakah isn't celebrated like Christmas. Santa doesn't come on Hannakah Eve.
If you're angry about your parents for lying about Santa Claus, there may be other issues because most of us that celebrate Christmas did not grow up resentful or believing our parents lied and hold it against them for the rest of our lives.
I also know that Jewish is an ethnic group and that in the USA over half of Jewish people don't believe in God at all. They don't wait for a Messiah, they believe in nothing.
But - back to the whole point of this - the aunt is a total jerk and they need to cut her off. This family wishes to celebrate Christmas the way they wish to celebrate it, the aunt is overstepping on this and needs to be told flat out that she is no longer welcome in their house.
Oh, I get it. You are one of those people who pride yourself on being frank about everything, even if it means being a perpetual killjoy. And anybody who actually likes to indulge their children's sense of whimsy is a liar or manipulative. Or both.
So if a kid sees a rainbow and relays a legend that there's a pot of gold at the end of it, you'll of course sit him down and explain that it's nothing more than sunlight refracting through rain and that leprechauns are nothing more than silly myths, right?
If a child cultivates an imaginary friend, do you tell them that they are crazy and hustle them off to the pediatrician for medication?
If your daughter dresses up and wants to be a princess, do you feel it's your duty as a parent to tell them that not only are royal families in a steep decline, but she has three strikes against her because of her nationality and lack of noble lineage?
If so, bravo to all three, because God forbid that any child anywhere actually have a harmless little fantasy life.
There is a difference between pretending and teaching our kids to believe in a lie.
All that being said, how does your pursuit of perfect truth translate into other spheres of life? Do you also single out adults wearing unfortunate clothes and tell them how dreadful they look--all in hopes that they'll shop somewhere besides the bargain counter at T. J. Maxx?
One, what does fashion have to do with the way families celebrate holidays? I'm only offended by ciggarette smoke and perfumes that set off my asthma and my children are forced to be near and clothes that reveal too much....such as a man wearing nothing more than a pair of cut off shorts and flip flops...and when I say NOTHING more I mean that you could see his...uh...thing...through the rip in the front of his shorts. He was a freak trying to get people's attention. When it comes to clothes, I do not care, seriously. I don't know why people sit around and talk about fashion and spend hours buying nothing. What a waste of time.
If you hear a parent bragging on her underwhelming child, do you tell them to give up hope, because there's probably a meth lab or stripper pole in the kid's future?
If the parent is clueless, it if probably do to the fact that they do not listen to their child, in which case I feel sympathy for the child...such as someone I know who talks about the toruble her daughter gets into but then when she is around nags at her for not wanting to spend her time trying to fit into the popular crowd and when the child is not with her mother, you realize in about 3 seconds she is a gifted child who is very much misunderstood. If a parent is BRAGGING their underwhelmed child, it fills me full of a sense of pride for that parent as they at least CARE about their child's future.
Do you tell your friends how worthless their boyfriends or husbands really are?
Yup, if they actuallly are. But then again, I choose stable friends so I don't run into the "My husband/bf is useless but I won't get a grip and get out," very often because if this is the woman's problem, they have bigger problems than just that.
If you attend a funeral and hear the deceased's family talk about the deceased's entry into Heaven, surely you tell them that there's no such thing as an afterlife, right?
What is wrong with spiritual tolerance? You get this EVERY single church you go to in our country...about how someone else praying to God across the street is praying to the wrong God. More wars have been faught, more people have died, more people have constant anger in their hearts about religion than any other thing in the world.
If not, you're missing out, because everybody wants nothing but the facts in life, just like Mr. Gradgrind in Hard Times. Fact. Facts. And nothing but facts.
Facts or knowldege? You are right that there are many people on the planet who don't care about acquiring knowledge. Let us put it this way....the "facts" people are the type to read, research, and actually learn things all day long from what they do for a living to what they do in their spare time and with their children are the type of people you are attacking but you must remember that they are as if not much more fulfilled with what they do than the other type of people. For example, my mother is the type of person you see to think we should all be like, forget watching the another show on Animal Planet with the kids, put on America's got talent so our kids can see that real people can achieve their dreams. Hmmm....support my child who wants to be ia vetrinarian someday with a show she actually likes and support who SHE is with real dreams that could actually take her somewhere some day or fluff. Our kids play dress up and pretend. In fact we only allow toys in the house that stretch their imagination and make them pretend but when it comes to real life dreams, we let THEM choose and don't try to push stupid stuff. Reminds of kinderdergarten when some senoirs came down and filled out some books with us we got when we were seniors. The gil helping me kept telling me that I didn't want to be whatever I had said I wanted to be when I grew up and wrote down cheerleader. 12 years later when I saw that, it made me just as mad. Maybe it has to do with IQ. People with higher IQ need things with real sustinance while people with average don't want to work their brain that hard.
In fact, when it comes to the event of Christmas itself, why don't we just remove all fun and suspense from it? Instead of wrapping the presents under the tree in colorful papers, why don't we just stick them in gallon-sized ZipLock bags and simply tell the kids to not touch them until 7 a.m., December 25th? And if they present you with a wish list for Christmas, simply sit them down at the kitchen table and start crossing out items as too expensive or impractical, and make them justify every single one of their requests.
Ok....right there....this is SO contradictory. If you shop off your child's "gift list" every year, then it is just like putting their gifts into ziplock bags and putting them under the tree because it is just a matter of guessing which item they got. We don't allow our children to ask for presents. That is greedy and they know it is rude so they don't do it. If fact, Christmas doesn't come with the expectation of getting gifts at all. They can only reserve that for birthdays and each year, they are excited to donate just as many old items from their rooms that they recieve and each year, as they increasingly don't want the items from their rooms to go away, want fewer gifts. They also don't want to ask for things for Christmas because they enjoy the suspense of seeing how mom and dad picked out an item or two that follows their interests. We don't put the presents under the tree until the 24th and they get them Christmas morning...Only two presents are wrapped for each and whatever else they get are family gifts, books, games puzzles, ect arranged under the tree.
And that tree you put up in the den? Make a little Excel spreadsheet showing them that the number of man-hours involved in putting the thing up just aren't a sufficient return on investment. They'll thank you for it later on in life.
Ok, so your "traditions" follow the mass of society. Ho-ho-ho. Have fun with that. We'll continue on the path to real fun and creativity...something you just harped on in length and do things that are different...and REAL.
This year we have already done:
Donated a trash bag and a half of boys clothes to two little boys in need
Donated two shopping bags worth of girls clothes two three little girls we know....two from one family whose house burned down a few weeks back and its too bad we didn't have more in their sizes
Went through my closet and found clothes for a woman I know in need and got out some more for a sister whose lost weight and needs clothes
We donated our old winter coats
Picked out all the extra gifts we had from last year or collected throughout the year and gave them to a mother who had little money to purchase gifts for Christmas
Donated an extra clothes dryer to someone whose dryer went out on them and they had to dryer their clothes on their heat vents of their house.
We had a cookie trade off and baked roll out cookies getting my sister's kids, my mother and my kids and myself together to do it and we are all using them to give out care packages to those who we know don't see many people during the holidays.
I did a photo shoot for the kids for their annual pics. I LOVE doing it myself and throwing the camera on burst mode at the end to capture unforgetable expression I get when as I tease them from behind the camera or they laugh and tease each other. You'd never get those from a "profession" and the last two times I paid to have shots done, I went home and took better pics anyway (If I liked other people's kids enough I could do it for a living)
Just to name some things we've done in the last week. Christmas isn't all about the gifts and I feel bad for kids who don't get more out of it. All the get is "stuff" nothing more. Our kids get so much more. We are writting our annual Christmas story right now and that is the ONLY thing that the younger two remember from last year. They don't remember the presents or the lights or all the other crap. My kids this year are each getting one main gift and a gift set each...DD is getting a sewing kit for example complete with fabric and sewing books. They will each get underwear, we get them a "need" item each year, no candy (we make candy so they don't get much as gifts as we have jars all over the place already that THEY made, which is what they prefer...more Christmas fun....which is more fun for a child do YOU thinK? A stocking full of cheap wax tasting candy from "santa" or their choice of a bunch of treats they made?) and a few books, a few art and crafty items, and three board games that they will all share but the only items that will actually go into their bedrooms are the main gift that they each got.
Wouldn't want a room full of crap they out grow in a year that they all have to swim in to get to the door...so full it is too overwhelming to clean on their own...junk they don't play with for more than a minute. The only people concerned about how many toys we purchase our kids are the toy company ceo's and those parents who enjoy supporting them who buy into all the advertising. My kids don't mind. In fact, one year we had a bunch of relatives give Christmas gifts for kids and they cried about there being too much stuff in their rooms. I went in and weeded it out before spring even came and DD, who I tought would be upset thanked me for it and never questioned about where it all went now we don't do the big Christmas parties with loads of presents.
I am sometimes nothing short of astonished at how much time some people devote at this forum to praising themselves - typing tomes of words all in the interest of "promoting tolerance" ... but showing nothing but intolerance for the ideals and principles of others at the same time.
I am sometimes nothing short of astonished at how much time some people devote at this forum to praising themselves - typing tomes of words all in the interest of "promoting tolerance" ... but showing nothing but intolerance for the ideals and principles of others at the same time.
Ok, so your "traditions" follow the mass of society. Ho-ho-ho. Have fun with that. We'll continue on the path to real fun and creativity...something you just harped on in length and do things that are different...and REAL.
This year we have already done:
Donated a trash bag and a half of boys clothes to two little boys in need
Donated two shopping bags worth of girls clothes two three little girls we know....two from one family whose house burned down a few weeks back and its too bad we didn't have more in their sizes
Went through my closet and found clothes for a woman I know in need and got out some more for a sister whose lost weight and needs clothes
We donated our old winter coats
Picked out all the extra gifts we had from last year or collected throughout the year and gave them to a mother who had little money to purchase gifts for Christmas
Donated an extra clothes dryer to someone whose dryer went out on them and they had to dryer their clothes on their heat vents of their house.
We had a cookie trade off and baked roll out cookies getting my sister's kids, my mother and my kids and myself together to do it and we are all using them to give out care packages to those who we know don't see many people during the holidays.
I did a photo shoot for the kids for their annual pics. I LOVE doing it myself and throwing the camera on burst mode at the end to capture unforgetable expression I get when as I tease them from behind the camera or they laugh and tease each other. You'd never get those from a "profession" and the last two times I paid to have shots done, I went home and took better pics anyway (If I liked other people's kids enough I could do it for a living)
Just to name some things we've done in the last week. Christmas isn't all about the gifts and I feel bad for kids who don't get more out of it. All the get is "stuff" nothing more. Our kids get so much more. We are writting our annual Christmas story right now and that is the ONLY thing that the younger two remember from last year. They don't remember the presents or the lights or all the other crap. My kids this year are each getting one main gift and a gift set each...DD is getting a sewing kit for example complete with fabric and sewing books. They will each get underwear, we get them a "need" item each year, no candy (we make candy so they don't get much as gifts as we have jars all over the place already that THEY made, which is what they prefer...more Christmas fun....which is more fun for a child do YOU thinK? A stocking full of cheap wax tasting candy from "santa" or their choice of a bunch of treats they made?) and a few books, a few art and crafty items, and three board games that they will all share but the only items that will actually go into their bedrooms are the main gift that they each got.
Wouldn't want a room full of crap they out grow in a year that they all have to swim in to get to the door...so full it is too overwhelming to clean on their own...junk they don't play with for more than a minute. The only people concerned about how many toys we purchase our kids are the toy company ceo's and those parents who enjoy supporting them who buy into all the advertising. My kids don't mind. In fact, one year we had a bunch of relatives give Christmas gifts for kids and they cried about there being too much stuff in their rooms. I went in and weeded it out before spring even came and DD, who I tought would be upset thanked me for it and never questioned about where it all went now we don't do the big Christmas parties with loads of presents.
Well, aren't we the self-aggrandizing one? Did it occur to you, during your pious laundry list of altruism and self-proclaimed goodness, that simply because we indulge in the completely harmless fable of Santa Claus doesn't mean we exclude philanthropy from our observance of the holiday? Seriously?
Do you honestly think just because we collectively enjoy the nice little story about Santa Claus we all dash out to the malls and buy a bunch of useless stuff, racking up household debt in the process? Just because we don't conform to your rarefied sensibilities, we're a bunch of slavering consumerists who load up our minivans in the mindless pursuit of material goods? Reading your argument, that's the sense I get.
Hate to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure that most of the people on this forum not only are pretty sane in their observances of Christmas, but probably dispense a great deal of kindness to others while doing so.
Now, at this point, I suppose I could indulge in a quid pro quo here and list all the ministries to the homeless, the poor, and the lonely that involve me, my family, and my church. But Saint Nicholas (You know, the entire model for Santa Claus and the true and lively foundation for gift giving during the holiday) gave away his gifts in secret, and certainly didn't post his generosity on a message board in expectation of a polite little golf clap.
And he certainly wouldn't have used his benevolent acts as some kind of weird point system so he could jump up and down and shout, "Look at me! Look at me! I better understand the true spirit of Christmas than any of you philistines!" Something you don't seem above doing.
You haven't had much contact with Jews, have you? As a habit and custom, I do not spell out the G word, common with many Jews. We find it disrespectful. Get your mind out of the gutter.
Let me get this straight. You were raised Jewish. Yet you were turned off to your own faith because you were finally told by your parents that a nice little fable among Christians wasn't real, and was only based on the life and works of a religious figure who was not even Jewish. As a result, you spurned your own faith. Now that makes all the sense in the world.
With all due respect, if you were/are Jewish, why are you even involved in a discussion of how Christians choose to celebrate a Christian holiday? I mean, I would never dream of weighing in on Purim or Yom Kippur. That would be highly presumptuous of me. What will you do for an encore? Maybe you should barge into a thread about Ramadan, using that as a golden opportunity to lecture Muslims about how proper eating habits should take precedence over their proper observance through fasting.
People like her can really spoil a holiday. Tell your children that Santa does not come to her house because she is on the naughty list and have them ask her what she did to get there. Best defense is a good offense. LOL Sorry, relatives can be a pain at holidays when you have to be around them.
Now the Christian attitude I was taught. People who are the most difficult require the most love. Maybe you can arrange a Santa visit to her children. Or better yet, buy a present for them and put Santa's name on it. Could it be she cannot afford to be Santa to them because of the divorce. Something is going on and she sounds like she needs help. Trying to reason, put your foot down, or fight with her will just make matters worse. Handle your problem from your end and walk on eggs around her.
We told our children that Santa only gives presents to children who believe in him. I think they still believe and they are thirty something and forty something. LOL
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We'll continue on the path to real fun and creativity...something you just harped on in length and do things that are different...and REAL.
