20181125.0430

With Thanksgiving past in the United States, attention turns towards the ostensible Christmas holiday, and it does so once again in the form of hypercommercialization and the reinforcement of putative traditions that have only grown up within the last generation and have altered their forms even within so short a time, although they tend to be held up as unaltered and inviolable. And I suppose it has become something of a tradition, too, that I complain about such things in this webspace; my curmudgeonly self has written about such vexations any number of times, although not necessarily on a regular schedule, such that I am not about to try to plumb my archives (2,052 posts prior to this one, if it can be believed, including one on nearly every day of the year since 2014) to find them all.
It will suffice to say that I am not overly fond of the way the United States marks such occasions--or it would were I not certain that some who will read this will think that I am not bound to honor such customs. When I try not to do so, I am rebuked, and by many. Both at home and away from it, I get to hear people tell me that I should do things a certain way, that I am expected to do them certain ways, despite having no desire to do so--and, indeed, active desires not to do so. And perhaps I grouse about others doing so, and I might deserve some castigation for that, but it chafes to be told on the one hand that all I need to do is not and on the other that I had damned well better. But I have long known that I am in abundant company as a hypocrite.
In the end, I usually win such arguments as happen. All I need to do so is nothing; no act secures my victory, but simply not doing as I am exhorted to do by those who repeat across years that I do not believe what I say even as I have said it for just as long and have tried to believe but cannot get myself to do so. I have tried to profess the belief, thinking that I can "fake it 'till I make it," but I wearied of the lie soon enough, and I have not been able to maintain it even in places where social expectations make it easier to go through the motions of belief than not to do so. And even if I did believe, knowing what I know about how things have come to be, I do not think I could reconcile myself to the way things are done; I know they are done as they are, and I know that nothing I am likely to be able to do will change how they are done, but that does not mean that I am pleased with the state of affairs or that I have to, by my participation, actively encourage its continuance. And I have no intention, this year as in years past, of doing so.