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laleiaToday on the way home from work a few of my co-workers and I were talking about Christmas, and I ended up explaining the very complicated political thing that gift-giving at Christmas can be in my family. Only I think I bungled the explanation because I made it sound more complicated than it actually is partly because 1.) it's semi-instinctive, 2.) part of is sounds really weird when verbalized but I think is not a problem when it's unspoken (for example, the thing where in immigrant families, if several siblings were brought over the U.S. because of the first sibling, a certain unspoken obligation may or may not exist), 3.) part of it is difficult for me to describe because it's second nature to native Chinese people but I have to work a little harder at getting it right (for example, how many times you must refuse a gift before you can accept it).
Anyways, one of the other English teachers (the one who's half-white, half-Korean), observed that it's a little weird that you would keep all the Chinese cultural rules when you're adopting an American holiday in Christmas, which was a comment I wasn't too crazy about so I tackled it, ish. I commented that I think part of immigration involves adapting your culture to mainstream culture and adapting mainstream culture to your own (only I was nowhere near articulate).
I followed up with the following anecdote under the cut, which led to a whole host of other thoughts, inner musings, and contemplations which I thought about the rest of the walk home.
You see, my Grandmother is Christian. But the rest of my family is agnostic.
I don't know how my Grandmother was converted, actually, as she probably wasn't Christian back in China. I think part of it is because the Christian Chinese community in my hometown is pretty close-knit, it gave her a very good support network to rely on. All I know is, she's pretty Christian. She has a copy of the Bible in Chinese, goes to church every Sunday (or at least she did -- health problems recently have probably reduced her churchgoing a bit), prays before she eats (although I don't think she does any more either).
I still recall one time when I told her that I was scared of the dark and she very confidently told me that if I believed strongly in God/Jesus, He would protect me from the dark.
But see, my Grandmother's Christianity is a very distinct brand of Christianity that she's adapted to her purposes -- and really, for the longest time I didn't realize that some of the things she believes aren't "normal" Christian beliefs.
For example, we are Chinese and we burn paper money for the dead on 清明, as well as on any other day when a family member has a disturbing dream about a dead ancestor. (I actually haven't gone in forever, because I am notorious in my family for not being able to wake up early in the morning, and they generally leave pretty early when they go.)
Every year, we would go to my Grandfather's grave, and we would all burn money, and my Grandmother would tell me that we were burning money for my Grandfather to use in heaven.
Then one day in elementary school, when we were writing stories about our lives and I was writing about this story, my teacher stared blankly at me when I told her this and said, "But people don't use money in Heaven."
And I think that's the first time I realized that the things I associated with Christianity weren't quite the same things that everybody else did.
(In retrospect, I'm not sure I approve of the elementary school teacher telling a student what is "right" and what is "wrong" about Heaven, but I suppose the Midwest is not exactly the capital of cultural competence, per se.)
I also remember that my grandmother used to lay out feasts on the table -- lay out fruits and tasty foods (unopened packages of Oreos, etc.), and tell me I was not allowed to eat them, that they were for God. She'd light incense, and leave it there. Then after a couple of hours, after God had eaten the spirit of the food, only then was I allowed to partake.
As I understand it, this is a ritual that she probably grew up with, that she adapted to Christianity, or that she adapted Christianity to incorporate. (She doesn't do this anymore, I don't think, by the way.) It took me a while before I consciously realized, hey, this isn't "normal" Christianity.
I shared these two stories with my co-workers, but I think they're both fascinating examples of how two different strains of belief can fuse, or can combine, or can blend. I think that they're cool examples of how my Grandmother adapted the traditions she grew up with and the religion that she converted to.
I don't know if that's what they took away from the story.
--
My Grandmother is Christian, but the rest of my family is agnostic. Perhaps atheist? I'm not really sure -- we don't ever really talk about religion. I know that my aunts took English lessons with some Jehovah's Witnesses -- I remember this because I read through their books, because at that age I was obsessed with reading (still am, I suppose), and I was really befuddled at the idea that God had a name.
I also know, however, that when we visit historical temples or whatever (which China has a LOT of), my parents always go through the motions -- bowing, kneeling, wishing, etc. My dad says that everyone in China (or just about) is a little bit Daoist (the religion, not the philosophy I think) and a little bit Buddhist. I remember one of the tour guides when we were in 云南 talking about how she was a little bit Daoist, a little bit Buddhist, and she also believed in their local village ... totem? local deity/god? Not really sure what the correct word for it is since she told me this in Chinese AND it was a vocabulary word I wasn't familiar with so I don't remember what it is in Chinese either.
My point is, I think that affects how the rest of my family views religion. And is part of the reason they're not Christian. It's what makes me wonder if my Grandmother didn't originally start going to church as a means to an end, where the end was to make Chinese friends.
But you know, I also suppose my Grandmother has more reason than most to believe in God. She started out life born and growing up in a village that still doesn't have running water (I've visited), 8 of her siblings died before the age of 10 because there was no hospital and no medicine, married off by matchmaker at age 16, both parents dead by age 18. She's not exactly had an easy life.
And now she lives in comfortable middle class, at an old folks' home (or assisted living center? one of those apartment complexes that has lots of old people living there and have emergency buttons in the bathrooms in case you fall and break your hip, NOT one of those places you put old people who can't take care of themselves), and most of her children are with her, and she is a U.S. citizen (and votes!), and her life has definitely improved.
So I think she has reason to believe in a benevolent deity watching over her life.
--
I went to church every Sunday until I hit middle school. (Middle school starts 2 hours earlier than elementary school; I valued my sleep on the weekends too much to wake up early for Sunday school.)
If you know me, this is a bit hard to believe as I'm pretty agnostic. (I tried my hand at being atheist, decided it wasn't for me.) But obviously for that period of my life, I was pretty Christian -- going to church wasn't a chore (aside from the waking up early part), it was something I enjoyed.
Part of that is because of all the other young kids running around. Part of that was because I liked the stories, even though they confused me. I never could (and still can't) keep Elijah and Elisha straight, and to say the story of Genesis confused me was an understatement. I was a confused child -- not only did I not understand how man and woman came before the animals when my teachers at school were telling me about dinosaurs, I also formed the mistaken impression that the "discovery" of America by Christopher Columbus was ALSO happening at the very beginning of it all, so clearly there should be American Indians along with the dinosaurs and Adam and Eve. I was a strange child.
So anyway, at one point in my life I believed everything they told me in Sunday School, and at this current point in my life I am very much in the opposite direction, whatever direction that may be.
--
Perhaps one of the reasons I shifted from Christianity to agnosticism is because I started to find Christianity off-putting. It's very strange, but large groups of Christian people taking part in rituals (for example, I played piano at a church once where for part of the service, they had to stand up and say "Hello Friend" to everyone and I found that uncomfortable, but that could also be because I'm super-introverted so having to speak to strangers period makes me uncomfortable) puts me ill at ease. It's not in a "your religion creeps me out" kind of way, but more in the sense that because all these people believe so strongly in this thing that I don't believe in, my very presence seems blasphemous, and I feel like my unbelief is out of place.
It's strange because I didn't feel this way when I attended my friend's bat mitzvah but perhaps if there had been more people there and there had been more audience participation required, I would have felt equally uncomfortable. I do know that I have the same ill-at-ease sensation at political rallies, even when they're politics that I agree with.
Back to my original point.
One of my last memories of church is when one of the older church-people pulled me aside and tried to have a conversation with me about God and Christianity and finding God. Perhaps that's when I realized that Christianity isn't for me. Perhaps that's when I started to find it off-putting.
I don't think attending Girls' State helped -- it's run by the Ladies' Auxiliary (aka the wives/mothers/daughters of veterans, I believe) and it's very politically conservative and pretty religious. There's a lot of flag etiquette stuff there, and every day we had a daily prayer/moment of silence type deal.
Group prayers in particular make me uncomfortable because I don't like to bow my head along with everyone else -- I feel that because I don't believe in it, doing so would be a mockery and would be disrespectful to people who did believe in the power of prayer. So instead I awkwardly wait for everyone to "Amen."
--
Given that, it's a bit strange that I'm obsessed with Christmas, or at least I used to be.
My family has always celebrated Christmas, the gift-giving holiday. Santa Claus featured in part of it, but not always. Jesus Christ was sometimes a part of it, but not often.
But there was a period of my life when I was obsessed with Christmas. It started I think when different people gave me Christmas books -- books filled with Christmas recipes, Christmas carols, and lots of Christmas stories -- stories about the true meaning of Christmas, with special emphasis on the Christ part of Christmas.
I read those books cover to cover many times (probably because I liked to read, partly because they were very feel-good fuzzy stories).
I'm not obsessed with Christmas any more -- unlike a lot of my friends and co-workers, the prospect of spending Christmas alone in Korea doesn't really faze me. Maybe it should -- this is going to be my first Christmas away from family, I'm going to be in a country where most people don't care about or celebrate the holiday. But I'm not really the homesick sort (I love my family, but I don't really viscerally miss them the same way most people seem to miss their families), and also I think that because nobody here cares so much about Christmas, it actually in a strange way will make it easier for me to not care, or to forget about the holiday.
Honestly, the prospect of spending Chinese New Year alone frightens me more -- because presumably everyone here will be with their family, and very obviously making a holiday of it, and even though I've had plenty of Chinese New Years without family (every year in college), it's never been without family when I'm surrounded by people who so obviously celebrate it.
So no, I'm not obsessed with Christmas anymore, though I am still obsessed with Christmas carols -- the religious as well as the secular ones. I invented a game called the "Christmas Carol Game" which all my close friends and family hate -- it's where we take turns singing Christmas carols, and the first person who can't think of any more carols loses.
I always win this game.
--
Once, in middle school, our middle school "newspaper" (more like a newsletter) had an article asking why so many non-Christians felt it necessary to celebrate Christmas. The article was probably intended to encourage diversity in winter-solstice-type-holidays, but the tone of the article was a but indignant, like the person was saying that people were using her holiday in their own ways and she didn't like it.
I did not have a high opinion of that article -- coming from a non-Christian family myself, especially an immigrant family who'd adopted Christmas as sort of an "American" holiday, I had a lot of things to say. I could argue that Christmas was a commercialized holiday, that it had been taken over by all the people selling stuff anyway, that it was no longer just about the birth of Jesus Christ (who apparently wasn't even born around then?), that when people talk about the "meaning" of Christmas they tend to mean "giving" or "family" and not "Christianity."
I was pretty indignant myself that she was claiming Christmas was something that belonged to her and that nobody else could take it, when clearly everything from school schedules to work schedules to store schedules were all arranged around Christmas.
--
Despite all this indignation and this obsession with Christmas, the ... I suppose you could call it "Christmas hegemony"? It still bothers me.
Partly this is because I grew up with a lot of Jewish friends, and probably partly this is because I just have that sort of nature, but it really annoys me that there is so much focus on Christmas and only lip service is ever paid to Hanukkah -- I don't know what the Jewish population in the U.S. is, but maybe part of the reason I feel this way is because there was what felt like a sizable Jewish population at my school, and more than half my close friends were Jewish -- and maybe 75% of my larger circle of friends were Jewish, though they ranged in terms of how religious they were. So I didn't understand why there weren't more Hanukkah decoration. I don't know.
Like, it annoys me that Rachel in Glee, despite lampshading that she doesn't normally singing Christmas carols one time, spends most of the episode obsessed with Christmas. I mean, given that she told Finn she wants to raise her kids Jewish, and how much she cares about it, I really don't see her the type to just up and do Christmas to that extent. I mean, I had friends who wanted to boycott Choir voice tests (or whatever they're called) because they didn't like singing Latin hymns with so much Christian stuff in it. Rachel always struck me as that kind of student. It also annoyed me that Ross and Monica were Jewish but to my knowledge it was only ever mentioned in one episode with the Armadillo.
--
Anyways, one of the other English teachers (the one who's half-white, half-Korean), observed that it's a little weird that you would keep all the Chinese cultural rules when you're adopting an American holiday in Christmas, which was a comment I wasn't too crazy about so I tackled it, ish. I commented that I think part of immigration involves adapting your culture to mainstream culture and adapting mainstream culture to your own (only I was nowhere near articulate).
I followed up with the following anecdote under the cut, which led to a whole host of other thoughts, inner musings, and contemplations which I thought about the rest of the walk home.
You see, my Grandmother is Christian. But the rest of my family is agnostic.
I don't know how my Grandmother was converted, actually, as she probably wasn't Christian back in China. I think part of it is because the Christian Chinese community in my hometown is pretty close-knit, it gave her a very good support network to rely on. All I know is, she's pretty Christian. She has a copy of the Bible in Chinese, goes to church every Sunday (or at least she did -- health problems recently have probably reduced her churchgoing a bit), prays before she eats (although I don't think she does any more either).
I still recall one time when I told her that I was scared of the dark and she very confidently told me that if I believed strongly in God/Jesus, He would protect me from the dark.
But see, my Grandmother's Christianity is a very distinct brand of Christianity that she's adapted to her purposes -- and really, for the longest time I didn't realize that some of the things she believes aren't "normal" Christian beliefs.
For example, we are Chinese and we burn paper money for the dead on 清明, as well as on any other day when a family member has a disturbing dream about a dead ancestor. (I actually haven't gone in forever, because I am notorious in my family for not being able to wake up early in the morning, and they generally leave pretty early when they go.)
Every year, we would go to my Grandfather's grave, and we would all burn money, and my Grandmother would tell me that we were burning money for my Grandfather to use in heaven.
Then one day in elementary school, when we were writing stories about our lives and I was writing about this story, my teacher stared blankly at me when I told her this and said, "But people don't use money in Heaven."
And I think that's the first time I realized that the things I associated with Christianity weren't quite the same things that everybody else did.
(In retrospect, I'm not sure I approve of the elementary school teacher telling a student what is "right" and what is "wrong" about Heaven, but I suppose the Midwest is not exactly the capital of cultural competence, per se.)
I also remember that my grandmother used to lay out feasts on the table -- lay out fruits and tasty foods (unopened packages of Oreos, etc.), and tell me I was not allowed to eat them, that they were for God. She'd light incense, and leave it there. Then after a couple of hours, after God had eaten the spirit of the food, only then was I allowed to partake.
As I understand it, this is a ritual that she probably grew up with, that she adapted to Christianity, or that she adapted Christianity to incorporate. (She doesn't do this anymore, I don't think, by the way.) It took me a while before I consciously realized, hey, this isn't "normal" Christianity.
I shared these two stories with my co-workers, but I think they're both fascinating examples of how two different strains of belief can fuse, or can combine, or can blend. I think that they're cool examples of how my Grandmother adapted the traditions she grew up with and the religion that she converted to.
I don't know if that's what they took away from the story.
--
My Grandmother is Christian, but the rest of my family is agnostic. Perhaps atheist? I'm not really sure -- we don't ever really talk about religion. I know that my aunts took English lessons with some Jehovah's Witnesses -- I remember this because I read through their books, because at that age I was obsessed with reading (still am, I suppose), and I was really befuddled at the idea that God had a name.
I also know, however, that when we visit historical temples or whatever (which China has a LOT of), my parents always go through the motions -- bowing, kneeling, wishing, etc. My dad says that everyone in China (or just about) is a little bit Daoist (the religion, not the philosophy I think) and a little bit Buddhist. I remember one of the tour guides when we were in 云南 talking about how she was a little bit Daoist, a little bit Buddhist, and she also believed in their local village ... totem? local deity/god? Not really sure what the correct word for it is since she told me this in Chinese AND it was a vocabulary word I wasn't familiar with so I don't remember what it is in Chinese either.
My point is, I think that affects how the rest of my family views religion. And is part of the reason they're not Christian. It's what makes me wonder if my Grandmother didn't originally start going to church as a means to an end, where the end was to make Chinese friends.
But you know, I also suppose my Grandmother has more reason than most to believe in God. She started out life born and growing up in a village that still doesn't have running water (I've visited), 8 of her siblings died before the age of 10 because there was no hospital and no medicine, married off by matchmaker at age 16, both parents dead by age 18. She's not exactly had an easy life.
And now she lives in comfortable middle class, at an old folks' home (or assisted living center? one of those apartment complexes that has lots of old people living there and have emergency buttons in the bathrooms in case you fall and break your hip, NOT one of those places you put old people who can't take care of themselves), and most of her children are with her, and she is a U.S. citizen (and votes!), and her life has definitely improved.
So I think she has reason to believe in a benevolent deity watching over her life.
--
I went to church every Sunday until I hit middle school. (Middle school starts 2 hours earlier than elementary school; I valued my sleep on the weekends too much to wake up early for Sunday school.)
If you know me, this is a bit hard to believe as I'm pretty agnostic. (I tried my hand at being atheist, decided it wasn't for me.) But obviously for that period of my life, I was pretty Christian -- going to church wasn't a chore (aside from the waking up early part), it was something I enjoyed.
Part of that is because of all the other young kids running around. Part of that was because I liked the stories, even though they confused me. I never could (and still can't) keep Elijah and Elisha straight, and to say the story of Genesis confused me was an understatement. I was a confused child -- not only did I not understand how man and woman came before the animals when my teachers at school were telling me about dinosaurs, I also formed the mistaken impression that the "discovery" of America by Christopher Columbus was ALSO happening at the very beginning of it all, so clearly there should be American Indians along with the dinosaurs and Adam and Eve. I was a strange child.
So anyway, at one point in my life I believed everything they told me in Sunday School, and at this current point in my life I am very much in the opposite direction, whatever direction that may be.
--
Perhaps one of the reasons I shifted from Christianity to agnosticism is because I started to find Christianity off-putting. It's very strange, but large groups of Christian people taking part in rituals (for example, I played piano at a church once where for part of the service, they had to stand up and say "Hello Friend" to everyone and I found that uncomfortable, but that could also be because I'm super-introverted so having to speak to strangers period makes me uncomfortable) puts me ill at ease. It's not in a "your religion creeps me out" kind of way, but more in the sense that because all these people believe so strongly in this thing that I don't believe in, my very presence seems blasphemous, and I feel like my unbelief is out of place.
It's strange because I didn't feel this way when I attended my friend's bat mitzvah but perhaps if there had been more people there and there had been more audience participation required, I would have felt equally uncomfortable. I do know that I have the same ill-at-ease sensation at political rallies, even when they're politics that I agree with.
Back to my original point.
One of my last memories of church is when one of the older church-people pulled me aside and tried to have a conversation with me about God and Christianity and finding God. Perhaps that's when I realized that Christianity isn't for me. Perhaps that's when I started to find it off-putting.
I don't think attending Girls' State helped -- it's run by the Ladies' Auxiliary (aka the wives/mothers/daughters of veterans, I believe) and it's very politically conservative and pretty religious. There's a lot of flag etiquette stuff there, and every day we had a daily prayer/moment of silence type deal.
Group prayers in particular make me uncomfortable because I don't like to bow my head along with everyone else -- I feel that because I don't believe in it, doing so would be a mockery and would be disrespectful to people who did believe in the power of prayer. So instead I awkwardly wait for everyone to "Amen."
--
Given that, it's a bit strange that I'm obsessed with Christmas, or at least I used to be.
My family has always celebrated Christmas, the gift-giving holiday. Santa Claus featured in part of it, but not always. Jesus Christ was sometimes a part of it, but not often.
But there was a period of my life when I was obsessed with Christmas. It started I think when different people gave me Christmas books -- books filled with Christmas recipes, Christmas carols, and lots of Christmas stories -- stories about the true meaning of Christmas, with special emphasis on the Christ part of Christmas.
I read those books cover to cover many times (probably because I liked to read, partly because they were very feel-good fuzzy stories).
I'm not obsessed with Christmas any more -- unlike a lot of my friends and co-workers, the prospect of spending Christmas alone in Korea doesn't really faze me. Maybe it should -- this is going to be my first Christmas away from family, I'm going to be in a country where most people don't care about or celebrate the holiday. But I'm not really the homesick sort (I love my family, but I don't really viscerally miss them the same way most people seem to miss their families), and also I think that because nobody here cares so much about Christmas, it actually in a strange way will make it easier for me to not care, or to forget about the holiday.
Honestly, the prospect of spending Chinese New Year alone frightens me more -- because presumably everyone here will be with their family, and very obviously making a holiday of it, and even though I've had plenty of Chinese New Years without family (every year in college), it's never been without family when I'm surrounded by people who so obviously celebrate it.
So no, I'm not obsessed with Christmas anymore, though I am still obsessed with Christmas carols -- the religious as well as the secular ones. I invented a game called the "Christmas Carol Game" which all my close friends and family hate -- it's where we take turns singing Christmas carols, and the first person who can't think of any more carols loses.
I always win this game.
--
Once, in middle school, our middle school "newspaper" (more like a newsletter) had an article asking why so many non-Christians felt it necessary to celebrate Christmas. The article was probably intended to encourage diversity in winter-solstice-type-holidays, but the tone of the article was a but indignant, like the person was saying that people were using her holiday in their own ways and she didn't like it.
I did not have a high opinion of that article -- coming from a non-Christian family myself, especially an immigrant family who'd adopted Christmas as sort of an "American" holiday, I had a lot of things to say. I could argue that Christmas was a commercialized holiday, that it had been taken over by all the people selling stuff anyway, that it was no longer just about the birth of Jesus Christ (who apparently wasn't even born around then?), that when people talk about the "meaning" of Christmas they tend to mean "giving" or "family" and not "Christianity."
I was pretty indignant myself that she was claiming Christmas was something that belonged to her and that nobody else could take it, when clearly everything from school schedules to work schedules to store schedules were all arranged around Christmas.
--
Despite all this indignation and this obsession with Christmas, the ... I suppose you could call it "Christmas hegemony"? It still bothers me.
Partly this is because I grew up with a lot of Jewish friends, and probably partly this is because I just have that sort of nature, but it really annoys me that there is so much focus on Christmas and only lip service is ever paid to Hanukkah -- I don't know what the Jewish population in the U.S. is, but maybe part of the reason I feel this way is because there was what felt like a sizable Jewish population at my school, and more than half my close friends were Jewish -- and maybe 75% of my larger circle of friends were Jewish, though they ranged in terms of how religious they were. So I didn't understand why there weren't more Hanukkah decoration. I don't know.
Like, it annoys me that Rachel in Glee, despite lampshading that she doesn't normally singing Christmas carols one time, spends most of the episode obsessed with Christmas. I mean, given that she told Finn she wants to raise her kids Jewish, and how much she cares about it, I really don't see her the type to just up and do Christmas to that extent. I mean, I had friends who wanted to boycott Choir voice tests (or whatever they're called) because they didn't like singing Latin hymns with so much Christian stuff in it. Rachel always struck me as that kind of student. It also annoyed me that Ross and Monica were Jewish but to my knowledge it was only ever mentioned in one episode with the Armadillo.
--
