As Randi’s post reminded me, I’ve already missed the opportunity to celebrate some Holidays with Sweet Pea. In making the conversion from a more mainstream Christian faith to UU-ism, one of the more fun aspects I was excited about was the new holiday possibilities. There is actually only one purely UU holiday, “Chalica” and it’s kind of a joke (I honestly think its name comes from an Adam Sandler SNL song) and kind of a way for families to commemorate their UU-ness and teach their children (and the parents) about the 7 principles. But, the wonderful thing about UU’s is that they also celebrate other faiths' holidays. (Come December, our altar has the UU chalice candle, the advent wreath with its candles and a Menorah with all its candles, that’s a lot of candles and I love it).
Meanwhile, I’m more excited about Halloween than I have been in YEARS, possibly ever. Just because I am excited about the costumes I have for Sweet Pea. I’m very much aware that this year, and possibly next year, may be the only time I get to select his costume for him... so I selected three--and got myself a coordinating costume for one. We’re essentially in it for the pictures. I won’t be taking him Trick-or-Treating or anything like that.
But, I was mentioning it to a co-worker and he mentioned that he and his wife had made the decision as a family NOT to celebrate Halloween for religious reasons. And that made me pause. Not because I have qualms about celebrating Halloween, I don’t. But about whether I’ve seriously thought about the holidays Sweet Pea and I will celebrate. As UUs we have a lot of choices. I’m inclined to go with what my extended family does and what I know--so the major Christian stuff we’ll do largely as I did as a kid--Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny included.
But, I also realize that now is the time for me to work out the kinks in how we celebrate other holidays, if we celebrate other holidays and to make decisions about what I really want to do for Christmas and Easter. I need to make a choice about whether I want Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah, Passover and even Chalica to become things I mark in some way every year- or if these will just be things to which we are tourists when it’s convenient.
I want the holidays we do celebrate to be meaningful and I want to be respectful of their source traditions. I fear that if I only adopt the holidays I grew up with that it isn’t embracing all that UU-ism has to offer. But, if I try to embrace all the holidays we might get a bit over-whelmed. A part of me would like to do something different every year- but then where would Sweet Pea get his sense of tradition in that? I want him to know each year that we will mark the holidays and that tradition is important. I just need to select the traditions that are right for us and I suspect that will mean the ones that don’t make me feel like I’m appropriating someone else’s culture for my own religious tourism.
The good news is that I don’t have to decide today and I can probably do a blend of what works for us in any given year with the “big” holidays I’m accustomed to, I just have to get comfortable with the message that sends to Sweet Pea--that the Christian holidays are ones we celebrate every year and the other are ones we celebrate when convenient. Right now, that message isn’t sitting too comfortably with me, so I have some soul-searching to do.