Celebrating Holidays

Every Christmas is a little different with and for J. The year she was born, we took her to the mall to get the de rigueur picture with Santa and she bawled the whole time. That picture has a scared J sitting on the lap of a disgruntled Santa. A lot has changed since then. When she was too young to notice the holiday season, Christmas meant very little to her.

Over the last couple of years, J has been agitating to have some kind of celebration during the holiday season. Having celebrated Diwali a few months prior is not quite cutting it. She wants to celebrate something along with everyone else - it does not even have to be Christmas. Even the tree and presents are optional as far as J is concerned. The only thing that matters is the timing of the celebration.

J feels like when she has her festivals no one shares in with her unlike Christmas which almost everyone is a part of. To her being American and celebrating a festival of some kind over the winter holidays has turned synonymous. We've talked about this a bit and it turns out that the peer pressure is mounting as she grows older. Everyone in class will be bursting at the seams with elaborate accounts of what they did over the holidays. J does not want to be the one left out with nothing to say for herself. This time of year, lack of conformity is far more painful than it is at any other time - it has her feeling anxious. To J's credit, she is very much her own person almost all the time and does not have any pressing need to be like anyone else. But the holiday season is more than even she seems to have capacity for.

Last evening, I sat her down and explained to her the importance of being true to oneself - indeed knowing who that was and what that person was all about. I told her about my non-Hindu friends in India who felt left out of the big Hindu festivals and celebrated their holidays in relative isolation - an experience that parallels her own in America. I have not been in their shoes and don't know what it feels like - but J does and I realize it is not easy at all.

I told her, what I have learned from observing those friends is that the more confident they were about their identity, the better they have fared in their adult lives. It takes tremendous strength of character to be an ethnic and religious minority and still negotiate successfully in the social and cultural context. Yet, those who do it successfully are the ones who thrive best.

I explained to J the importance of feeling confident despite being different and this is not just about celebrating a holiday (or not). If you take the path of least resistance and fit in, you will find yourself needing to make many more compromises all your life to continue to fit in - increasingly you will lose your sense of self. A time will come when you would no longer know who you are because you have turned yourself into what most people expect you to be.

Next year when you go back to school, I said to her,  it would be much more challenging to tell your friends "I don't have a holiday to celebrate in December but I had a great time doing other fun stuff over the winter break" and take interest in what they share about their holidays. The easier thing would be to put up a Christmas tree and have Santa bring in the presents. That would give you exactly the same things to talk about as the other kids.

J went to sleep with what I hope was food for thought. Time will tell if what I told her helped or hurt her. The one thing I do know, I was being true to myself and consistent with what I believe in. The hope is, that will be of value to J and help her find direction.