My Love Hate Relationship With Pinterest
One thing I've struggled with as a practicing Satanist mother is how to still incorporate holidays and traditions that my children can enjoy and have fond memories of without wading through volumes of Christian or Pagan based rhetoric - There's nothing worse than finding an adorable bunny garden statue with "I Love Jesus" or "Blessed Be" plastered on it's butt! But hey that's what spray paint is for right?
Anyway, I think it's important for kids to be able to enjoy holidays, (life is hard enough, let them enjoy a damn chocolate rabbit once in awhile), and I want them to still be able to have memories and traditions with our extended families who don't share my views on religion. A huge part of this is compromise and setting boundaries. Some hard No's on my end: no church, no Jesus/God nonsense when it comes to gifts/Easter baskets etc, and the expectation that if you tell my kid about something that isn't real like the tooth fairy, or that magic is real, I'm going to correct you (much to some co-parent's annoyance). Yes I'm also in the divorced mom's club but that's a blog for another day.
This didn't happen overnight. In fact I can tell you with my first son I did the whole Santa and Reindeer, cookies out on Christmas Eve, the whole thing! Why? Because I didn't know anything else. This is what I grew up with, this is what every other parent I knew did, and I wanted to give my kids a "normal childhood." Psst...there's no such thing. As I was Pagan for many years the way I got around this was swapping out Christian holidays for Pagan ones; ya know, where Christianity got most of their holidays from in the first place. We didn't have Easter, we had Ostara. We only did Christmas Day for my parents but our family opened gifts and had a big dinner on Yule. In my mind this was enough of a difference in speech to ignore that we really hadn't changed anything but a few names of things and some specific dates. And it was fine...until November 2016.
November 19th 2016: The date of my "Unbatism" from Paganism. Again, that's a blog for another day, but in regard to this blog it was the date a lot of things in my life changed because I did finally drop the facade of all these bullshit holidays. Christmas season rolled around (as it never fails to regardless if you're financially ready for it or not) and it was not only my first time without the crutch of Yule to lean on, it was the first holiday with my now partner, who also loathes commercial Christmas as much as I do. We have three kids between us though, and we don't enforce our disdain for all things red and green and sparkly during December, so we wanted a holiday that felt like "us."
What did we come up with you ask? A Hellraiser Tree of course.
The kids have a small green one they decorate themselves where they put all their school-made decorations each year. And the what we do part of the holiday for our family is still evolving. This year we'll throw up the trees and what not, but instead of the wake up and open gifts we're gonna spend a few days at a theme park riding roller coasters!
The constant evolution though, that's a huge part of it. If you're finding yourself filling with anxiety over how you're going to get through Easter without dragging your little hell-spawned offspring to some church group or local coven's "spring egg hunt" in that park that never has enough fucking parking, or you're tired of cul-de-sac "trunk-or-treats" hosted by the local LDS ward every October, but you also have some sketchy neighbors and don't necessarily want them giving your kids candy, I suggest you make a list of things you DO want to do. And you don't have to stick with something that doesn't work! You made tamales instead of turkey this year for Thanksgiving and hated it? Firstly, what's wrong with you? Tamales are delicious! Secondly, okay try something else next year. Do a ham, fuck make it family build your own mega salad night! Do whatever YOU WANT TO DO! Not what's "expected of you." If you can't come up with anything off the top of your head, ask yourself what about this holiday do you like? And go from there.
Annnd that's where the time-sucking monster known as Pinterest comes into all of this.
So I am a HUGE fan of anything crafty! Like I would fucking wear glitter as skin if I could! So it's not a task I dislike but rather one I dread because I know exactly whats going to happen: I'm going to spend several hours on the site scrolling and searching and pinning everything that looks remotely interesting and maybe even run to the store and grab a bunch of supplies! Then I'll either a) never bother to look at it again, or b) try the first thing, it comes out horrendous and I get discouraged. Either way it ends up in a box of wasted moneys worth of supplies in my closet that I will inevitably give away to someone at some point. You'd probably think after a few times of that I'd learn my lesson right? No. No I have not. But donation groups sure love me!
But I am trying. Now I pin something and refuse to look at it for a couple days, weeks even... if I come back to it later and still have interest then I'll look at potentially making it. My hatred comes in with for as many cute ideas there are for many things, when it comes to certain holidays there isn't much to offer. It seems the bulk of Pinterest ideas come from the same stay at home Jesus moms that put out the mom blogs. No Karen, I do not have the time, nor the desire to turn the underside of cardboard egg cartons into a nativity scene with my kids, and my partner has pretty much sworn to step in and end these shenanigans if I bring a single mason jar into the house!
It wasn't until this last month that I finally got the idea to stop searching for holiday related pins. If I search Easter I'm going to get the same bullshit I always get - boring way-to-little kid bunnies and chicks crafts, or bible versus and "He is Risen" crap. What I've done in the past is scroll around until I find a unique idea on egg dying (because we all enjoy that part) and then build my own thing around that. For example one year I found DIY Harry Potter eggs... and while I was unwilling to put myself through the intense level of time consumption to make those particular eggs, I did take the idea and ran with it. We did a Pottermore party in the park and the kids hunted "dragon eggs." The kids got to dress up and we set up a mock quidditch game, did face painting and took pictures, and invited a bunch of people. It was a blast! Way better than any previous boring old Easter my kids have had! We made it special, we made it "us" and the kids still talk about it. This year with Unicorns being such a huge fad we're going to do a Unicorns vs Dragons party! I'll post pics of that event when it happens!
Coming back to that original search idea: sometimes that isn't enough. Sometimes you have to be more specific. Example with this year's party; I don't want it to just be a re-skinned version of the Pottermore and I always was a little annoyed we didn't do anything traditionally different from the egg hunt routine...so this year I want to incorporate something real-life into our holiday. I've been trying to get the kids to grasp the importance of environmentalism lately so I searched for that. We're going to do this really adorable but also environmentally beneficial planting activity (see pic to left) and there's going to be a "cost" to participate in the egg hunt: 3-5 pieces of trash they pick up from whatever park we go to. It'll either be a great learning opportunity that the kids can mentally associate with a good time - or they'll think I'm insane and trying to sneak in extra chores. It's too early to tell so I'll let you know how that works out. Please feel free to ask questions or share your own ideas/suggestions in the comments section below!
Anyway, I think it's important for kids to be able to enjoy holidays, (life is hard enough, let them enjoy a damn chocolate rabbit once in awhile), and I want them to still be able to have memories and traditions with our extended families who don't share my views on religion. A huge part of this is compromise and setting boundaries. Some hard No's on my end: no church, no Jesus/God nonsense when it comes to gifts/Easter baskets etc, and the expectation that if you tell my kid about something that isn't real like the tooth fairy, or that magic is real, I'm going to correct you (much to some co-parent's annoyance). Yes I'm also in the divorced mom's club but that's a blog for another day.
This didn't happen overnight. In fact I can tell you with my first son I did the whole Santa and Reindeer, cookies out on Christmas Eve, the whole thing! Why? Because I didn't know anything else. This is what I grew up with, this is what every other parent I knew did, and I wanted to give my kids a "normal childhood." Psst...there's no such thing. As I was Pagan for many years the way I got around this was swapping out Christian holidays for Pagan ones; ya know, where Christianity got most of their holidays from in the first place. We didn't have Easter, we had Ostara. We only did Christmas Day for my parents but our family opened gifts and had a big dinner on Yule. In my mind this was enough of a difference in speech to ignore that we really hadn't changed anything but a few names of things and some specific dates. And it was fine...until November 2016.
November 19th 2016: The date of my "Unbatism" from Paganism. Again, that's a blog for another day, but in regard to this blog it was the date a lot of things in my life changed because I did finally drop the facade of all these bullshit holidays. Christmas season rolled around (as it never fails to regardless if you're financially ready for it or not) and it was not only my first time without the crutch of Yule to lean on, it was the first holiday with my now partner, who also loathes commercial Christmas as much as I do. We have three kids between us though, and we don't enforce our disdain for all things red and green and sparkly during December, so we wanted a holiday that felt like "us."
What did we come up with you ask? A Hellraiser Tree of course.
The kids have a small green one they decorate themselves where they put all their school-made decorations each year. And the what we do part of the holiday for our family is still evolving. This year we'll throw up the trees and what not, but instead of the wake up and open gifts we're gonna spend a few days at a theme park riding roller coasters!
The constant evolution though, that's a huge part of it. If you're finding yourself filling with anxiety over how you're going to get through Easter without dragging your little hell-spawned offspring to some church group or local coven's "spring egg hunt" in that park that never has enough fucking parking, or you're tired of cul-de-sac "trunk-or-treats" hosted by the local LDS ward every October, but you also have some sketchy neighbors and don't necessarily want them giving your kids candy, I suggest you make a list of things you DO want to do. And you don't have to stick with something that doesn't work! You made tamales instead of turkey this year for Thanksgiving and hated it? Firstly, what's wrong with you? Tamales are delicious! Secondly, okay try something else next year. Do a ham, fuck make it family build your own mega salad night! Do whatever YOU WANT TO DO! Not what's "expected of you." If you can't come up with anything off the top of your head, ask yourself what about this holiday do you like? And go from there.
Annnd that's where the time-sucking monster known as Pinterest comes into all of this.
So I am a HUGE fan of anything crafty! Like I would fucking wear glitter as skin if I could! So it's not a task I dislike but rather one I dread because I know exactly whats going to happen: I'm going to spend several hours on the site scrolling and searching and pinning everything that looks remotely interesting and maybe even run to the store and grab a bunch of supplies! Then I'll either a) never bother to look at it again, or b) try the first thing, it comes out horrendous and I get discouraged. Either way it ends up in a box of wasted moneys worth of supplies in my closet that I will inevitably give away to someone at some point. You'd probably think after a few times of that I'd learn my lesson right? No. No I have not. But donation groups sure love me!
But I am trying. Now I pin something and refuse to look at it for a couple days, weeks even... if I come back to it later and still have interest then I'll look at potentially making it. My hatred comes in with for as many cute ideas there are for many things, when it comes to certain holidays there isn't much to offer. It seems the bulk of Pinterest ideas come from the same stay at home Jesus moms that put out the mom blogs. No Karen, I do not have the time, nor the desire to turn the underside of cardboard egg cartons into a nativity scene with my kids, and my partner has pretty much sworn to step in and end these shenanigans if I bring a single mason jar into the house!
It wasn't until this last month that I finally got the idea to stop searching for holiday related pins. If I search Easter I'm going to get the same bullshit I always get - boring way-to-little kid bunnies and chicks crafts, or bible versus and "He is Risen" crap. What I've done in the past is scroll around until I find a unique idea on egg dying (because we all enjoy that part) and then build my own thing around that. For example one year I found DIY Harry Potter eggs... and while I was unwilling to put myself through the intense level of time consumption to make those particular eggs, I did take the idea and ran with it. We did a Pottermore party in the park and the kids hunted "dragon eggs." The kids got to dress up and we set up a mock quidditch game, did face painting and took pictures, and invited a bunch of people. It was a blast! Way better than any previous boring old Easter my kids have had! We made it special, we made it "us" and the kids still talk about it. This year with Unicorns being such a huge fad we're going to do a Unicorns vs Dragons party! I'll post pics of that event when it happens!
Comments
Post a Comment