Christmas – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

Small Business Saturday: Feminist Gift Guide for the Holidays by Angela Yarber

Wondering what to give the revolutionaries in your life for the holidays? Want to support feminist small businesses as you shop? Need some creative ideas with powerful feminist history and theory embedded in each purchase? Would it help if the gifts fused together feminism and religion? The Holy Women Icons Project, Lagusta Luscious, and Bloodroot Feminist Vegetarian Restaurant has plenty of ways for you to celebrate the holidays with empowering gifts to please feminist in your life.

The feminist non-profit Holy Women Icons Project seeks to empower marginalized women by telling the stories of revolutionary holy women through art, writing, and special events. For over five years, a different holy woman has been featured each month on Feminism and Religion; we became an official non-profit earlier this year; and we have some beautiful, creative, and empowering offerings suitable for the holidays.

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Holy Women Icons Bearing the Light of Advent by Angela Yarber

There’s nothing like the holiday season to bring out everyone’s least feminist self. In one of the courses that I teach—Gender, Food, and the Body in Popular Culture—students are assigned to examine gender roles throughout the holiday season through the lens intersectional ecofeminism. Inevitably, almost every student returns from holiday break with the same assessment: mom, grandma, and a kitchen full of women prepare, cook, and clean every family meal; women do the holiday shopping; men in the family watch sports. Of course, this isn’t true of everyone. There are plenty of families who subvert and dismantle stereotypical gender roles, but the holidays seem to heighten these roles, undergirding them with some kind of nostalgic and theological weight that claims that if mama doesn’t arduously prepare her famed casserole, the season will be ruined. Otherwise committed feminists find themselves singing carols filled with sexist language and participating in holiday rituals that they would critique any other time of the year. Subversion be damned because we want our traditional family holiday!

I’ve long struggled with creative ways to subversively approach the holidays as a queer clergywoman, parent, artist, and author. People like their nostalgic and heart-warming traditions, even when they sometimes smack of patriarchy, racism, and heteronormativity. I’ve confronted this as a preacher and worship planner, often to raised eyebrows or angry phone calls from congregants who just want to sing the carols without the preacher changing the words, or dismissing the notion of a virgin birth, or hanging enormous paintings of pregnant women all over the sanctuary.

Continue reading “Holy Women Icons Bearing the Light of Advent by Angela Yarber”

The Reindeer Goddess by Judith Shaw

Judith Shaw photo Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere is the day of the least daylight and the longest night. Long before Christmas our Northern European ancestors celebrated the Winter Solstice, the moment that heralds the return of the sun and with it the promise of new life in spring. Without the comforts offered by modern technology, this time of year must have raised fears in the hearts of our ancestors; fear that the sun would not return to its summer glory, fear that there would not be enough food for the winter, fears that surface most easily in the dark. A celebration of light would have been most welcome and needed.

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Painting Mary(s), Queering Mary(s) by Angela Yarber

It’s no secret that the holidays are often a difficult time for queer people. Disproportionately estranged from family, we often must create our own family. While these chosen families can be tremendously life-giving, it’s tough not to long for our families of origin during Christmas time. Many still in relationship with family are forced to retreat to the closet for fear of safety or exclusion this season.

Queer folk who have affirming families of origin still experience the twang of heteronormativity in holiday commercials, family events, and church services throughout December. There’s a reason why many refer to it as “Blue Christmas,” because, well, the holidays can leave us feeling pretty blue when our identities are invalidated, excluded, questioned, or marginalized.

In every nativity scene, we see images of a so-called “holy family” that likely doesn’t look very much like the family’s most queer folk create: a straight, cisgender couple, and a baby. This family is lauded by the Church as the quintessential iteration of what family should look like. When our families don’t look anything like this, it’s easy to see how celebrating the birth of Jesus is fraught with emotional and spiritual hardship.

There is good news, though. We can subvert this narrative of traditional family by queering the story. So, I’d like to talk a bit about the revolutionary power of queering Mary. Abolitionist and Women’s Rights Activist, Sojourner Truth, said it best at the 1851 Ohio Women’s Convention. Once a slave, Truth questioned the whitewashing done to women of color by white women working only for white women’s right to vote by asking the famed question, “Ain’t I a woman?” In that same speech, she notes that male clergy claim that women “can’t have as much rights as men ‘cause Christ was a man.”

This adage is familiar, not only to women, but also to LGBTQs who have been told that our iterations of family aren’t real or true or right because they don’t reflect the so-called holy family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. In an act of theological brilliance and subversion, Sojourner Truth poses this question to the male clergy gathered at the convention: “Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him!” Continue reading “Painting Mary(s), Queering Mary(s) by Angela Yarber”

Moving Forward and into a New Season by Elise M. Edwards

It’s only been a month and I am still reeling from the US presidential election. I feel like I’m just beginning to emerge from the sense of loss and futility that has cloaked me. But I am beginning to move forward.

I don’t feel better. I’m still confused and discouraged about why people voted for Donald Trump. I’m very concerned about his cabinet picks and his proposed policies. But I am actively seeking a path forward and a path of resistance. I’m finding support in my spiritual practices and communities.

In the Christian calendar, we are in the season of Advent. Advent carries profound symbolism, and this year it is especially poignant for me. The word advent bears meanings of arrival, birth, and emergence. It’s the beginning of the Christian year, which is patterned on the life of Christ, but the year does not begin Jesus’ birth. That celebration is observed at Christmas, four weeks into the church year. The weeks preceding Christmas are a time of preparation and reflection on the need for the Incarnation. The Incarnation of God in the Christ Child may be a distinctly Christian doctrine, but I believe the need for it–even the idea of it–is found in other spiritual and religious teachings.

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Low Impact Giving as a Holiday Gift to Mother Earth by Elisabeth Schilling

Beach As the winter months approach, at least one “Christmas” gathering will be on my schedule. As this holiday has been co-opted by consumerism as evidenced by my memory of the throngs of sales and shoppers in large shopping centers to get “the perfect gift,” I wonder how to give the perfect gift to Mother Earth simultaneously. At the December meeting of my local chapter of the Sierra Club, one of the members passed out a list of gift ideas for a “low-impact” season. Some of the items on the list include or have inspired the following:

Gift Coupons for Services – cleaning out a garage, taking care of someone’s kids for the day, a home-cooked meal for a family, showing someone how to set up composting, teaching someone to knit.

Memberships/Lessons – Yoga classes from a studio, membership to a museum or a gym, art lessons, music lessons.

Gift Basket of Sustainability-Minded Products for Cleaning/Bath

Donations in Honor of Someone

I am sure many of us are already creative in our gift giving. So hopefully you will all comment and share your low-impact gift traditions. For those of us who haven’t quite transitioned or have never fully thought of pursuing this course of action, there can be some resistance encountered in those who receive low-impact gifts. Continue reading “Low Impact Giving as a Holiday Gift to Mother Earth by Elisabeth Schilling”

Body of Nature by Oxana Poberejnaia

oxana In the medieval European philosophy, woman’s body was seen as a vessel filled with sins, while man was regarded as a more spiritual being. This is one of the reasons why the concept of body is reassessed in feminist studies and why body is elevated in neo-paganism and Goddess spirituality. My fear is that nowadays body can be treated as an instrument for social advancement.

We still live in a society that is deeply hostile to women’s bodies. Alla Demidova, an actress I respect for her talent and her critical mind, did a programme of Christmas-related poetry. I could not listen to more than five minutes of it.

The poems have been all written by men. I am not saying that men do not have the right to write about birth. I am saying that our prevalent image of Christmas should not be based on male view alone. In this sense I much better like the Carol from “The Vicar of Dibley” (one of my favourite British comedy series, about a female Vicar), which describes the movement of baby Jesus through Mary’s birth canal.

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‘Tis the Season…For Holiday Movies by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

Anjeanette Pope Julian I in 350 C.E. set December 25th as the official day of observance for Christmas. It wasn’t until 1834 that it became a public holiday in the United Kingdom and it was declared a national holiday in the United States in 1865. The Night Before Christmas story was published in 1823, which solidifies the modern day Santa Claus in popular culture. 1898 saw the first depiction of Santa Claus on screen– a British short black and white silent film. Continue reading “‘Tis the Season…For Holiday Movies by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

There Is No Santa: The Antlered Flying Goddess– with Gifts by Marie Cartier

temple of isis elen 2 — Marie bringing in Elen of the Ways
photo by Tony Mierzwicki

One of my colleagues at Feminism and Religion recently wrote of Xmas and Feminine Wisdom. My blog, for Christmas Day continues this exploration.

Elen of the Ways is a figure primarily studied by scholar, Carolyn Wise. She wrote two core articles available on the web here and here. Wise writes that in order to “track” and find Elen of the Ways she had to peel back the layers:

…to the earliest track ways, the migratory tracks of the Reindeer and Elk. Elen moves across vast tracts of time, and land, cloaked and masked appropriately for each age.

As the Green Lady, she peers out between the trees in forests …As a British Venus… she is guardian of the underground streams that carry the sacred waters. She is the Guardian of the ancient track ways, the Leys, the Kundalini currents in nature. And as the Horned Goddess, she leads us to the first track ways, the migratory tracks of the reindeer and later, to the path of the red deer through the forests. From here she leads us to the lost Shamanism of the isles of Britain and we can follow her across Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, Siberia, India and beyond.

You can read more about Elen in the book edited by Carolyn Wise, Finding Elen: The Quest for Elen of the Ways. Elen is:

…part goddess, part dream, part saint, a green lady and a water nymph, primordial mother and patroness of deer, and guardian of the Old Straight Tracks and solar alignments. …Elen is as real as the roads named after her, as solid as the ancient paths that carry her presence.

What are these tracks? Part of the story can be explained by understanding that there are ley lines, or energy paths throughout the globe. These paths were “tracked” by shamans, pagans, and regular folk and still exert their influence today in very recognizable ways. People celebrated earlier this week on the Solstice (December 21) at Stonehenge. “One of the most important and well-known features of Stonehenge is its alignment on the midwinter sunset-midsummer sunrise solstitial axis,” a spokesperson said. “The midwinter sun sets between the two upright stones of the great trilithon.” The solsitial axis is part of the ley line network that connects sacred sites such as Newgrange in Ireland, a sacred burial mound which lights up only the morning of Solstice.

Continue reading “There Is No Santa: The Antlered Flying Goddess– with Gifts by Marie Cartier”

Remembering to Be Thankful by John Erickson

Remembering to be thankful may just be a privileged illusion that individuals in positions of power get to write about in the December of each year to self-congratulate themselves about being actually able to be able to be thankful. It may just seem like people who write about being thankful are complaining or pontificating that being thankful is in itself a chore.

WEHO CA (June 7, 2015)©2015 Rebecca Dru Photography All Rights Reserved www.rebeccadru.com — WEHO CA (June 7, 2015)©2015 Rebecca Dru Photography All Rights Reserved
http://www.rebeccadru.com

With the holidays just around the corner and the frazzled, crisp ping of anxiety, rush, and panic take over the air around us, it is easy to forget to stop and “smell the roses.” In times where teaching positions continue to shrink and more universities switch to adjunct labor, fees and class costs continue to rise, or just simply life becomes a little more complicated, due to the nature of balancing life, activism, work, friendships, or relationships, remembering to remind myself to be thankful is another task, I find adding to the never-ending list of stuff I always seem I have to do.

However, remembering to be thankful, scheduling it into one’s daily schedule are vital to our success as new and emerging faculty or activists or just in general because being thankful reminds us that we have aspects of our lives that are worth being thankful for. Remembering to be thankful proves that we are in some way, connected to a larger sense of life that, at times, grants our wishes, wants, or desires, brings us despair, and then allows us to get through it, or even makes us feel alive.

As I sit back and look at the personal and professional landscape around me I understand that I have a lot to be thankful for both consciously and unconsciously. Most recently at AAR, I participated on a panel in response to Bernadette Barton’s Pray the Gay Away. During the course of our panel, the conversation of chosen vs. biological families came up. Most recently, my mentor and panel moderator, Dr. Marie Cartier, talked about the same topic here on FAR and the difficulties many of us experience in regards to our chosen families vs. our biological families. With the holiday season all around us, and regardless of what or if, you celebrate it or not, it is quite hard to get away from it all without realizing who your “family” is and whether or not you’re close or connected with them can be traumatizing during these times where we’re taught or expected to be with them.

After our discussion on the panel and then at the hotel bar, people discussed the pains and traumas in relation to not having a biological family to go home to during the holidays. Sitting there and listening to the conversations, I realized that, for once in my life, I had nothing to say. Continue reading “Remembering to Be Thankful by John Erickson”