December 10, 2007

What did you get for Hanukkah?

Early childhood is blissful ignorance. There is a Santa Claus, he flies all over the world in one night, and everyone believes in him.

That "all" adults actively support this belief is one of the most touching aspects of Christmas. Adults, it turns out, are singularly unwilling to confront children with any facts that might, in some way, possibly, alter the child's world view.

It's up to other children to truly initiate one into the idea that people are different. Just ... different.

Kindergarten brought me up against the idea that people were different.

It was mid-December, after our teacher had spent all of November trying to get us to pronounce the second "p" in "pumpkin." Hanukkah had just started (or just ended). We might have discussed Hanukkah in class (probably not), might have had some paper stars and menorahs hanging in the windows with the paper stocking and trees.

One of the other girls, dark-haired, confident, out-going, asked me, "What did you get for Hanukkah?"

"I didn't get anything," I said, confused.

"No," she said, "what did you get?"

"Nothing!" I said. "I didn't get anything."

"What did you get?" she asked again.

By this point, I was just totally confused. "I didn't get anything. What's Hanukkah?"

At this point, she gave it up for a lost cause and asked someone else. I was probably close to tears because I couldn't answer her.

Of course, she was trying to be friendly, was, in fact, trying to build a community based on shared experiences. We just had the wrong kinds of experience to share.

As children, we think everyone is like us because we haven't met anyone unlike us yet. As adults, it's easier to understand each other with that shared experience. Generalizing from the specific served humans well when our ancesters learned not to eat poisonous plants; it serves us less well meeting people who don't look like us or believe what we believe.

Members of the dominant group (religious sect, language, or Star Trek fanbase) often forget that other people are different — not wrong, just different. After our twenties, we've settled in with the familiar and don't seek out the new and strange (to us). If it's a group for all Trekkies, it gets annoying when only re-runs of ST:OS are shown (and not the clearly better ST:TNG). And for the one-fifth of the country that's not Christian, it must be pretty galling to have this holiday shoved in their faces three months out of the year.

It doesn't mean not celebrating Christmas, it just means not acting like every suggestion to be considerate of other beliefs is an attack on Christmas, Christianity and you personally. Bill O'Reilly, I'm talking to you.

(Many thanks to a.j. for the editorial advice.)