fandom and secret santa

[salinea]

What chopchica said here : one big word to it. (also some very brillant things in the comment).

Christmas isn't universal. Making it into X-mas or whatever kind of pseudo-OEcumenist version doesn't make it universal.

It just makes it more oppressive.

At least when it's Christmas the very Christian religion I don't feel excluded as a human being for not practicing it. It's just the different traditions that different religions have.

Secret Santa are a great idea. I had a lot of fun participating in the Snupin Santa last year, and it brightened my month of December considerably. But fandom is always thriving to be all inclusive and pretty tolerant. So don't people be surprised if sometimes people feel grouchy about that.

Comments

[chopchica.livejournal.com]

Hi, somebody linked me over here, and I thought I'd try to clarify a bit of what I was saying and trying to do.

As somebody who lived in Israel for years after high school, and has faced real life antisemitism throughout my entire life, I of course, find antisemitism in fandom to be on a much smaller scale.

However, fandom is a community I consciously chose to join, and seeing ugliness in a place that was supposed to be a welcoming and safe space, is extremely disturbing. In the last two days alone, a close friend has been called a kike, and I was the recipient of an antisemitic lecture in another friend's journal. There have been dozens of comments coming out of this from people I'd previously respected and liked. It was like turning over a rock and finding rotting maggots underneath.

So yes, in that context, it may seem "childish" and amusing, but when you are faced with antisemitism staring you in the face, it *hurts*. No matter *what* the context.

I found deb's post to be silly. Very, very, very silly. And I found the idea that everybody in the world should magically know all about every religion and their holidays to be even sillier. Deb's post is not what my post was about (my five posts by now, cause this grew and grew).

I posted about two main points. The first was that I found it incredibly disturbing that Deb's post opened the gateway to numerous hostile comments, which weren't mocking her for being silly, they were mocking her for being *Jewish*.

The other point I posted about was not that I find Christmas exchanges to be oppressive. I actually find them to be quite lovely, because they fill many people with joy and happiness and I get to read lots of stories. However, I do find them to be *based on Christmas*, being that they have titles from Christmas songs, use the word Santa, and go live on Christmas. And I think there's nothing wrong or oppressive or antisemitic with any of that at all. Not even a little bit. My issue is with the fact that when most people try to point out that of *course* the exchanges are Christmas-based, the reaction tends to be complete denial at best, and outright hostility at worse.

I hope that helped clarify things a bit, and I'd be happy to discuss this more, if you're interested or still have questions. If this was a bit rambly, I apologize. It's 3:30 in the morning here and I've answered literally over 100 comments today.