Shoshkablog

What a great photograph of me and Demi Lovato

Every year, as the Halloween decorations go down and Thanksgiving pouts in the corner, America starts Getting In The Holiday Spirit. Red and green as far as the eye can see (with accents of white, gold, and/or silver)! Snowflakes and snowmen and reindeer! Santa and presents and pine trees! Because didn’t you know?? CHRISTMAS IS COMING IN LESS THAN 2 MONTHS!!!!

Of course, we call it “the holidays,” but literally everything you see everywhere is allll Christmas. Christmaschristmaschristmas. And it’s nice!!! Because everyone is cheerful and festive despite the shorter days and impending cold doom.

But it’s also when the religious right gets its panties in a bunch because cashiers and store clerks and signs don’t explicitly wish everyone a merry Christmas. “They’re trying to silence Christians!!!” they yell. “They’re persecuting us!!!!” they shout.

Meanwhile, us Jewish people feel all warm and fuzzy if we even see one small menorah or Jewish star amidst a giant explosion of tinsel and holly.

Exhibit A: Schmidt, the Jewish character in the show New Girl, getting excited about a menorah while he takes a drive with his friends down Candy Cane Lane, a street that is famously dressed to the nines with more holiday cheer than Santa’s beard itself. 

I know this is just one (awesome) clip, but it accurately represents what having your religion celebrated in even the *smallest* form is like as a religious minority. Being thought of–at all!!!!–makes you feel welcome and happy and like you belong. When someone says “Happy Holidays!” and you say, “You too!” you actually feel that you’re part of the environment of holiday cheer.

In America, as a Christian, you are constantly surrounded by countless symbols of your holiday. Everyone, whether they like it or not, participates in a season that completely revolves around it to the point where everything winter-themed is also associated with Christmas. Take the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” for example–it is considered a “Christmas song” despite the fact that it never once mentions Christmas, just snow and the cold. Or the movie Die Hard, which is about a hostage situation, which just happens to take place during an office Christmas party. Whether we try to or not, we are all familiar with “Jingle Bells,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” “Silent Night,” “White Christmas,” and a host of other Christmas songs, whether Christian or not.

So, please, spare me your “War on Christmas” bullshit. If someone says “Happy Holidays” to you and doesn’t acknowledge that it is your specific holiday despite the fact that they are probably wearing red and green and have a decked-out Christmas tree standing in the corner of their store, please calm down and consider that there actually are other holidays!!! And people actually celebrate those other holidays and appreciate when people don’t automatically say “Merry Christmas” because they are already bombarded by Christmas from literally everywhere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and snowmen and snowflakes are not Christians symbols. Starbucks did not get any less holiday-themed. See how far this has gone??? You actually associate winter-time decals with Christmas. That’s how much Christmas is ingrained in American culture.

There is no “War on Christmas.” Other beings who are not Christians exist in this country, and they are also people. Get over it, and drink your peppermint-flavored lattes while you eat a candy cane and walk by the guy dressed up as Santa among all the tinsel and holly decorations. You have literally everything. Stop complaining about the few things that everyone else gets to have, too.

Note: Normally I feel really weird talking about my own feelings about any kind of tragedy, but the 9/11 Memorial is really that intense. I feel like I have to write this disclaimer to say that I do not feel that my feelings about something that had virtually no effect on me are in any way significant, but if you want to read about it, that’s cool. Also, I highly recommend anyone who plans to visit New York to stop by it, and anyone who lives in New York to take a day and get their butts down to the World Trade Center because this is so important.

I was supposed to go to a Javascript meetup at the Flatiron School with Hindi (hindividual), but I was running late and she was crazy swamped at work, so I took my time. When I realized that the memorial was pretty much on the way, I decided to stop by.

I did not end up going to that meetup.

On September 11, 2011, I was in Los Angeles. I was 10 years old and in 5th grade. When I woke up at 6:30 AM for school as usual, I went to wake up my parents (as we kids usually did) and was shocked to find them already awake and watching TV. I asked them why they were already up. They told us that two planes were hijacked and flown straight into the World Trade Center towers in New York City. 

I could barely comprehend what the hell was happening or how it could possibly happen. I had never really heard of these towers, but all day I saw pictures of them before and during, and felt the distance. Here were these towers I’d never known existed in a city I’d never visited but heard all about and now they were gone and all these people were killed because some evil, terrible people decided to take a couple of planes and kill a bunch of innocent civilians. 

It was so painfully real. Everyone in Los Angeles was frozen to their televisions and on the phone with anyone they knew in New York City to offer their support. But it was so far away. It felt like another dimension where evil, cruel things could happen.

I remember standing next to my teacher on October 11th, 2001, in a hallway that was also a kind of gallery space for recent art projects. The projects hanging at the time were various students’ tributes to the victims of 9/11, some accompanied by personal essays recounting stories of relatives or friends across the country. “Can you believe it’s been a whole month?” my teacher said to me. I shook my head “no.” Even all the way out in Los Angeles, where we could not even remotely comprehend the full horror, it still affected us; it shook the whole nation.

When I looked into the South Pool at the 9/11 Memorial for the first time on Wednesday, I immediately felt weighted down by sadness and horror. Looking into those pools, slowly reading all the names… it was devastating.

After I had walked around the perimeter of both pools for quite some time, I sat down across from the North Pool and tried to comprehend everything. I kept looking up at the empty spaces where the buildings once stood and pictured the chaos of that September Tuesday 14 years earlier. I even opened my computer and journaled because I just needed to parse out my thoughts.

In a way, I feel like I did the day it happened. I was 10, in California, and scared. But it was far away, and all I could do was mourn and hope everyone was okay. And now I’m here so it seems 100000% real, but it was 14 years ago. Far away in time. And all I can do is mourn and hope all the victims’ loved ones are okay.

The memorial is these 2 big square pools, one where each of the towers stood. They’ve got waterfalls going down the sides, which fall into a deep pool that drains into a smaller square. It’s immediately evocative of tears; the center square immediately evocative of the emptiness the attack left behind. Each pool has a raised border around it with all the names of the victims who perished in the attack. Some parts are prefaced with the flight number, or the ladder or squadron number, or the building name. It’s utterly heartbreaking and it portrays the utter chaos and sadness (understatement) that New York was filled with on that day and afterward.

The 9/11 spotlight is also up right now, since 9/11 is on Friday. It’s all so powerful and intense and I’m trying to put my feelings into words but I’m struggling. …

I took a picture of the spotlight juxtaposed with 1 WTC. Actually, I took like 10. I keep looking up at it. It’s just so striking: the “never forget” next to the “but we rebuilt.”

It really is strange how time and distance essentially chalk up to similar emotions. But it is a testament to this memorial that it is able to invoke these feelings. 

Never forget.

(But we rebuilt.)