Another Jolly, White-Bearded Old Man

I am one of those people who flew into a rage after seeing this holiday season's controversial Toys R Us commercial. The one where a busload of  kids are tricked into thinking they are going on a wilderness field trip to learn about trees (which they apparently find boring), and are then told that really they get to run around a toy store and take home free stuff (this revelation causes them to explode in a fervor of maniacal joy.) If you haven't seen it, you can watch it now.

For those who just watched it for the first time, if your mouth is hanging open with shock and disgust, then you have responded the same way I did. The horribleness of this ad is so painfully obvious, I'm not going to get into it. Suffice to say, it reflects badly on our society that commercials such as this get made.

Work by one of my Wagner students, a sculpture of an Aardvark placed in a diorama

As a secular humanist mom, nature and science education are hugely important to me. My daughter Lysi knows the names of all the captive animals at two nature centers. We have pet millipedes because after holding a giant, African millipede at a bug show last summer, she wanted to have some of her own. We're members of the Academy of Natural Sciences and attend all the preview parties and special events.

This year I'm an artist-in-residence at the Wagner Free Institute for Science. I work with science teachers to design and teach curriculum that integrates our two disciplines. During the Wagner's summer camp, I had inner city middle schoolers draw butterflies, cicadas, and other wildlife in nature journals and create mini-dioramas of animals in their natural habitats.

Hands-on experience of nature in parks and with rescued wildlife engages all our senses and makes it real.

Dude, that's an owl! 

Drawing from life is an exercise in really looking, rather than skimming over what is in front of our eyes.

Now that I get a really good, long look, geez, those talons are seriously scary looking! 

Well-presented information in a good book takes us deeper into understanding.

Owls are predators, descended from dinosaurs. They need those talons to swoop down on their prey.

Finally, creative illustrations transcend what can be seen by the naked eye or camera lens in any single moment. They have the potential to evoke an emotional response, which impresses on us the mystery and profundity of the natural world.

Click here.*

In the library last year, Lysi and I came across Every Autumn Comes the Bear by Jim Arnosky. It's a quiet sort of book. When you really get down to it, all that happens is that a bear appears, hangs out for a bit, then goes to sleep in a cave. And yet Lysi and I both fell in love. What got me was the subtle beauty of the watercolor illustrations. They were detailed, yet loose and painterly. Naturalistic, yet full of unexpected color choices.

In the months that followed, I kept coming across Jim Arnosky's name again and again.  Lysi expressed interest in turtles, and we found All About Turtles. I pulled a book off the shelf because of its striking cover image of an osprey, and it turned out to be Arnosky's Thunder Birds. Lysi got really into bugs, and we found Arnosky's Creep and Flutter. Talk about prolific!

Jim Arnosky popped up once again while I was looking for books for a workshop I teach. In the adult section of the library, among the field guides on trees, I came across Crinkleroot's Guide to Knowing the Trees. An adorable, gnome-like man on the cover charmed me instantly. Inside he introduced himself to me as "Crinkleroot", and said he was "born in a tree and raised by bees." I took the book home and immediately read it to Lysi, who loved it. Not only that, now she knew the difference between coniferous and deciduous trees.

To our joy, we discovered a whole series of Crinkleroot books: guides to butterflies and moths, animal tracking, knowing the birds, giving back to nature, and more. We checked out as many as our public library kept in stock (which was most of the series).

Even though the books were basically doling out textbook information about their subjects, because Crinkleroot addresses his readers directly and is full of personality, Lysi responded to him the same as she responds to Angelina Ballerina, or any of her favorite characters in literature. The first time we went to the Morris Arboretum and saw a real log cabin, she exclaimed with delight, "It's Crinkleroot's house!"

The only Crinkleroot books Lysi found disappointing were the ones titled Crinkleroot's 25 (fill in the blank with "animals", "more animals", "mammals", "fish", and "birds") Every Child Should Know. In each of these books, Crinkleroot only appears at the beginning, and the rest of the pages are filled with profiles of animals listed. The reason Lysi didn't like these books was, as she put it, "I want Crinkleroot to come with us."

Even though Crinkleroot is a delightful character in a series of informative and playfully illustrated books for children, you will not find Crinkleroot dolls, t-shirts, backpacks, or other hokey merchandise. He does not star in a cartoon on Nick Jr., the Disney Channel, or even PBS Kids. You will, however, find Crinkleroot books in most public libraries and many schools. On Crinkleroot's website you can purchase teaching leaves with art and science lessons, download free coloring pages of animals, and even listen to the Crinkleroot song.

I wish Crinkleroot were as familiar a literary character as Fancy Nancy and Arthur. He is a full fleshed-out personality who presents children with facts about the natural world in a way that is engaging and beautiful. And yet, when I have brought him up to educators at nature centers and the Wagner Institute, they have never heard of him. Just like that horrible Toys R Us ad, Crinkleroot's anonymity is perhaps indicative of our society's disconnect and disinterest in the natural world.

A side by side comparison of Crinkleroot and Santa Claus

Crinkleroot looks quite a bit like Santa Claus. White beard. Rosy cheeks. Friendly expression. They're both chubby and wear a lot of red. Crinkleroot might be shorter, but then in many historical incarnations, Santa is an elf or elf-like man of short stature. (Snopes has a good article on the history and myth surrounding Santa's appearance.)

Then there are the significant differences. Crinkleroot merely lives in a cabin in the woods with his pet snake Sassafrass, consorts with nature, and tells tall tales about being raised by bees. Santa on the other hand, lives in the far-off North Pole (a place covered with shifting ice water) and has magical powers: he can fly in a sled, visit all children in a single night, and spies on all children throughout the year.

A late autumn walk in the woods

If we must associate a jolly, white-bearded fictional character with gift-giving in December, how about purchasing some Crinkleroot books to add to the home libraries of the children in our lives? Instead of putting cookies out for a mythical elf, we can take a walk in the woods and note that the nakedness of the deciduous trees signifies winter and the time when bears sleep.

* The image was Owl In Flight, an oil painting by Jane Gough.


Originally published 12/15/13 on Humanist Mom. 

A Tour Around Ye Ol' (Godless) Tannenbaum

I almost didn't put up a tree this year. The kids (ages 2 and 4) have ignited a whole new wave of over-analyzing and agonizing over whether to celebrate the holiday season or not, and if so, how to celebrate in a manner which is true to our family's secular worldview. For now, let's just focus on the issue of the tree.

First of all, what do I call it? A Christmas tree? Maybe spell it X-mas, or Krismas. Tannenbaum just means fir tree and sounds reasonably festive; that's good, right? But walking around calling our tacky, miniature tree a tannenbaum feels pretentious. Holiday tree sounds forced. We started calling it a Cricky tree. That's what (I've been told) my husband called it as a kid. And let's face it, in an atheist home, it's basically there because of my (somewhat shallow) attachment to my childhood.

So we have a religious symbol in our house from a religion we don't practice. That's not unusual for middle class Americans, right? Plenty of non-Buddhists have statues of Buddha on their shelves. Same with non-Hindus and statues of  Shiva and Ganesha. People read and enjoy stories of the religious myths from cultures around the world. Still, decorating the tree in December makes me feel silly and a bit like a phony, but whatever. The kids like it. Okay, okay, I like it, too.

This is no elaborate tradition in our house. It took no more than twenty minutes to bring the box of ornaments labeled "Hippy Tree Balls" in big, black marker by my cynical husband, up from the basement and hang them on the three foot high tree I bought on a whim at ACME. Twenty minutes of bouncing back and forth between nostalgic bliss and wistful torment.

Strung the lights on first. It is the same string of lights Will and I purchased seven years ago for our first holiday season in our new house. (Okay, Will had nothing to do with it. He could give a shit about anything holiday season related.) I had run out to the Family Dollar and purchased $40 of cheap ornaments, mini candy canes, a 3 ft fake tree, and a single string of lights - the gaudy, multicolored, large bulbs that went out of fashion a long time ago. I like those lights the best because they are most like the ones from my childhood Christmases. It is a sappy explanation, and every year those memories wear more thin.

Will's favorite ornament reflects his cynicism about the holidays. It was handmade by an artist friend of ours who works in polymer clay, and seems innocent enough: a dinosaur hugging a car. Except it's really a dirty inside joke, and that's not really hugging. With a smirk, I hang it in a prominent location on our tree.

I have several ornaments from the two years I worked in a small, private, progressive school. It was one of the best jobs I ever had. There was practically no hierarchy and both students and faculty were encouraged to take risks and be creative. Every teacher seemed to regard his or her position as a calling. I taught grade school students who involved themselves in political action, public service, who questioned and knew how to research. But it was part time, the pay low, and the commute long. More than that, the job left me with little creative energy for my own artwork and writing. The job wasn't my calling, so I quit. Every year I look at these ornaments, these gifts from amazing former students, and briefly ponder the path not taken. It's not regret; I like where I've ended up. But there's deep melancholy in it.

There's one ornament which splits me right in two. The ornament itself is rather cheap and dull. It's merely a white, glass bulb with the HumanLight holiday logo printed on the front. HumanLight was invented to give secular humanists something meaningful and our own to celebrate in late December. I have jokingly described it to friends as a sort of atheist Kwanzaa. I used to encourage my humanist friends to adopt HumanLight. I wrote a promotional article about it for Humanist magazine. I had my oldest daughter light a candle and open her presents from us on December 23rd (the official date of HumanLight.) For the record, my husband rolls his eyes at all this.

Two guys in New Jersey created HumanLight in 2001. They got not only their local chapter to throw a HumanLight party, but quickly persuaded many others, even some abroad, to adopt the holiday. A couple songs were even written. Not great songs, mind you. "HumanLight" by Sonny Meadows sounds a bit too much like the Spiderman theme song (this was pointed out by some college students who attended our party one year, and they all got a good laugh out of it.) So not great songs, but at least they were our songs. As long as we were earnest about it all, it meant something. My local chapter got Paul Kurtz to be our keynote speaker less than a year before the prominent philosopher passed away. Even the "father of secular humanism" couldn't help but get a bit sentimental around the holidays, and for part of his talk he had all of us in the audience stand and hug each other.

One of those guys in New Jersey who created HumanLight was my friend, and in 2012, to the shock of all of us who knew and loved him, he took his own life. It took five months for my rage over his suicide to burn out. Since then, when I think of him and anything associated with him or even organized humanism, there is a quiet undercurrent of despair. I realize that my involvement in organized humanism all these years was never really about the ideas. I mean, I agree with the ideas, sure. But I can live the humanist philosophy just fine on my own. The organization was about the people. It's often difficult for us nerdy, cynical, godless folk to find others who want to watch lectures, documentaries, read heavy nonfiction, and sit around discussing religion, philosophy, and politics. I didn't celebrate HumanLight because of the message or meaning of the holiday. I celebrated it because it was something to share with my friends. So with my friend who was the most enthusiastic about celebrating HumanLight gone, I'm just not that into it anymore.

The ornaments with pics of my kids, one for each year of their lives, these are what evoke the nostalgic bliss. I look at images of their adorable expressions and reminisce over the best moments of their infancy and entrance into childhood. All the sleepless nights, poop explosions, and shrieks are out-shined by memories of first cradling them in my arms, the stuffed animals they slept with and carried around, the silly ways they first pronounced the word orange, and so on. Considering these ornaments against the rest of what hangs on our Cricky tree, it occurs to me that I could just hang photographs of my kids as they age in the stairwell in decorative frames and achieve the same effect. Why record their growth with tree ornaments?

It's just a tree.

But it's more than a tree! It's a symbol, right? A symbol of, of... oh you know. Family togetherness. We decorate it with memories, surround it with gifts for those we love. An evergreen, the leaves don't turn brown and crumble. They endure the cold darkness of the winter. It's about hope. Another chance to do better, to do more in this world. To improve ourselves. Argh, but that's still so vague, somewhat trite. I can do better. It's, it's...

Just a tree. A tree that makes me feel... A tree that makes me feel.

I realize that no matter how much I try to recapture (or perhaps reinvent) some transcendent wonderfulness of the holiday season, and which can be shared by people of all faiths and no faith, it's all cold comfort. Being a religious skeptic means forever being on the outside looking in. It means exchanging the elation of faith for the sober courage of doubt.

As another year ends, this passage of time is emphasized. I set new goals for the coming year while growing more and more weighted down by memories of what I achieved and failed to achieve in the past. Eventually, there will be no rebirth, no spring. The wicked will go unpunished, the good will pass away without adequate reward.

We top our tree with a finger puppet of Isaac Newton.

I will ride this carousel. Hopefully I'll take more pleasure in the beauty and craft of the wooden horses I ride than I will feel disappointment over the lifelessness of their shiny, painted eyes. I'll try to enjoy the music without worrying about when it will end.

Yes, my daughter, we put up a tree. You can call it a Christmas tree if you want. But we don't really celebrate Christmas because we're not Christians. What do we celebrate? That's a good question. Not that I've found a satisfying answer. There's nothing special about December, really. Only that, if we must face the impending darkness, it's comforting to have a little artificial light.


Originally published 12/6/13 on Humanist Mom.

Dumping the Santa Myth

My three year old is a fan of the book series Angelina Ballerina, about a little girl mouse who is very talented and passionate about ballet dancing We've been taking the books in the series out one by one from the public library, and as the holidays loomed nearer, I saw that, of course, there is one in the series titled Angelina's Christmas. My first impulse as a secular humanist mom was to ignore it. But I decided to read it first and see if there was any religious content other than the word "Christmas" (which arguably is used in a secular way as often as it is used to refer to the birth of the Christian savior). There's wasn't. In fact, I immediately approved of the book's unique message, checked it out, and was thrilled when a friend gave a copy of it to my daughter to keep. 

What is the message of Angelina's Christmas? Well, the more overt message was the usual holidays are a time to show care and concern for others. In the story, Angelina notices that an elderly man in her neighborhood is all alone, so she and her family make him cookies and get him involved at her school's holiday celebrations. 

But the side story is what really interested me. Angelina's younger cousin, Henry, makes a special cookie just for Santa Claus. Henry is brought to tears when he's told that he cannot give it to Santa in person because Santa only comes when people are sleeping. Henry keeps the cookie in his pocket when they visit the old man. The old man turns out to be a retired postman. He notices Henry's sad mood, and puts on a Santa outfit to cheer him up. Then he tells Henry a story about how he used to deliver presents to families on Christmas even in terrible weather. Henry enjoys the company and story so much that he is moved to give the postman the special cookie, instead of saving it for Santa. 

The implication is that real people bring joy and good to the world. Such people might embody the symbolism of Santa through their actions, but Santa Claus as a person is not real. So if we want to express gratitude for good works, we should express it to those who actually do good works. 

I don't tell my daughter that Santa is real. She knows about Santa (mostly from the Korean cartoon Pucca where Santa Claus is a main character, and incidentally also a ninja and former thief.) In fact, we have conversations about how Santa is a character, and compare him to other characters she knows are fictional. She enjoys the concept of Santa, but she knows that the guys she meets wearing red suits are regular people in costume. This hasn't become an issue yet with peers who believe in Santa and whose parents want to encourage that belief, but I suspect that at some point it might be. Either way, I'm sticking to my guns and refusing to lie to my own child. 

Over a decade ago, and then again 2 years ago, I heard Tom Flynn, notorious secular humanist and "Anti-Claus" speak about why non-Christians shouldn't celebrate Christmas. The full expression of his opinions and support for them are outlined in his book The Trouble With Christmas. Included in Flynn's talks was a harsh critique of "The Santa Myth" and the many dark and unintended consequences of teaching children that Santa Claus is a real person, opposed to a fictional character. 

A decade ago I came to my own conclusions. I think celebrating the holiday season in a variety of secular ways is both fun and beneficial for humanists who want to celebrate, so long as it is done in a way that emphasizes charity, generosity, and family togetherness, downplays the grotesque materialism, and ignores the baby Jesus.  

However, I was then and now totally persuaded by Flynn's anti-Santa arguments. In fact, I found his arguments relieving. I had been one of those kids who believed longer than I really should have, and letting belief in Santa go was emotionally painful, humiliating (because most of my peers had figured it out at much younger ages) and made me trust adults, including my own parents, less. As Flynn argues, and I agree, parents and other adults lie to kids about Santa. People try to dress it up as something else. Something about celebrating innocence, indulging in a fun fantasy, or whatever. The the problem is that it's one sided. When a kid asks if Santa is real, that means the kid has enough of an understanding about what is real and what is fictional. That kid is asking if Santa is literally real, or merely a character like Clifford or Curious George. When adults say that Santa is real, they are in every sense of the word, lying. 

In the episode of South Park titled "Crack Baby Athletic Association" the writers make the point that Santa is really just a lie adults tell children. In the episode, all the kids know and like Slash (who actually is a real guitarist who used to be in the band Guns and Roses) and he apparently plays at many of their birthday parties and other events. Some of the kids try to get Slash to play for a benefit they are organizing, and in the process they discover that Slash isn't real, but a lie their parents have told them, and that whenever they've seen him play it was really one of their parents dressed up in costume. One of the kids, bewildered by this information, calls his father and asks him directly if Slash is real, and his dad says something about the spirit of Slash being real in our hearts or something like that (think "Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus".) The kids then express annoyance and disappointment that their parents have lied to them. They don't interpret what has happened as anything other than being deceived. In the end, the writers parody the end of Miracle on 34th Street (probably the most anti-critical thinking holiday movie ever); a mysterious donation has built a center for the crack babies (I'm not explaining that, you have to see the whole episode) and the kids notice a guitar that looks just like Slash's in the corner. 

The whole Santa Myth often puts teachers in a precarious position. Students will ask if Santa is real. Teachers can risk getting in trouble with parents who want to perpetuate the myth by telling the kids the truth, or they can participate in the lie. When I was a teacher in a school with young children I chose to treat it like I treated religious beliefs - I told them to ask their parents. But it felt weird to do that. Once I watched a second grade boy stand up in front of the entire school and lecture all the kids about how Santa was really real, and how he knew because his grandfather had taken him to the North Pole to see the toy factory, and so they'd better be good and believe in Santa or else they would get coal for Christmas. As he went on this tirade, other students giggled and rolled their eyes, and teachers flashed each other looks and awkward smiles, but of course nobody was going to correct this kid, because the Santa Myth is one of our sacred cows. Events such as this poor 8 year old kid's lecture (which likely resulted in teasing and humiliation when he discovered Santa's fictional nature) show how out of control this whole Santa Myth can get. 

While working as a babysitter, I had a lovely afternoon with a 5 year old girl. We had gotten onto the subject of the continents, and from there we got online and were looking at maps of the globe. It was so much fun to be teaching a young child about the earth, and feel in awe of how much humans have come to understand and document about the geography of our planet. All of the sudden, she jumped up and asked, "Hey, where's the North Pole?" I pointed it out. This is what we saw: 

You might notice that the North Pole is smack in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. There's no land, only constantly shifting ice. So unless Santa's a very cold merman, there isn't any home or factory of his there. The girl looked at the spot on the map. I could see she recognized that it was water, not land, and looked confused. "Where's Santa's house?"  I sort of panicked. I hadn't expected this to suddenly come up. And I hate lying to kids. I told her to ask her parents. 

Now these are just some personal experiences I've shared on this blog. There are actually a whole list of fully fleshed out arguments as to why the Santa Myth is a bad idea that shouldn't be perpetuated, but instead of going into all that here, I'll direct you to this article by Austin Cline. And for those who find visuals more persuasive, check out some of the endless parade of pictures of not-so-happy kids on Santa's lap. 

Happy HumanLight! 

Originally published 12/6/12 on Humanist Mom.