The Christmas letter I am not really going to send

Dear friends:

I always try to send a cheery Christmas letter: a little bit funny, a little bit hopeful. But oh, this year I am not feeling funny. I am not feeling hopeful. I am feeling a little like a beached mudskipper. I don't quite know how to maneuver in my new environment.

I keep wishing I could move on, you guys. When Obama said we should give Trump a chance I knew he was right. I said, "Okay, I'll give him a chance." I pray for Trump regularly and I try not to resent the obligation to do so. But we're five weeks in and he has given us no indication that he is going to step up and act presidential. He is, instead, lunging up out of the muck, grabbing at the "presidential" standard in an egregious effort to pull it down into his (undrained) swamp. If he does it, it must be presidential. He's the president-elect, after all.

Holy cow, that's the saddest sentence I've ever put in a Christmas letter.

The world seems so unpredictable now, though: will today bring further destabilization of the US-China relationship? More bombers in the South China Sea? More human siege engines rolled into position, ready to take aim at the republic in the new year? Huh, I am sounding dramatic even to myself. But what else can we say, when the Environmental Protection Agency will be directed by someone who doesn't actually believe in environmental protection, and when climate science is about to be supplanted by climate fantasy as a basis for decision-making, and when a Friend of Russia with massive global business entanglements is the nominee for Secretary of State? What good things happen when >20 million people lose access to health care? I'm waiting for answers. I suspect I'll be waiting for a while. 

I wake up in the middle of the night and think about it. I walk to work every morning and my footsteps beat a tattoo on the pavement: EIGHTy perCENT of WHITE evanGELicals VOTEd for DONald TRUMP. SIXty perCENT of white CATHolics / VOTEd for DONald TRUMP. Five weeks in and I still can't get my mind around it. It's weighing on me. It's like I've been saddled with an oversized howdah, and my uncertainty steers me this way and that, day in and day out.

(Huh, mudskippers do not usually wear howdahs. Pardon my mixed metaphor. I blame the existential despair.)

I've been frustrated for a long time by the conflation of GOOD CATHOLIC or SERIOUS CHRISTIAN with REPUBLICAN. This year, though-- this year is an object lesson in the perils of single-issue voting. I am increasingly impatient with partisanship masquerading as GOOD CATHOLIC-NESS or SERIOUS CHRISTIAN-NESS. The climate at my kids' Catholic high school is driving me nuts, I have to tell you.

Huh, people don't usually talk about money in their Christmas letters either, just like they don't talk about politics. Taboo, schmaboo. Let's talk about money. Education is far and away the biggest line item in our family budget. This year we will pay ~$15K to send two kids to Catholic high school. Education expenses are the reason I drive a 16-year-old car that sounds like it has automotive emphysema. They're the reason that we buy secondhand clothes and that nobody has a phone worth more than $25. Because the idea that my kids can spend most of their waking hours in a place that's consciously creating a Catholic culture -- that idea is worth a lot to me. And yet. And yet.

One of my boys gets called a Social Justice Warrior anytime he opens his mouth with a radical assertion like "It's problematic for police to shoot unarmed people in the back." One group of boys throws around "Jew" as an insult routinely: "Hey, Jewbag, I want to sit there."* This month there were persuasive speeches, plural, asserting that the scientific consensus on climate change is an elaborate hoax.** 

Oh, friends, it sounds like I'm sending my kids to Alt-Right Academy. I just want to say, Hey, if Catholic social teaching is at odds with the preferences expressed in your usual news sources, you might want to consider some alternate news sources.

*I complained to the principal. He says he can't do anything unless my kid divulges a list of names and contexts. Can't. Do. Anything.***

**I'm drafting a letter about that. But I'm not going to send it until grades are in, because I am not optimistic about the response. 

***I know, we don't put footnotes in Christmas letters either. What other conventions of the genre shall I defy?

I keep looking for solace, hanging out in the prophets and the plaintive psalms. But the divisions among people of faith are crushing me as much as the uncertainty I was telling you about earlier. It's like my howdah has a Volkswagen Beetle on top of it. I am looking for goodness, trying to savor my lovely quirky family. Maybe in a different sort of Christmas letter I would find a way to tell you about our dinner conversation tonight, where exclamation-point-y talk about the election morphed into the St. Andrew prayer for the Electoral College (seriously, electors, who do not usually appear in a Gladly Christmas letter either: do your job on Monday. Anybody but Trump. Anybody.) which slid into a discussion of imported plurals and a riff on Manamana: "phenomena, do dooo do do do." But we are none of us laughing much lately.

We often talk in December about praying for peace, but my prayers for peace this year have a fervency they have lacked in the past. We talk too about preparing for the birth of a baby in December, and I keep thinking about how birth means suffering. It's been almost exactly eight years since my youngest child was born, but I don't think you ever forget how hard it can be to see past the waves of suffering to the joy on the other side. I believe in a sovereign God and so I will choose to believe in good things on the other side of this December. But maybe it's like birth: you have to lean in, and breathe deep, and know that it will get worse before it gets better.

Love and peace and the few specks of hope that I can assemble tonight,
Jamie

Comments

[L - Mama(e) in Translation]

Oh. my. dear. This is SO MUCH how I feel! (down to the preoccupation about the money spent on private Christian schools, this year our school budget doubled, but it won't be close to yours for another year and a half when both of my sons are in high school. Sigh...

But I hear you on the despair and lack of hope. I am SO GLAD to hear that there are other people who have been feeling uncomfortable with the conflation of Catholic/Christian with Republican. I have felt horribly conflicted about that for years and years. Sigh...

My youngest son suffered a bit of stress with all the young Trump supporters in his elementary school, but things have died down. His classmates seem to be mostly uninformed about real issues. Both of their schools are really small (120 in the elementary, a bit over 200 in the high school which has an extremely diverse population, I think 50% or more kids of color), so my kids don't have to put up with what yours do.

In any case, what is going to happen to this country in the next 4 years? May God help us to work hard to prevent 4 more. Every week I look at your tweets (203 more weeks until we elect a new president) and I have to smile. I still don't know if I'll be able to vote then. Such a hard decision.

Thank you so much for this, though, I definitely needed to read it. We need to pray a lot, that's for sure, and also act. Hugs!

[bearing]

Can't do anything? Can't, for example, issue a general statement to the student body that slurs will not be tolerated?

[Ariella]

I can't believe I'm reading what you just wrote about the climate at your kids' school. The principal is being craven if he truly believes he can't do anything.

But - and this is a serious question here - why wouldn't you send this Christmas letter? This is a real letter filled with real concerns that overshadow the Christmas spirit. The things you're discussing in here affect every one of us. I am done keeping quiet for the sake of family unity.

We just had our annual holiday party and though it was a success (in that people came to our house and ate and drank), I still feel empty inside. Every bit of news I hear just brings more worry for me.

Moreover, yesterday I was driving up in northern Wisconsin for work. I turned on the radio to hear what people in the red part of our state listen to and I was just appalled. According to the talk radio hosts up there, liberals are just upset about Trump's win and there is nothing wrong with ANY of his prospective cabinet appointees.

I don't even know what to do at this point. No one cares what I have to say; I am just part of the liberal elite, I guess, and therefore am un-American and my opinion doesn't count.

[mary d]

I was going to say the exact same thing bearing did. Seriously? The heck?

[Pippi]

There is NOTHING the principal can do?!? That is the most ridiculous, untrue statement. He can start implementing a whole-school program that addresses diversity. He can bring this up at the next staff meeting (or call an emergency staff meeting!) and discuss with the faculty how they can start addressing racism and anti-semitism in their classes TODAY. He can call a whole school assembly to address this issue. He can talk with the student council about next steps the student body can take. He can make it his goal as principal to create a more accepting, better educated student body with regards to diversity. Does your school have a board of directors? Because if he keeps complaining that his hands are tied I would consider levelling this up (with your sons' permission). That atrocious leadership on his part.

[Jennifer]

That principal is a coward and a fool.

If your students are making jokes like that, then your curriculum has failed them and your duty as a principal and as a human being is to make it clear to all of your students that such language is unacceptable, both for the sake of the cretins who are saying it and for the sake of the students who are hearing this hate and not hearing anyone call them out on it. Even if you don't know which kids are responsible, you can stop the normalization of hate speech.

[bearing]

Diocesan school? Might the bishop be interested?

[Karen]

The Anti-Defamation League has a No Place for Hate program specifically designed for schools. I would get your school to implement it. It's not going to fix things right away or completely but holy cow it seems like it's necessary in a place where Jewbag is a word.

And I have to say that getting called a Social Justice Warrior is a great compliment. God put us on this earth to repair the world. We are the hands of God. Surely that is what is being taught in a Catholic school?

[Kristin]

I'm appalled by the principal's response.

And I'm sorry: there's a lot of fatigue and anxiety radiating from a lot of people I read, and people I talk with, and I hope things get better.

A moment of levity, if I may? The riff on Mahna Mahna made me chuckle, because holy cow, that's right out of a particular set of students I had one year! If I ever made the mistake of saying the word "phenomenon," like when I was describing things like "quantitative metathesis" in Greek class...they'd break into "doo doo, do doo doo!" and I'd have to wait while they finished singing the whole phrase.

And I'll admit, it tickled me so much that I didn't mind accidentally on purpose throwing the word in now and then.