Rabbi Michael Lerner: Responding to the Holidays With Awe, Wonder, Amazement, Generosity and Compassion During the Plague of COVID
November 27, 2020
Let compassion not consumption be your gift to others this Holiday season (Adam Freidin)
By Rabbi Michael Lerner
As a psychotherapist at the Institute for Labor and Mental Health and as a rabbi for Beyt Tikkun, I’ve run groups for people who are facing intense holiday stress. At first glance, the phrase seems to be an oxymoronic pairing of words or a dystopic echo of the phrase holiday cheer. Based on my professional experience, I can assure you, however, that many people do not look forward to holiday celebrations. For them, the next 5 weeks will be stressful.
A casual “Happy Holidays” that we say to people whose situation we don’t know much about can trigger upset and deepen depression, even when we intended to uplift them with a pleasantry.
This year, the stress that people are experiencing has been intensified by the COVID–19 pandemic and the surge in death rates that are associated with it particularly in this last month. Moreover, we are steadily realizing that even with a Biden-Harris victory, the rhetoric that President Trump still broadcasts, the power-over-others ideals that he promotes, and the reckless materialism that he encourages, combine to produce a favorable wind filling the sails of fascist movements both at home and in countries around the world. The Democratic Party centrists, who won the Presidential election, will return to the Oval Office. And though the outcome feels like relief when I compare it to the alternative, the centrists fail to grasp the psychological and spiritual needs that have caused many Americans to be receptive to some version of Trumpism.
Here are some points for elevating our awareness of the situations of others who may be struggling with psychological and spiritual needs during the autumn and winter holidays when our society tell us we and our families should be celebrating:
Many people have neither a partner nor a circle of friends with whom to celebrate, even on Zoom.
Please acknowledge when you celebrate Thanksgiving that for many Native Americans the distorted history that continues to be taught in our schools, ignoring the genocide of Native Americans which European settlers imposed on the already existing societies of North America, and the seizure of their lands is a cause of sadness and ongoing pain.
The capitalist marketplace and ideology encourage self-blaming, from which at least 80% of the U.S. population suffers. During the next 5 weeks, endless appeals for people to buy holiday gifts online promote the idea that these gifts show how much the purchaser cares for the ones who receive them. Many television ads also present ordinary people buying extraordinarily expensive gifts. When children see these ads, many are prone to feel that their parents are failing them because these children think that every other child gets the flashy things that their parents do not buy for them. These advertising messages often motivate friends and parents to purchase gifts that their budgets cannot accommodate. They charge these purchases on their credit cards, increase the money that they owe each month, and suffer in silence. They know the hardships associated with servicing their debt obligations. In class-stratified Western societies, the pressure to present oneself as at least “somewhat successful” leads to impulsive buying. Healthy support systems are needed for people to resist and not spend money on things that are unnecessary, both for themselves and for others. This annual holiday cycle of messaging for-profits, self-blame, ultra-budgetary shopping, and increased personal debt, has an even more pernicious effect: consumerism is ruining Earth’s biosphere and ultimately depriving the youth of a bright future.
Holiday culture also encourages consumption of alcohol as a way for people who are not so happy to find relief from fear and depression. This fleeting relief allows them to act as happy as everyone else for the duration of the party. This behavior contributes to addictions of all sorts (most recently to opioids and other new forms of addiction); it also puts immense social pressure on people who are recovering from addictions. Like everyone else, they, too, want to present a similar appearance of gaiety and light-heartedness.
The elites of wealth and power don’t want people to think critically about consumption or about the lie that capitalists use to justify the vast disparity of wealth and power in this society. They preach that each of us creates his or her own reality because we live in a merit-based system. They claim that smarter and harder working people have the money to buy the things that the capitalist marketplace offers. In my book Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto To Heal and Transform the World, I included a fuller picture of how self-blaming underlies much of the pain people experience 365 days per year, but more intensely from Thanksgiving through the secular New Year.
The groups that I ran for holiday stress helped people understand why they feel down during this season, or feel that they are failing their families, loved ones, and friends. Unfortunately, I don’t have the energy to run those groups this year because I continue to recover from surgery that was done over the summer.
So, here are some things that you can do: Talk about these issues with friends, share this email with others and post it on social media, and encourage your friends to do the same. Speak with children about making the holidays a time to give love, but not necessarily by giving purchased things to show love. Offer gifts of your time and skills that really would ease the burdens that others carry or brighten their day. I am fond of creating a little certificate on a plain piece of paper or a digital one via email that promises to give 4 hours of my time to teach something that I know about and you might know less about (history, literature, midrash, science, Talmud, the worldview of our movement for Love and Justice, our proposed New Bottom Line, etc.). Others may prefer giving 4 hours of time to babysit (once COVID–19 subsides). Still, others may want to go give 4 hours of time to help bring order to a home or office, or simply to help somebody clean a home or office. The possibilities of giving our time are truly without limit because each of us is unique and special. Some of these promises would have to be in the form of an IOU because of the pandemic, but offering time to somebody may potentially cheer you. You also will be reclaiming the power to give without a corporate intermediary. Giving in this manner is good for you, your friends, families, and neighbors, and it is good for Earth!
Giving is a wonderful thing to do, but separate it from spending money on material things as much as possible. Attend to the feelings of those who don’t have families or friendship circles wide and thick enough to give them a feeling that they have others who really care about them. Visit a homeless encampment or give to an agency that distributes food to the hungry (there are many in every town or city who are hungry). Charitable giving is a good way to celebrate. And if you appreciate the messages you get from Tikkun, you could even make a federal tax-deductible contribution to us www.tikkun.org/donate.
Please do not read this commentary as critiquing somebody who spends money to buy gifts for others. In trying to shift the culture, I don’t intend to put down anyone who continues to struggle with breaking from its money-orientation. My intention is to promote movement toward what I call in Revolutionary Love “A New Bottom Line of love, kindness, generosity, caring for each other and for the earth, responding to all creatures as manifestations of the sacred, and responding to our universe with awe, wonder, and radical amazement.”
All of this is one small part of building a world of love and generosity, which is the goal of Tikkun, our interfaith and secular-humanist and atheist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives and our Movement for Love and Justice.
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