I’ve noticed in the past few years that more and more online retailers are offering an “opt out of emails” feature prior to certain holidays. Several weeks back, for example, I started getting ones with the subject line “Rather not see Mother’s Day-related advertisements?” and the enclosed message allowed subscribers to temporarily remove their contact information. Now, I know some might roll their eyes and think, “For heaven’s sake, just because some people are offended by something doesn’t mean we all have to excise it from our lives,” and I get that. The pendulum, in some cases, does seem to have swung wide with cancel culture and people might be experiencing compassion fatigue. But I’ll take a stand on this one and say that I don’t know of any mother (or human) who’d want to deny others the chance to celebrate those they love; they might, though, have their own personal and significant reasons for wanting a holiday to pass them by. That companies are realizing this and doing their small part in respecting people’s experiences is a compassionate move.
Because Mother’s Day is what initiated my thinking on this topic, I’ll use it as an example. There are people who have recently lost a mother or a child. Some are in a season of estrangement from a mother or child. Some have poured their whole hearts into raising children who have hurt them, and others have unhealthy relationships with their mothers. Some may have spent years trying to become a mother and haven’t had the blessing of marrying and gaining “bonus” kids. In short, there are more circumstances than I can even imagine that would make comments like, “How are you celebrating Mother’s Day?” or “What did your family do for you for Mother’s Day?” cut deep.
Of course well-meaning comments and questions aren’t limited to holidays, although I think I first realized how vastly different our experiences can be when I became a teacher and heard students asking “What are you doing during the Christmas break?” or “What did you get for Christmas?” and saw the expressions on faces of students who dreaded an extended break in unstable homes or who anticipated receiving nothing at all for Christmas (or perhaps their families didn’t celebrate Christmas). For years people have asked me why I’m a vegetarian and if it’s against my religion to eat meat. Those questions never bothered me, but they might feel invasive to some. Comments like, “Well, I bet if you tried a steak you’d love it!” were sincere, because the speakers themselves loved steak and couldn’t imagine anyone who didn’t.
Similarly, for all my child-bearing years I’ve been asked when I plan to have children, why I don’t have children, and the ones that actually do kind of shock me: “Does it make you sad that you don’t have kids?” and “Don’t you think it’s selfish not to have kids?” I’d bet a week’s worth of gourmet coffee drinks that if I’ve regularly been on the receiving end of those questions, other women (or humans) have, too. And for as many of us who have been put on the spot trying to construct a polite reply, there are just that many different answers to those questions, if we were being honest and not tactful.
I don’t know that there’s one correct way to approach or talk about holidays that are special to us. Certainly, we should celebrate them and the people who are honored on those days and not feel we have to mute our joy because others might not feel the same as we do. Perhaps a compromise could be this: for the people whose lives include details of which we are unaware, we just send them a little extra love on holidays and leave the conversational door open for them to elaborate on their own festivities or to decline. We’ll never go wrong by being gentle with people’s hearts.
PartWolf 