viz. - Christmas

Presenting the Family: A Holiday Ritual

Calliope — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 17:31:45 +0000

Image Credit: minted.com

Choosing a holiday card is apparently a big deal. I was not aware of this until my sister (married with two children) called me in distress over designing her card. As we talked and I pressed her to explain how this could possibly be stressful, I learned that the tradition of sending out greeting cards around the holidays isn't just about spreading good cheer. The rise of the photocard has made holiday salutations into an important opportunity for families to make a positive visual impression on friends and relatives. This surprised me a little because I had naively assumed the intent was to express one's hot-cocoa-induced feelings for the cards' recipients. But considering that media today is increasingly social, targeted, and customizable, the practice of creating a visual brand for one's family and sharing it with others should come as no surprise at all.

Image Credit: minted.com

What's interesting about the way this tradition has evolved is its correspondence to an emphasis on carefully mediated photography in popular social media (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.). The photocard puts the family portrait front-and-center, replacing seasonal or religious iconography with family faces; and the photos that are included are often professionally taken, or at the very least posed, cropped, edited, and thoughtfully arranged. In my sister's circle of thirty-something friends, it's much more common to exchange customized photocards than store-bought cards with a candid snapshot thrown inside. Her friends use custom stationary sites like minted.com and tinyprints.com to create their distinct family look with carefully chosen photos and a prominent byline (see "The Jones Family 2012," and "The Laurants" above). Affixing the family name to a controlled, manufactured image of its members gives the card a corporate feel; the examples above could easily be ads for clothing stores (just replace "The Laurants" with Eddie Bauer or J. Crew).

These cards aren't very subtle about their aims. Their purpose is to construct a familial identity just as Facebook pages and online bios construct identities for individuals. The fact that they perform an authorized, identity-building function for families--groups as opposed to individuals--makes them fascinating and unique social objects. As I looked through pages of sample cards on the aforementioned sites, I tried to think of other widely-observed rituals or spaces in which families present carefully crafted images of themselves. Aside from engagement photos, and possibly birth announcements, which these photocards clearly draw upon, I could not think of many other occasions for publicly presenting a pre-fab image of the nuclear family. And then I remembered those stick figure families.

Image Credit: gorestruly.com

You know, the pictographic sticker-inventories of families displayed on the back of cars (see above). At first these bare representations might strike you as fundamentally different than the holiday photocards, which include a much more intimate portrait of the family. But I suspect that the decision to put these stickers on the back of one's car is related to the basic impulse behind the photocard: to advertise that you have a family, indicate its size, show that it is happy and thriving, and embrace group identity over individuality.

Image Credit: minted.com

Holiday cards that double as yearly newsletters seem to combine intimate presentations of the family with statements about their size, uniformity, group behavior. In the past, families might have sat down together during the holidays to write a long, usually humorous missive about what they experienced or accomplished that year. Now, sites like Minted encourage us to create and share infographics that measure our family's growth in stats and figures.

And now I will try my hardest not to leave you with an anti-commercialist, Grinch-like message, nor a moralizing one (even though these are two of my favorite postures). I will admit that after spending time on the virtual Hallmark aisle of our day, I can understand where my sister is coming from. Projecting an image of one's family is a delicate affair, and not an easy thing to opt out of. Almost any card, whether it's store-bought, handmade, digital, or photographic, will say something about how you want your family's values, traditions, class and lifestyle to be perceived. So choose wisely, and have a wonderful holiday season.

Visualizing the War on Christmas: Acknowledging the Pre-Christian Origins of Winter Festival Imagery

Todd Battistelli — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 19:41:22 +0000

Image Credit: Fox News

Every holiday season conservative political activists trying to maintain Christian supremacy in the United States bemoan an alleged "War On Christmas." According to their conspiracy theories, evil secularlists lurk behind every corner, ready to pounce on any expression of the Christian Christmas tradition. For the activists, store employees who wish customers a "happy holiday" are not trying to be inclusive. Rather, these cheerless corporate-mandated greetings serve as another boot of tyranny standing on the neck of American Christendom.

Image Credit: nknh

Such bluster is par for the course when the religious right are concerned: it is as loud as it is baseless. However, the hullabaloo does contribute to the marginalization and under-appreciation of the diverse historical sources of the imagery currently associated with Christmas that originated with various European celebrations of the winter solstice.

Image Credit: Simon Phipps

Despite what certain bumper stickers and church signs might tell you, Jesus is not the reason for the season. Early Christian celebrations of Christmas appropriated preexisting winter festival traditions, such as Roman Saturnalia or the Norse celebrations that preceded Yule.

Image Credit: Aaron Jacobs

These solstice celebrations marked the return of longer days and the promise of a bountiful growing season. Evergreen trees and shrubs, such as the pine tree and holly bush, serve as a reminder that life only slumbers but does not perish in the coldest, darkest days of winter.

Image Credit: Duncan Hall

Pagan winter traditions, though, aren't all light and joy. If you think coal in a stocking would be a disappointment, just be thankful that you don't have to deal with Krampus.

Let me close by wishing all a happy holiday season, no matter what holiday you celebrate, and offer my hopes for peace on Earth and goodwill to all.

Image Credit: Seattle Atheists

Coffee Cups and Acronyms...'Tis the Season

Jay Voss — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Image Credit: nomnomclub.com

The Starbucks Christmas cups have been out in full force for what seems like several weeks, although I’ve delayed writing about them until after Thanksgiving. If last year is any measure, I should be writing about these cups at exactly the right moment. Last year, at the Starbucks in and around UT’s campus, their coffees reverted to the boring white cups nearly a full week before Christmas. Whereas the area’s students had gotten in the mood for Christmas well in advance of Thanksgiving, at the exact moment they were turning in the last of their final papers, at the exact moment when responsible students might let their thoughts drift towards dreams of sugar plum ferries, Yuletide cheer vanished from the cups of their gingerbread lattes. This strange vanishing has made me suspicious of Starbucks’ holiday cups.

Image Credit: www.neontommy.com

My cynical conclusion is that these cups come out at a very calculated moment in order to someway enhance Black Friday sales. American holiday consumers have long been known to energize their excessive shopping experiences with massive amounts of caffeine. What better way to shop for an event that’s just about a month away than to do so ingesting holiday-themed caffeine with images of people sledding and partridges flying in the periphery? I do enjoy Starbucks’ Christmas cups, and so I hope that none of this sounds too condescending. Is it irreverent to comment that the cup’s artwork looks a little bit like a computer generated depiction of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker? To be honest, I’m not sure what other images one could use for such a project. A blogger over at neontommy.com has suggested that the Starbucks nutcracker looks a lot like Guy Fawkes, mascot of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Image Credit: www.neontommy.com

Speaking of Occupy Wall Street, all reports suggest that Occupy UT Austin will be gearing up after the holidays. Tents should be propping up on campus sometime around Martin Luther King Day. Whatever you think about the Occupy movement, I can’t help but point something out. All the cool kids on facebook and elsewhere have started referring to the Occupy movement as “OWS.” This acronym is five syllables. “Occupy Wall Street” is also five syllables. So, essentially, it takes the same amount of time to say “OWS” as it does to say “Occupy Wall Street.” What is it about acronyms in the twenty-first century? Does making “Occupy Wall Street” an acronym somehow enhance the movement’s credibility? Maybe, like Starbucks’ red Christmas cups, it’s the visual appearance that counts.

Okay, okay…folks started referring to “Occupy Wall Street” as “OWS” because the acronym is the movement’s Twitter hash tag. A friend sitting next to me just corrected my post. But, you know, it sure is ironic.