High consciousness Christmas gifts

[bejapuskas]

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to share this here, because I am so excited. When I came back home from India for Christmas, my younger brother told me it is about time we buy our parents something for Christmas.

I asked myself what kind of Christmas gift can we buy to increase their awareness about politics. I asked my brother when we were in a bookstore, why dont we buy them a book about LGBTQIA identities? He agreed and we found an amazing collection of short stories about homosexuality, bisexuality, binary and nonbinary transgender, and even aromantic and asexual people by 11 Czech authors called "Všechny barvy duhy", which means "All Colors of the Rainbow". 

Even before I went back to India, we all read one of the stories about a girl who went on a "date" with a 50 years old guy who later showed up to be her mum. This was before we went to sleep, it was a really nice experience to read something like that before sleep as a family for bonding. 

However, after I left, my mum, who is a Czech and German teacher, told me, that she taught her class this short story and that they really liked it. Some of the students reached out to her and asked where they could buy the book. I think including queer literature can help people question and find their authentic self.

I am really proud of my mum for doing this, the Czech education system and basically most of the education systems are rather conservative and they do not use literature to advocate for conscious politics and local political problems this way. I thought this would be an interesting post to show how Christmas gifts can create positive impact on the world and how one can be an active citizen and a political activist even through a 9-5 job.

Let me know what you think about this, share your similar stories and communicate with your families and friends about how they could implement this lesson in their career life and family life.

[puporing]

Your mom is pretty cool and open-minded, especially like you say given the environment she's in.

It's an interesting topic, I have gifted books before to give the other a new perspective or shift that I think may help them in general.. they sort of have to be already receptive to me doing that like your mom. I think books are wonderful as gifts I remember after reading the Complete Conversations with God books I wanted to just give a copy to everyone around me!

I also sort of took the 'opposite' direction by simply not gifting on those occasions unless it felt right to. It's not so much an active thing I'm doing, it's more like dropping the thing - the tradition around it, or that I should/have to, not based on authentic feeling around gifting to someone in particular. So nowadays when I do want to give someone something it just happens spontaneously on any day and I don't feel obligated to which is liberating. 

[bejapuskas]

@puporing  I understand what you mean, good point!