I love you Grandma but that was NOT OKAY.

I just got the notification card from the donation she made in my name as a birthday present and it reawakened my anger and hurt over what she did. It reads:

During this joyful time of celebration, a gift was given - in your honor.

To share in Christ’s abundant blessings, a special gift was given to Compassion International to help the world’s impoverished children.

We pray that this gift brings joy to you, as well as the compassion-assisted children and their families who receive its benefits.

In celebration of Christ’s many gifts.

Now, you may be thinking, what’s so offensive about that? Why am I so angry? Poor children are benefiting!

• To start, for the most shallow reason, I am an Atheist and she donated to a Christian organization in my name without a second thought. This is highly inconsiderate of my personal beliefs when I am never anything but considerate of hers, to the point of attending ceremonies with her on holidays when she feels it’s important to be with family.
• Next, I do not believe in religion-based charity organizations. I feel that religion has no place in true charity work and that proselytizing to children and adults who cannot afford to say no or who are not educated about or presented with any other choices is incredibly immoral. This is made worse by the fact that my quick check of Compassion International’s website showed me this: “Compassion International exists as a Christian child advocacy ministry that releases children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enables them to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adults.
  
  Founded by the Rev. Everett Swanson in 1952, Compassion began providing Korean War orphans with food, shelter, education and health care, as well as Christian training.”
  
  This is not in any way okay. “Spiritual poverty” being implied to mean any non-Christian spirituality is a horrible, horrible idea that erases the validity of the beliefs of the cultures these children are raised in and smacks of an uncomfortable level of brainwashing and the desire to stamp out any non-Christian beliefs in children with no one else to turn to.
• Their website and the card I received are plastered with poverty porn of starving children of color and their white savior sponsor families. With no exception, the children portrayed to be in need of saving are non-white and the sponsorship families are white Christians.
• The fact that the card “pray[s] that this gift bring joy to you” really rubs me the wrong way. Charity is not about giving privileged white bible-thumpers the warm fuzzies because omgz, they’re so kind that they sent money to the little brown children and they can tell their friends how good they are! Charity is not a present that you give in the name of another privileged person to give them the warm fuzzies and make them feel like a better person. Charity should be about a genuine desire to do good for others even if it never affects you in any way and you get no social benefit from it.
• Last, I am especially angry because, if she had asked, I could have given her 5 charities off of the top of my head that I would have been extremely grateful to see receive money. If she had given me a few minutes I could have given her a hugely long list. If she really desired to send money to this specific kind of cause, I would have willingly researched organizations that do similar work until I found one that I was comfortable donating to.

This is not a problem of me not caring about charities, this is a problem of disrespect and holding people and organizations to a higher ethical standard before I’m willing to throw money at them. I am incredibly grossed out and upset.

My biggest problem with Valentine's Day.

Don’t get me wrong, I like an excuse to eat candy and mock cheesy cards as much as anyone. That aspect of V-day is cutesy and fun and something the perpetual first grader in me still appreciates.

My biggest problem with Valentine’s Day, really, is my biggest problem with most holidays: being told when and how to celebrate, giving out stereotypical and expected gifts because you’ll be looked down upon if you don’t, and complaining if you don’t get presents from the right people is not a real celebration of anything. It’s a mockery of love and a cop out to romance.

If you have to be told to do something and pressured into it by advertising and culture, I highly doubt it actually matters. Taking someone out on a dinner date once a year because you’re supposed to doesn’t show love or appreciation. Flowers and chocolates are the gifts of someone who doesn’t know or care enough about their partner to get them something that actually, personally matters.

Real love - with all its fuck ups and messes and pain - is something that you should show and celebrate when it feels right, or when the object of your affection needs to be reminded. Not when other people tell you that you must. Not how other people tell you that you have to.

Celebrations only matter when they’re organic and genuinely meant to appreciate something worthwhile. Valentine’s Day isn’t a celebration that matters.