It certainly won't be long now. The long awaited climax that began on the marketing side over five months ago has almost arrived. It's hard to believe how quickly the time has passed, and what is even more remarkable is how little this year's Christmas is going to be different than last year's or most Christmases before that. Apart from individual catastrophes and unexpected blessings, we're every bit as divisive, argumentative, confrontational, unyielding, insistent, aggressive, and, yes, violent as we ever were. This is true nationally, politically, communally, and individually. If all of us were better people than we were before, the world would be in better shape, but it isn't.
In spite of all the marketing hype, Christmas is about reflecting, being thankful, caring, and sharing. It is season in which Love, Peace, and Hope should abound, but I'm seeing -- and feeling -- very little of that this year. Oh, we've got our houses decorated, we're going to make another big family meal, we're going to eat too much, drink too much, and, before it's all over, complain too much and get upset too much.
I, for one, am not willing to trade the holiday in or much less give it up just because so many folks just "don't get it". I can't repeat it often enough: it is time to recognize just how much all of us (not just us in the West, I mean ALL of us) have in common: you've got family members who are more challenging that you think you can handle, well so do they and so do I; you have self-serving, out-of-touch political "leaders", well so do we; you're being made to work more and more but less and less to show for it, well, the same's true here; you are sick of the lack of commonsense and decency around you, well so am I; you wish there were more peace and less war on the planet, well so do I; you wish other people could be more like you, for then there would be fewer problems in the world, well, no, it doesn't work like that.
Christmas is the biggest Christian holiday we have (though why it's not Easter still makes me wonder, a lot). Yes, over the years it has been secularized and commercialized beyond recognition. There is not, nor has there ever been, a War on Christmas. In fact, the very notion of a "war" in relation to this particular holiday is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard, and insisting that others celebrate like you do is, well, simply narrow-minded and unreasonable.
In the West, this holiday has been the high point of the year for the last two millennia. This holiday is Christian because almost 2 billion people the world over believe that Christ, their redeemer and, as they believe, the world's salvation, was born on this day. This individual (and whether he really existed or whether he was actually born this day is so irrelevant that it's not worth mentioning) spent his short life preaching, teaching, and healing. He cared for the outcast, the downtrodden, the abused, the sick, the needy, the infirm. His message, evidenced not only by words but by deeds, was as simple as you can get: love whomever you meet as much as you love yourself and show it by helping and caring. What is so difficult about that?
The message in itself makes sense, regardless of whether you believe he was the one G-d sent to save the world. Why you act this way is completely and utterly irrelevant, so it doesn't matter how others greet you for the season. If you're offended by someone saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", you simply don't get any of it at all. It's not what we say that makes a difference in the world. Talk is cheap. What matters is what we do. The person's birthday that is the reason for the holiday rejected no one, was offended by no one, and was willing to help and heal anyone and everyone he met. It's this story -- whether true or not -- that is the reason we should be stopping to think and reflect just what kind of standards we have in our own lives, and that is why we should try so hard to make others' lives happier at least once a year.
Christmas is a good thing, regardless of why we celebrate. Too bad so many of us don't even get it just once a year.
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