Peace Is A Wish Our Hearts Make

As someone who wallows in politics, in opining, in making fun of those who, if I were the violent type, would be subject to ear pulls and nose-tweaking, I'm still surprised when, like clockwork, these are my thoughts at Christmas time:

Deliver me, please, from anger, from ugliness, and keep these peaceful moments coming.

You may have noticed that it's been a while since I've written about politics. (Better than a fortnight, I see.)  But I haven't been silent.  Lord, no!  I've been commenting and arguing in small doses, but until now I haven't felt the urge to write a real post.  Judging from past experience, it's only a passing phase, but it feels good not be angry at the world and all its cruelties, its craziness, its Trumps and Fiorinas, its Onward Christmas Warriors.

I expect this will go on until after the Holidays.  We've closed up our house in the northern boonies and are in the city with family and friends now. Love is in the air.  Hugs, giggly kids, heavenly desserts. . .  It's those Hallmark moments.  They're killing me!

It's hard for me to be angry right now, even at the people who deserve it. When I heard Lindsey Graham was quitting the race, I even found a tiny soft spot just for him.  Aawww.  Nearing the last of the old guard.  He may be a war-monger and a bit of a fibber, but he's not rude, crude, or a low-life.  He may never say anything I can agree with, but when he speaks my tongue doesn't catch fire, my eyes don't bulge, and steam doesn't come out of my ears.  Glad tidings, if not good will.

I can't talk right now about Governor Snyder, Michigan's anti-government legislature, and the lead-poisoning of children in Flint, caused by an emergency manager who decided on his own, with a big thumbs up from the Gov, that saving a few bucks was far more important than the health and safety of an entire city.  It's my own Yuletide promise forcing me to keep the outrage down for the holidays, but it's festering, it's in there and it will come out.

I will leave it to others to comment on Donald Trump calling Hillary's longish bathroom break during Saturday night's debate "disgusting".  You won't hear it from me that it sounds like Donald the Magnificent has perfected the art of peefraining.

I'll leave aside the talk of guns until after the ball has dropped at midnight, the start of a brand new year, unless the unthinkable happens again, in which case, I'm in.  Big time.  But here's hoping.

It's peace I'm after now.  A moment's respite.  A slowing-down, a deep breath, a calm and steady drifting through the sights and sounds of the Holiday season.  A moratorium on palpitations.

But peace is more than a single mindset, more than a quest for calm on a few special days. It's a planetary necessity.  It's how we got here and how we'll stay.

I felt it yesterday as NBC's Hoda Kotb hosted an interfaith panel of women.  She asked three spiritual leaders--Christian, Jew and Muslim--if peace is possible. (Watch it here.)  Peace, they said, is love.

And so it is.

May peace, hope, and love be yours throughout these coming days.  If not, there's always next year.  We'll work on it together.

______________

Posted, too, at Dagblog and Crooks & Liars.

It's Hard to Be Merry At Christmas When It's "Merry Christmas" Or Else

The last time I wrote about Christmas I thought I was being pretty polite, considering the message I was getting from my friends and relatives and neighbors.  To wit:  How DARE you even THINK about not wishing me a Merry Christmas!  Which, of course, led me to respond by pleading "not guilty"--which caused me to tell a lie at Christmas since I didn't feel the least bit guilty. Why would I?

I say "Merry Christmas" quite a bit at Christmas time.  I've been saying "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" ever since I could say the words, which, I'm guessing, was around December, 1939, when I was just over two years old.  Sometimes I say "Have a great holiday!" without mentioning which holiday I mean when I say that.  There are times when I say "Happy New Year!", forgetting to say "Merry Christmas", even though it may be several days before Christmas.  I can't help it.  It just comes out.

 For weeks now I've been getting those admonishing Facebook posts and emails about keeping Christ in Christmas by saying "Merry Christmas". (As if, if we don't keep repeating those words, everyone will forget who Christ was.) 

I hadn't planned on writing yet another blog about the "war" on Christmas.  Even Bill O'Reilly himself is getting bored with it. I can tell.  (He has now declared the war is over and he won it.) But today I received the email that was the straw that finally broke it.

It was an email from a dear friend and the subject line read, " MERRY CHRISTMAS!"  The picture that topped it was an old fashioned Currier & Ives etching with digital snowflakes falling, falling, falling.  A colorful "Merry Christmas" banner arched over the top with a bright red ribbon wreathed with holly and ivy.

So lovely. . .

And this is what it said:

I will be making a conscious effort to wish everyone

a Merry Christmas this year ...

My way of saying that I am celebrating

The birth Of Jesus Christ.

So, I am asking my email buddies,

if you agree with me, to please do the same.

And if you'll pass this on to

Your email buddies, and so on... maybe we can prevent one more

American tradition from being lost in the sea of "Political Correctness".

What. On. Earth.  Really??  At risk of never receiving another Merry Christmas greeting from any of you ever again, I'm going to say this and I hope you will take it in the spirit in which it is given:

What is wrong with you people?

It's Christmas!  Millions of us love this season.  We look forward to it, we read about it, we sing about it, we who are parents can't wait to experience it with our children.  We plan, we decorate, we bake, we go shopping, we party.  We find a million different excuses to hug each other.  We hang mistletoe just so we can kiss under it.  

We fill food baskets and donate money because it's Christmas and there is nothing sadder than the thought of someone not enjoying the holidays.  Our happiness is so acute we smile at perfect strangers and wish them good tidings.  Joy, my friends, is busting out all over.

Many of us only go into a church at Christmas time;  some of us not at all.  I love the story of the baby Jesus.  I love Christmas carols. (Last night I watched the St. Olaf Choir Christmas Concert from Norway on PBS.  It was beautiful--a mix of the sacred and the secular--like Christmas.) I love the happy faces.  The candles.  Nice.  All nice.

But let's talk about Christmas tradition:

December 25 is closer to the pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice than it is to Jesus' birth, which most Christian scholars put nearer to summer, based on historic events.

The Christmas song "O Tannenbaum" was based on a 16th century tune, put to secular lyrics in 1824. 

Charles Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol" in 1843. While it ends with, "God bless us, every one!", it's a morality tale about the rich holding terrible power over the poor.

Irving Berlin, a Jewish songwriter, wrote "White Christmas" in the late 1930s and it became the most popular Christmas song of all time.

Charles Schultz's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was released in 1965 and has been shown every year since.

We love "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Let It Snow" and "Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas".  We love red and green and silver and gold.  We love twinkly lights and Santa and snowmen.  And elves.  We love elves.  WE LOVE CHRISTMAS!

And you're spoiling it for us.

It takes all the fun out of it when you think you get to decide for us how we're supposed to spend Christmas.  For you, Jesus is the reason for the season. Amen to that.  For us, it's a wonderful, happy holiday that is open to so many interpretations you could get the idea it's mainly about peace on Earth, goodwill toward mankind.

But we would never know it now, what with this sudden ruckus about putting Christ back in Christmas--as if there were sinister factions out there trying to erase him for all eternity, the main weapon being two words: "Happy Holidays".

If Christmas means Christ to you, there is no better time than the Yuletide to celebrate him.  But you simply cannot butt into our celebrations, Grinch-like, throwing wet blankets all over our happy days.  If there is a war on Christmas, it's a one-sided battle and it's coming from you. You can have it.  For me, it's the happiest, happiest time of the year.  I feel love in the air and I plan on enjoying every minute of it.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and a joyous New Year.


(Cross-posted at Alan Colmes' Liberaland and dagblog.  Featured at Crooks & Liars.

The Quiet Joy of Christmas

December 25, Christmas Day, is reserved by Christians as the day they celebrate Jesus Christ's birth.  There is no real indication that the Christian Messiah was actually born on that day, but it was decided long ago, and there it is.   But little by little the reason for the season was crowded out; St. Nicholas came along and then morphed into Coca Cola Santa.  Pine trees were brought into houses and decorated with ornaments having more to do with sweet and cute than with Jesus.  Mistletoe hung over doors, candles twinkled in windows, and Currier and Ives made a fortune with their prints of winter scenes--a far stretch from the birthplace in Bethlehem.

The complaints about the secularization of Christmas have a certain legitimacy.  The celebration of a sacred birth has been usurped and turned into a holiday that bears no resemblance to the original intent.  Shopping is a major proponent of the new Christmas.  Drinking is right up there, too.  It wouldn't be Christmas without the traditional overindulgence.

But I maintain that there are enough joyous moments, quiet moments, loving moments--in fact, memorable moments at Christmas to keep the holiday sacred (as in protected and defended) in the hearts of Christians and non-Christians alike.   We love the lights and the music, the laughter of little kids, the connections with friends and family near and far away.

Let's face it; Christmas is prime time for cliches.  Even the hardest hearts succumb to Christmas.  (There is a reason Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is dragged out, re-read, or re-made year after year.  We need to pretend the Scrooges will come around, if even for one day. )

I love the memories of candle-lit Midnight masses.  I'm still thrilled by Christmas hymns; in fact, this old heathen's dream is to sit in the Mormon Tabernacle and listen up close and personal to the Tabernacle Choir singing "O Holy Night". 

Besides family images, it's the quiet winter scenes that, oddly, remind us of Christmas.  There is nothing religious about them, nothing having to do with the birth of a Messiah, but they stir feelings in us that we can't seem to do without this time of year. 

 

I wish love and joy and wonder to all.  I wish the weight of the world would come off the shoulders of those who are suffering, even today. I wish our memories would include them, even tomorrow.  I wish this wasn't just wishful thinking.

Merry Christmas.

'Tis the Season to be Liberal

It's Christmas morning, early, and we're lucky enough to have been awakened by the grandkids at 6 AM to see what Santa brought.  This year Santa had to go easy, but the kids didn't seem to notice at all.  They're in a warm house surrounded by people who adore them, their tummies are full, and Dollar Store stocking stuffers are keeping them amused.  They have no reason to be afraid.
They live near Detroit and have heard enough stories on the news and in their own schools to recognize that there are a lot of kids nearby who are a  lot worse off than they are.  There are kids who woke up afraid this morning, and will wake up afraid tomorrow morning, too.  There are some things that just should not be.

Last night we drove around the neighborhood after dark to look at the Christmas lights.  This is a neighborhood just 20 minutes from the center of Detroit where most of the residents are or were car company employees.  This is a neighborhood that has been hit hard.  I've talked about this place before, about the growing numbers of empty houses, red and green tags slapped on the doors--foreclosure notices dressed up in Christmas colors.  The lights are out for them.

Last Christmas season was already a hard one for some but there was still hope, and, though some of the usual Festive homes had dimmed, there were still enough to keep the sky above the neighborhood glowing.  This year there was no more pretending.  It takes a lot of power to keep the strings of lights on, to keep those puffy santas and snowmen inflated.  When times are tough, you have to weigh the luxuries.  In times like these, even electricity becomes a luxury.

No reminders needed around here about how the neighborhood is struggling, but last night it hit home with a punch.  We rolled past rows of dark houses, seeking out the few with doors and windows and roofs outlined with sparkling lights, the huge pine trees festooned with garlands of bright stars, the happy santas in their sleighs, signaling normality, hope, good cheer.   They were like oases on a barren landscape, and they were few and far between.

We are a country in need this Christmas day.   There are too many people going into the new year so much worse off than they were last year at this time.  If the true spirit of Christmas is giving, it makes it easy for those of us who still have something left to give.  We can give of our hearts, if nothing else.  We can do what we can to bring hope to people who can't see the light in front of them.  We can feed them, clothe them, house them; help them without judgment or pity but simply as one friend, one citizen to another, and be the better for it.

As the New Year arrives, we can resolve to use our strength to defeat the forces that keep our people down.  We can make that promise because it's in us to recognize that the power of our country is in its people.  If we let them down, we've let our country down.  It's the message, the spirit of Christmas--the one we've heard before, but worth repeating:

Peace on earth, good will toward all.

And remember the children, please, for they shall lead us.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here.)