Merry Christmas, everyone.
Take time to
disengage from the commercial nightmare this holiday (i.e. holy day) has
become.
Take time to hold your loved ones close, to be generous of
spirit, to "see" your friends and family by taking memory snapshots of
the smiles, and to say "I love you."
Life is fragile and joy fleeting . .
. but every moment spent with love is a deposit in Eternity.
Two-thirds
of the way through the corporately homogenized *HalloThankMas season: a veritable blur of consumerism on steroids, appeals to greed and gadgets
as the keys to happiness.
It can be . . . maddening, depressing, frustrating and leave your soul black and blue. And if you watched TV news coverage of "Black Friday" -- and mobs lined up to scrum through the doors for a bargain on electronics, toys and whatever else will not survive the first week of January as a source of visceral joy -- you know this "happiest of seasons" can leave you physically black and blue, too.
Or bleeding, in the hospital, with a bullet in your gullet.
Still, I refuse to surrender Christmas to commercialism in my heart. And, that's where the message, and person of
the season should live, thrive and be honored . . . if we do that, it
should gush out of us in patience, understanding, love and generosity of
spirit, action and thought.
It should; but that, my friends, is
entirely up to us.
*HalloThankMas: OK, I made it up. Musing over how goblins, turkeys, elves and Santa seemed to have merged into one, months-long orgy of spending and partying, I even suggested just coming with with a suitable mascot . . . perhaps a vampire turkey in a red suit.
