"Happy Holidays," or Whatever.... I Was Just Thinking by Don Huntington www.donwriteforyou.com 925-634-7927

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I’ve always had a fondness for the holiday season and begin singing carols the day after Halloween...

I thus, perhaps, escape a censure of Helen Keller, the most famous blind person who ever lived, when she said, “The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.” The grim reality is that if we don’t find Christmas in our hearts, we will search for it in vain beneath the most elaborate Christmas tree.

For a person raised in my tradition, the reality that underlies and gives content to the season’s joy-filled celebrations, delicious food, lovely decorations, and pleasant emotions is the image of a rude stable with its miscellaneous assortment of animals, shepherds, kings, and angels who gaze towards a young couple standing behind a feed trough in which lies the tiny figure of an infant who is, in fact the Cosmic King come to show us the way to God. The central figure lying there in the hay constitutes the true spirit of Christmas.

Any truly genuine holiday cheer is no temporary seasonal affectation, but the response of a naturally bright temperament to the cheerfulness of the season. In other words, the season doesn’t create joy within our hearts, but only provides a release for the gift of divine positive energy that has come to us as a gift.

Of course, many people miss the point of the holidays. The theme song of some children seems to be “’Tis the season to be greedy.” For some adults the celebration of Jesus’ birth provides an excuse to indulge in gluttony, avarice, and pride. The holiday season creates a pretext for people to make purchases beyond the limit of their budget, for engaging in lavish decorating and party hosting beyond their resources, and for indulging in excessive partying beyond the bounds of good sense.
Other people dread the approach of the holiday season as a time of anguish and pain. Many people suffering from a recent bereavement, for example, can scarcely bear to have their sense of desolation driven home by expectations that they be cheerful. Moreover, holiday parties and good cheer simply raise the awareness of other disaffected and poorly socialized people concerning the social network that is so obviously missing from their lives. I am moved by the inability of such people to rejoice along with me. I make allowance for them, try to be sensitive to their grief or their oppressive isolation, and remain ready to reach out to them as I have opportunity to do so.

I’m disturbed by the trend — that seems to be dying down, thank God — of angry Christians who respond in a disgusted, affronted, and unlovely “I’m Mad As Heck and I’m Not Going to Take it Anymore” manner towards a simple, “Happy Holidays” greeting from an innocent store clerk, neighbor, or fellow worker. Such inappropriate attempts to “Keep Christ in Christmas” sometimes serve to drive His Spirit away.

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