The season is upon us now...we have perhaps never needed this season so much before, and I for one am plunging headlong into it. Trump really did bring back Christmas - not because he mandated it, but because in the face of the nightmare that he and his minions are, a little escapism right now is maybe all that will save our sanity. I don't care whether it's angels or Santa or Rudolph, someone please help because, "We need a little Christmas right this very minute..."
I am sure that someone from a different tradition must look at this image and laugh at the sentimentality. I have done plenty of this myself. But desperate times, as Dickens knew, require desperate measures. Whether 33% of American will admit it or not, the American constitution happens to be on trial right now, and more than that, democracy in the West. We don't yet know if it is going to hold up, and if it doesn't, we're in for a coup from the ideology of the Vlad Putins of the world. America the Great is going to turn into another autocracy, and it was already well on the way to being one, at least a plutocracy, even before the idea of running for president ever wormed its way into the addled brain of Donald Trump.
So, we are depending on our sleigh bells this year, our Frosty the Snowman, and chestnuts roasting by an open fire. We need to know that when Scrooge wakes up, there really is still time to set everything right.
Merry Christmas everyone! Whatever Christmas means, it has to do with an open heart, a setting aside of our mechanistic view of the universe that chases off all magic; it is the time for a little shared humanity right now, for gifts and giving. I don't even care about the commerciality of it all. We just need to sustain some measure of hope. Yesterday I gave money to a homeless guy and his dog sitting twenty feet away from a Salvation Army person ringing their bell and asking for donations to help the needy. This Christmas we are all the needy, and what we need is the intangible gift of cheer. Got any of that in your red collection kettle?
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