It’s Christmas Day, and try as I may to ignore it for the purposes of a column, I can’t seem to evade that simple, irrevocable fact.
It’s Christmas Day, and depending on who you are, where you are, who is or isn’t there with you and what you believe about the 25th day of December, it may be a wonderful day, a horrible day, a meaningful day, a great TV day, a terrible TV day, a loud, busy day, a lonely, dreary day, an emotional day or just another day – But there’s no escaping the fact that it is Christmas Day.
So, near as I can tell, here’s the one thing that every, single one of us, regardless of today’s circumstances, can agree upon: We aren’t dead. I know this to be true because every applicable marketing study and poll reveals that very few dead people read this column.
So what? Well, it’s Christmas Day! So what?? No, try “NOW what?”
Right: Now what? What now? What next? The end of the world, in another form or in another place or in another way, depending upon which talking head has captured our imaginations. All bad. All crises. The end of freedom, the end of capitalism, the end of everything we’ve ever known. Crime, viciousness, brutality.
Greed.
All around us, all the time, 24/7: What was wrong, what is wrong, what will be wrong – Fear motivates! Us vs. them! – And you know who’s right, right? Sure: Us!
Us. We. And “we” are all having Christmas Day.
And every single one of us feels very…small. Powerless. Inconsequential. There’s no way that any of us can possibly solve all the world’s horrible problems, so we just agree with whomever seems less harmful and call it “us.” Or just ignore it all, in the name of “mental health” – I get that.
And we hope. We hope for something better, something saner, something more civilized. We hope for a time when people take care of one another and share the burdens. We hope for a society in which people encounter people as “people,” not political, philosophical or religious partisans – People. People can be good and decent people, and still disagree. Bigotry, in the name of being correct, is still bigotry.
We hope that people we are supposed to be able to believe will just tell us the truth. We hope that we will be able to vote for someone instead of against someone. We hope that common sense will become a common commodity and we hope that aging really will be an achievement, and not an affliction.
We hope that people will still hold doors open for other people. We hope that people will say “please” and “thank-you” – And mean it.
We hope that people will share when they can, take when they need to and be able to remember which is which.
We hope for fewer raised voices and blood pressures and we hope for gentleness.
We hope for privacy as we hope for “community,” and we hope more for health care than we do for health insurance.
We hope for dignity, personal responsibility and self-determination – And we wonder how many laws we really need.
And we wonder when we’ll remember that we are our brothers’ keepers.
We hope that people will stop doing bad things for good reasons and good things for bad reasons.
We hope that we can take care of ourselves and take care of the caretakers. We hope that longevity won’t be a curse and we hope that the good don’t die young.
We wonder if our leaders will ever figure out that the planet isn’t getting any bigger and we hope that the babies will be fed. And clothed.
And loved.
We hope for patience, civility and courtesy, while we hope for honesty.
And we hope that “we” get so big that we totally consume “them!”
We hope for love, in all its many colors.
We hope, because it’s Christmas Day.
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