What Is The Meaning Of Christmas? (Or Is There One?)

Christmas time is almost here. (Imagine my exuberance.)
The original, religiously-based meaning of the day (the birth of the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, who would bring all mankind to salvation) has been watered down so much by our secular society that it’s almost gone. Mostly, in today’s world, it’s the culmination of a three-to-four-week feeding frenzy of consumer insanity, greed, violence, inhumane behavior to animals as well as to fellow humans, apathy, grinding poverty, depression, suicidal thoughts and actions, anger, and other “negative” aspects.
All told, this has never been my favorite time of year, for reasons I’ve expressed elsewhere and elsewhen. Celebration has never been my strong suit.
Can someone tell me what about the end of the year – call it solstice, Yule, Saturnalia, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or whatever else – is good? Because, maybe because of my own lack of vision, I just don’t see it.
What would happen if there were none of the holidays at the end of the calendar year? Or, for that matter, what would happen if there were no holidays at all? No Independence Day… no Easter… no New Year’s Day… no Labor Day… no Memorial Day… no Halloween. How would stores survive? How would we keep commerce going when every day is like every other day?
Stores would have no emotional “hooks” to try and get you in and spend your money. What would happen then?
Would the feeding frenzy fade… or would it escalate to a constant, high level?
It may be an interesting experiment… but, personally, I’d rather just keep it on the Einsteinean “thought experiment” level. Things have changed enough in the last fifty years without this sort of tinkering.
Besides… could you trust the government, or the heads of major corporations, to implement this sort of policy in a manner that would be fair, equitable, and beneficial?
I didn’t think so.
So ponder… but don’t act unless you’re as sure as you can be that it’s an action that will promote the general welfare, and not just line somebody’s pocket even more.
To misquote Dickens, “God help us… every one!”

Questions 67 and 68…

The shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut last Friday, who killed twenty innocent children, six adults, and himself,  was purported to have a mental illness that greased the skids to send this young man down his personal path to hell.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would view someone who kills his own mother, while she sleeps, with a bullet to the head as a coward.  I would view this person, breaking into an elementary school with an assault rifle and two pistols and opening fire on defenseless, innocent children and adults as a coward.  I would view this person, who killed himself with a gunshot before the police could arrest or subdue him, as a coward.

That would be under ordinary circumstances.  But the mental illness this shooter suffered caused a twisting of the reality the shooter perceived.  We may never know exactly what was in the shooter’s mind… but we can, and will, pry, dig, and speculate from the evidence we uncover.

The evidence is showing, also, that the true cowards are crawling out of the woodwork in the wake of this tragedy… the Westboro Baptist Church, who protest at high-visibility funerals (such as those of our military KIA), claiming that because our country is tolerant of gay rights, God called them to yell things at the mourners such as “God hates fags” and that our soldiers (and others) are dying because God is punishing the United States of America, this selfsame Westboro Baptist Church intends to protest at the funerals and memorial services for these twenty-six dead.

Were I a more vindictive man, or uncaring about my future, I would let the Westboro scum assemble, and then do something that I would in no way regret later.  And that’s as far as I will say.  The stench of hypocrisy almost overpowers the stink of cowardice in their case, but in both instances it can’t be missed.

And coming from a military family, where duty, honor, and country are as necessary to life as food, air, and water, the gall of these people to actually be proud of their cowardice is an affront to all my family and my wife’s family stood (and stand) for.

My wife says that there must be a special place in hell for people such as the Westboro scum; I wonder if there are new additions to Dante Alighieri’s nine circles.  And if there aren’t, where can I put in a bid for the construction contract?