A Letter

Dear Christmas~

I guess I officially don’t understand you. I mean, I think I understand, but I understand the sentiment holding you up even more.
Sometimes, aren’t you a giant excuse to remember the loved ones you forget about all year long? That’s actually sad, but what if you weren’t there?
No, I think we’re definitely better off with Christmas in our lives; however, I also think that the manner of Christmas ought to be redefined.
In Korea, Christmas amounts to a bank holiday, a day off from school, and little more than a nice lunch with the family feeling good about life.
In America, Christmas lasts almost two months (sometimes more), costs a crap load, and has become the time of year that businesses rely on to pull them out of the red.
Okay, seriously, there has to be some kind of balance we can reach—Chanukah seems like a nice balance: one week, candles, remembrance, a few gifts, okay.
But why does religion have to get all mixed up with you?
So many people go to church one day a year.
Oh, and, um, Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25th, but it’s tradition isn’t it?
This is just something that I’m throwing out into the winds of possibility and might eventually regret: could you ever be about simple celebration of the beauty of being there and alive? Santa being the cartoonish representation of the giver of the free gift of existence?
You know, the more I think about it, you probably started as precisely that: a simple celebration in the heart of winter to remind humanity of the warmth that perpetually burns in the breast of all who are alive.
But Pagans and Christians all wish to have to their stamp on things and we wind up with the mind-bending reality of seeing the juxtaposition of a magic cartoon octogenarian master of breaking and entering and the birth of the son of god.
In what world would these two things normally be allowed to be together?
Or…
is it just me or do those two things suddenly make perfect sense?
Ah, there’s my cynicism coming back through again and I apologize because this was meant to be a serious epistle of thankfulness for your existence.
Once, a while ago, I went through a period of serious appreciation for everything around me, and I do mean everything: the pencil I was writing with, the couch I was sitting on, the door I walked through, everything and everybody received a certain amount of love energy from me.
I have since stopped this practice (although I’m not sure why), and what I want to say right now is that I appreciate the reality of you.
The fact that you are instead of aren’t is enough to win you some appreciation from the mind of this thought wondering wandering Ulysses of ideas.
I’m not sure if you’re meant to be celebrated with lights and presents or simple dinners or nothing or fruitcakes or family or friends or lovers, but I do know (from somewhere in my spiritual existence) that you are meant to be celebrated.
What would happen in a world where you were celebrated with everybody everywhere doing a rhythmic rock riot fist to Metallica’s Battery?
What would happenin a world where you were celebrated by everybody picking up the nearest text of intense philosophical inquiry and quietly searching into their existence?
Ah, you’ll once again have to excuse me, but I have this penchant for unanswerable questions.
There is beauty in you. I can see it. I think it’s hiding beneath the layers of meaning that various groups are attempting to ascribe to you, but you are a day like any other.
On any other day you could give gifts to your loved ones (and they might even mean more for their unexpectedness).
On any other day you could get the whole family together and have a loving family meal where you genuinely appreciate each other.
But this is what holidays are for, and what does that illustrate?
At some level I’m almost certain that, for the most part, we don’t want to spend time and money on our family and friends, but there is this one day every so often that tells us we ought to, and so we do.
The human character is essentially a super-selfish character with walls built up around itself to deflect the pulsing arrows of those who would call it out.
--No, I’m not. See what I give when I’m supposed to give?
There is none holy, no not one.
Do you know why I think that there is not one holy person in the world?
Because people aren’t holy, days are, and that’s why you are special: humans are spiritual, but they exist inside the holiness of days.
What’s unique about you is that almost every group of humans all over the planet has decided that you are an especially holy day.
Let me restate that in different words: every single day we can exist our spirituality is a holy day (making every single day of our life special and important and real), but some days are holier than others by virtue of… something-or-other.
A personal day is a personal holiday, a personal holy day in which something is more special than other days, and there is great beauty in that.
What’s in a day?
Only everything, by which I mean nothingness, by which I mean the foundation for building whatever you want it to be.
O, Holy Christmas, I hereby thank you for your existence and make a pact with you that I will celebrate my existence and the existence of the human characters around me and the existence of the planet and the existence of every pine needle that has fallen to the ground with a little bit more fervor than on other days.
You win.
I will probably not decorate a tree or my room or my house until I have children whose cries of “Daddy, why?!” need placating, but know that inside my heart there will be great joy in your holiness.
If there is indeed magic in you, and let’s just assume for the sake of argument that there is, could you send a little of it to all those I would say I love, all those I would say I like, and all those others I don’t know.
That’s a tall order, for sure, but let’s just say I believe in you.

Cheers
e