The Christmas Season is in full-swing. Lights hang jauntily from trees, and the windows of my son’s school are bedecked with snowflakes cut carefully from construction paper. The merchants throughout my small town have miniature Christmas trees in their windows, or those really pressed for space hang wreaths and red and silver ribbons. And the lights again; lights are everywhere, the tiny jewels shimmering in the cold night air, recalling their pagan past enjoined with the hope embodied by the light of Christian celebration. Couples walk hand in hand in the sometimes bone-rattling cold, blissfully unaware of the harsh weather; bars and restaurants are packed with people, a sense of merriment in the air. Songs, both secular and religious fill the air with hope; another year is drawing to a close. We made it again. Let’s celebrate the goodness and the friendship and love. Yes, I am a fan of Christmas.
This is not to say I don’t see the flaws of the season: The rampant and often obnoxious commercialism. The overindulgence in food and drink, forgetting that too many have too little, while we have too much. The materialism, and the competitiveness. The seemingly endless obligations. Not to mention the bad sweaters. I understand all of that, and I can see why some are not so fond of the season.
For me, however, Christmas is comfort from the past, and hope for the future. It is friends and family gathering to enjoy one another. It is passing down food and traditions from one generation to the next. It is a place and time that is both rooted and forever fluid. It is my family’s nativity under the tree, A Christmas Story on TV, and a mix of foods that always starts with a fish fry on Christmas Eve and ends with a mix of Italian and classic American dishes on Christmas Day. And now it is my son as well, old enough to understand for the first time, and being able to see the holiday anew through his wide-eyed excitement.
Yes, I am a fan of Christmas. Cue the nog and the carols, the old religious songs, the jazz classics, and Bing Crosby and Andy Williams. Let me torture my loved ones with Fogelberg for a few weeks more. Let us celebrate the passing of another year where we were all together.
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