Tag Archives: holidays

The Last Holidays of the Year

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It always happens, but I always forget.  The night of Halloween starts the cold, and it continues until there is snow on the first night of the new year.  The ice is black and is so dark that it is invisible until the flurries of snow coat it, making skid marks visible.  The only way to travel is to go slowly and carefully, even the buses and the cyclists.  The hard part is  the flying ice pellets because the lake water rose and froze so quickly to become bullets of ice water.

I am counting down the days, and suspiciously guessing that a deep snowfall will happen before Christmas morning, making work fill our holiday.  In some ways I anticipate this, eager to see the men in the shovel machines–the small ones as well as the giant ones.  It is almost as if the snow melts and galls down the sewers just from the weight of the tires.  I feel more hopeful seeing that the city has not died on  Christmas Day.

The Christmas Time means that I see familiar people in a different way.  Sometimes my behavior changes, but I don’t always know what I am doing.  Sometimes if I just promise to make my money useful, helpful, I start seeing opportunity.  Then comes the work of budgeting appropriately as well as saving enough for the things I like.  I try not to act as if I am in Las Vegas, as there is no benefit in that.  Do I want to win hearts, or do I want to win money?  Feeling at home where I am before the new year is sometimes dependent on the feat of promise.

I also like Christmas, just for the food that becomes available when usually food is not so rich.  I like the busy-ness that excuses my absence from the usual things and places, and the sudden filling of my schedule with functions of food and music.  I like that everyone becomes important, not just the people of power and the famous.  I like that my heart knows what all this Christmas is.  That there is time to find an ever-green-tree, time to decorate it, and time to just spend time in places that as close but different.  I like that there is joy, and peace, and merry-ment.  I like that there is happiness and sleeplessness on the new year eve.  I greeting Christmas as well as greeting that first of the year, as early as I can, which makes staying up until midnight on those two nights a treasure.  The excitement of the first minute is a pleasure an joy.

Only a week separates the two most important events of each year.  It is easy to be generous, grateful, and happy, in this continuous way.  The time of a week is just the perfect amount of time, and is a reminder of what the entire time has been about and what the coming of another year will become.  The entire world is aware of these holidays, regardless of creed, religion, ethnicity, or status.  Whether child or grandparent, age is no barrier, no limit, to participating and understanding the one-ness of the world as it looks at itself, and appraises the situation of marking this year-end and year-beginning, as it comes.  December and January are the months the entire world unites, knowing the meaning of these two months, in agreement of this meaning, without malice, disrespect, or dishonor.  And so, in this agreement, the world celebrates existence, and the evidence of this existence.  There is no doubt or hate of it all.

The awareness grows.  And knowing grows too.  Snow, and cold are Christmas staples, which prove that warm hearts will come out.  So, it has been a month, and another month more is here.  Halloween, Christmas and the New Year will have their run, and then, the usual rest of the twelve months will have their turn.  Being old enough to anticipate these events is definitely something I have grown into, and is something that I invest myself in.  I encounter it in other people too….  The need to celebrate what this world we live in has become.

Fromm witches and goblins to Santa Claus and the New Year kiss, it is a glorious time, a precious time, and I have hope for it, because it is where I first had hope and fun.  The last part of the year is always what we will remember, it we remember anything out of an entire twelve months.  Here is to what is, what will become, and what we will change.  A glass of champagne, will be how we hold on to it all, toasting the past, the present and the future.  I toast you, and whatever language it is you use to greet the holidays.  Good health, good fortune, and great wealth!

A Reason

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Every day, the approaching holiday requires thinking.  It is Advent, and each day of this time we look at the calendar andn receive a piece of chocolate, just for looking at the day, and hopefully, understanding and knowing it.  It is about getting close to the end of the year, when just six days from New Year’s Eve, we celebrate, and, remember the birthday of the most glorious man to be born–Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

It is  not just to have an entire week of holidays, that we celebrate.  It is about a man who found a way to give the gift of life, every single day of his life.  Even if now, we cannot hear his voice, we can, still, have his words remembered and told to us from generation to generation, as all knew, even from the beginnings of time, that he was the One who would make the world a better place to be.  We have history books, and Catechism classes that recount, and retell, and make a real, all of Jesus’ teachings.  And, each day, each birth, there is carried on the glorious ability of Jesus to save and create, at the same time.

So, on Christmas Day, we remember the creation of Jesus, and by association, the creation of a new world–the Christian World.  From the beginning of time till now, we still wish to be as good as he is, finding within ourselves to give gifts, to pass on gifts, from person to person, from family member to family member, and ultimately, to instill in ourselves and our friends and family, the new gifts of life shown to us from Jesus Christ.

Why am I so ardently talking of Jesus?  It is because I come from a background of Christianity.  It was going to school, to Private Catholic Schools, for my entire education that has taught me the value of life, of myself, and of caring.  I am more satisfied with myself, and some would say this is a self-righteous declaration made to justify the validity and worth of a quickly fading Christian World.  It is, and, yet, it is not.  Science and the Scientific Endeavor to discover and create is destroying the old facts of the world, and creating a new world of wealth and power.  Some would say we will one day defeat death and live forever without dying….  But again, that is just a pipe-dream of Science, and, even, of Christians, as well.

So, why not have Science Day, instead of Christmas Day?  Because we value our life, even our life as it exists in bones in the grave.  We are all the same, our DNA 99% of our being, all linked together, and shared in this common ancestry.  We are proud of who we are, of who we will become, and we want to have life, infinitely, forever.  And, this is done through history stories, through science stories, through cultural stories, and through the leadership of the Christian Church.  Am I justified in ranking Religion on par with Government?  No, but it does have almost the same power as the Government, and has just as much reaction from everyone, regardless if it is friendly or not a friendly statement made to the public.  Every nation on earth has a religion, even those who purport to be pure of such subjective leanings.  So, if such a declaration is what defines the modern nation, why is there no such thing as a Science Day?  Science runs on very strict rules of experimentation and mathematical methods of describing the world, and only the most rigorous work ever gets recognition, because, it is what will define the world.  So, where is our respect, to all this work?  It seems almost duplicitous that we have forgotten the wealth of Christianity.  Churches and Cathedrals abound in every nation, even in those who purport to be areligious.  There is a secret code and a secret brotherhood in Christianity, and the following of it, has made it rich, made the world rich, and made the Church rich.  So, does this observation make it necessary that we enshrine Science like Religion has enshrined Jesus and Christians?

I would miss Christmas Day and all the 60 days of Advent before the Day.  I love the richness of having , of feeling, of believing, and of sharing what I can.  The greatest reason to do this, is because of Jesus.  I feel like he does, and I lead, like he does, by example.  This opinion is truly yet another voice in the crowd that gathers to support December 25th.  I gladly throw my voice into the sea, to be part of that humanity, to hopefully live infinitely, forever.

It is apropos, as the Fall season has so many little holidays that just make Autumn fun and memorable, that in going into the stores, I already think of My List…  The Christmas Season List of things I have reason to do, and of things I want to do.  So, happiness comes in red, and gold, and silver, all hung on the evergreen, on the holly, and on the wreath.  I value the richness, and that it feels like the world shares in good faith.  So, just for that one day, we have a reason to live.

Those Special Days

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I love the days that are special days.  I look forward to the coming day, planning events and getting all the perfect bits and pieces that make the day, the time, and the people, important.  This method of living through the calendar days requires accumulating “things.”  It is not these “things” that are important in and of themselves, but the people, the event, and the time that they are associated with.  Specifically, this year, as by coincidence, Mother’s Day and my brother-in-law’s birthday fall on the same day.  At this point, I am already half-way through thinking, planning, and purchasing “the things” that will fill this “double-day.”

More and more, I am attracted to those things that are more artistic.  I will buy a book full of words that are pretty and that tell a decorative story, rather than any story that is full of thrill and complex mathematical  problems that require suspending belief in the real world.  I prefer a few well-placed words, to a book that I can’t put down.  So, now, when I start the “accumulation of things” for “the special days” in the calendar, some, “tasteless, bland, white” card, figurine, book, and ecetera  is what I will look for, and usually it is what I get.

Part of my plan, which is a new criteria that developed only during the past year, is to try to fit the purchases of “the things” inside of a budget.  I wan to get to the day, with something that says, more “special, loved, and cherished” than any other day.  So, what I spend on the other deadline days in the calendar, should, not be able to compete with the “special days” and the amount I spend.  There is no way the money I spend can indeed reciprocate and represent the “specialness.”

How do I do this?  I have recently discovered “niche marketing” and the “niche market.”  I am finding more “hand-made” things, and “one-of-a-kind” things, in little shops that do not compete in anyway with giant marketplaces like William Sonoma and Crate and Barrel.  There, I can endlessly spend money, but rarely am I satisfied with the “thing” I have bought.

Being without a car, has led me to here, in my journey.  Because I have to walk, I try to fit everything I need to do, within a small radius of space.  And, I have discovered, the stores along those trendy streets, where the designers go, where the artists live and sell, and where things close to home are on sale, for a reasonable price, I can fulfill my wishes and desires… all in a small radius of a walk.

Also, I am a fan of those reality shows that average joe professionals host, and sometimes, compete with each other in.  It is a community that shows up on television at least once a week, and I am usually there, watching.

My hurrays for all the up-and-coming niche markets!  I feel I live a rich life and that I live it in reality.  I am comfortable and I am surrounded by all the comfortable things, which, for some reason, have to be earned through graduating from school and finding a way to make a living.  If this, is in fact, the real world, then, I give my hurrays again.  There are more and more…  One day, I too, will join with the “cottage industry” and end up on the trendy street.  I won’t only be giving on those special days, but I will also receive as much as I give.