Christmas

Many things have been happening lately. Too many to blog all at once. Christmas is a very powerful time for me, for obvious reasons. I'm very happy that the popular holiday is only one day long because it leaves the full length of the event free from commercialization and that makes it much more easily absorbed.

So, in my mind it is still Christmas, though I will quickly pull down the decorations and other trappings to make room for the full significance of the time to expand and fill it. I heard a song this year about a cowboy thinking through Christmas as he sat out on the high plains with his few companions. I know that may seem trite to some people, but you must remember that cowboys are one truly American icon and a huge part of our past and present. It wasn't a cheesy song in style, but very pensive and peaceful. The idea being none of the trappings that we associate with the holiday were present for this person and his friends. Therefore the full weight of the moment was overpoweringly present to them...much like the shepherds at the original event. There are many similarities to the lifestyle. If you've never taken time to exist in such a simple isolated manner, it is well worth it. That's why cowboys tend to be so philosophical and contemplative. I imagine shepherds must have been similar.

I would love to have a Christmas without gifts. Or perhaps only giving things that one already has. This would greatly change the character of the giving and make it a more personal thing. Sadly, this is pert near sacrilegious to most people, even Christians. I even have some family members that simply refuse to comply when everyone agrees to limit gifts. They don't do this to show off or embarrass anyone, but simply because the gifts and the holiday are so intertwined for them that they can't be separated. For these people, it is truly a joy to give and they truly expect nothing in return, all of which is greatly to their credit... I'm just illustrating the point.

I also took the time to read A Christmas Carol this year. It's a short book. I just never picked it up. I've seen the dozens of movies, but there's nothing like the source. Actually, the movies are extremely close to the source. It almost reads like a screenplay. I may have to read more Dickens. I've never been able to get into him. He's too close to that stodgy Victorian/Edwardian era that I couldn't stand it. If life was really like that, I'd run screaming mad. All artificial rules and hierarchies. Thankfully, Dickens was one of those who was trying to do away with that attitude. Maybe now I could actually get into it.

Anyway, I hope the few of you who actually read this are having a good Christmas and that you will let the full meaning and impact of the holiday settle upon you. Even if you don't believe it, try looking at it from the inside. There is no harm in seeing it from another's perspective. Just imagine what it would mean in the context that I see it:

A world that that was hopelessly lost with no chance of change or improvement on every level, despite monumental individual and cultural best attempts, all eventually succumbs to decay and corruption.

But one rural pastoral people, small in number and barely a blip on the cultural radar of the world, turns out to have the mythology that was chosen to be made true and the multi-dimensional being known as, "That Than Which Nothing Greater Can Be Conceived", the Yahweh, the Wakantanka, the Brahman, the Logos, the Ideal, voluntarily and permanently sheds dimension after dimension of his nature in the Great Dive, down, down, to assimilate himself into this lost world and all its individuals, every dimension of it, and in so doing assimilate it into himself so that the lost world and each of its damned inhabitants become a new form of existence, new beings...the merger of the human and the divine, which had never been done in the universe and can never be undone or done again. This is the root of the Christian mythos and all the cliched jargon that surrounds it. This is what we celebrate at Christmas.