Christmas is starting to pop up everywhere.
As I start the bumpy drive to work which means I am driving on icy rutted roads which means I am still in my subdivision, I see signs of the season poking up everywhere.
Houses with Christmas lights up. Christmas trees lighting up windows.
“I really must take that Halloween pumpkin which is now mush out of that flower cart thing on the front step,” I think to myself. “Really, that is so inappropriate.”
I drive on further and I see a plywood Santa and his reindeer bravely preparing to prance up on somebody’s rooftop.
Wow, it seems like only yesterday it was Remembrance Day. Probably, because it was. Okay, it was not yesterday, it was last week, already.
As has been my practice, or at least as has been my intention and sometimes my practice for the last few months or so, I rise, stumble forth, and end up at the gym early in the morning. This all happens before I become too awake to seriously consider the definition of ‘crazy.’
It’s good, at least it’s good when I am in the post exercise mode which means sitting down with a coffee and the newspaper. Well deserved. Relaxing.
Sadly, it seems so much of the news is not relaxing, but disturbing. I sip my coffee and turn the pages, reading of violence, sexual slurs, break ins and murders.
The written word. Mightier than the sword. Some wise person said that.
I look out my window at the crusted snow, lit by a few streetlights and a string of misplaced Christmas lights.
Christmas with all its hope, unrealistic dreams, great expectations and slightly camouflaged greed is here again. And, once again, people are embracing it like a long lost friend.
I even heard someone say to me the other day they loved Christmas. It was their favorite time of year. This person was an adult, too.
I turn the pages of the newspaper. It’s more of the same.
I think of the lyrics to the song that say ‘we need a little Christmas.’
Coffee break over, I head to work. I pull back onto the bumpy road that singles out my subdivision from the next subdivision which no doubt has the same bumpy road, but different street sign. I drive past the houses with the Christmas lights and the trees all lit up against the winter darkness.
“Good for you,” I say silently giving them the thumbs up! Of course, they don’t know that I’m doing that. No one else is up, or so it seems.
But, I have to say that in the midst of all the hatred and senseless violence and crime and atrocities that spill out onto the pages of the news, I have decided one thing.
It is true; we do need a little Christmas.
Or perhaps, what we really need is the faith to believe in what Christmas stands for so we know that somewhere in this tarnished and unhappy world, goodness will, in the end, win out.
And the Toronto Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup, making fans such as my brothers, who are watching the games from heavenly seats, very happy!
But that, perhaps, is too much to hope for.
— On The Other Side