Family/CommunicationDecember 26, 20131‘Tis The Season

My hus­band likes to poke (gen­tle) fun at my addic­tion to Christ­mas movies. Dur­ing this time of year, every time I start watch­ing anoth­er one, he says, “And I bet in this one, every­one will final­ly dis­cov­er the true mean­ing of Christmas.”

I always laugh — and yet that is, of course, the premise of pret­ty much every Christ­mas movie ever pro­duced: some­one starts out hard-heart­ed and Grinch-ified, and ends up hav­ing dis­cov­ered that: 1) the most impor­tant thing is love, 2) it’s bet­ter to give than to receive, and 3) there are peo­ple who want to love and sup­port you — if you can accept their help.

The inter­est­ing thing is that, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, those 3 things are true.  And they’re true all the time. It’s just that most peo­ple seem to think it’s eye-rolling­ly, embarass­ing­ly sap­py to allude to these things except dur­ing the last two weeks of Decem­ber. Some­how, dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son, we’re will­ing to put aside our pre­ten­sions to world-weary cyn­i­cism suf­fi­cient­ly to focus on the pow­er of love, the joy of giv­ing, the sat­is­fac­tion of rec­og­niz­ing that we are loved — and the grat­i­tude that aris­es from all these things.

Now, I’m real­is­tic enough to know that mil­lions of peo­ple have very mixed feel­ings about this sea­son, and that for some — espe­cial­ly those in need or who have expe­ri­enced per­son­al tragedy dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son in years past — those feel­ings are mixed heav­i­ly toward the negative.

But too many peo­ple also seem to believe that it’s some­how not cool to be too hap­py about the Christ­mas sea­son if oth­ers are hav­ing a hard time. I’m sor­ry, but that just seems goofy to me: it’s like say­ing that you should­n’t feel grate­ful for good health because some peo­ple are sick; or you should­n’t love your spouse because some peo­ple have bad marriages.

My point of view: rev­el in the sim­ple love, joy and gen­eros­i­ty that abound in this sea­son.  Share your love, your hope and your gifts with those in need and with those you love.  Feel grate­ful; feel con­tent­ed; feel loved and lov­ing; feel joyful.

Hav­ing a a won­der­ful hol­i­day sea­son does­n’t hurt any­one; it helps you and those with whom you come in con­tact.  And per­haps it will even move the world toward more love all year ’round.

With deep­est hopes for a deli­cious­ly lov­ing, giv­ing and grate­ful hol­i­day season.