MIDDLE WAY

It’s the week before Christmas already and I’m not hearing any holiday music. I see lights and tinsel here and there but it is sneaking up on us. It will come and go and if you blink, you’ll miss it. My gift giving is pretty much confined to grand children so I don’t really have any shopping to do. I give them each a Silver Eagle, technically a silver dollar but made of one Troy Ounce, 99.9% silver so their worth depends on the price of silver. My thought was, still is, that someday they will each have a collection that didn’t wear out, didn’t depreciate or go out of style. They get enough toys, clothes and technology from other directions that I avoid that hungry hole. Giving money may be practical but it’s pretty cold and calculated. I’m not religious but the holiday was always warm and fuzzy, feel good more because of people than presents and at least the pretense of Good Will. It’s when we celebrate baby Jesus’ birthday and that’s enough to hope for some Peace on Earth whatever your bias. So my choices are, or seem to be, either get some religion or take a few days off and throw money at people who expect you to shell out. 

I want to find a middle way; my experience is that family and food bring out the best. We should all watch one version or another of Dickens Christmas Carol even though we’ve seen it, know it by heart. I think he got it right. Things change and we’re all about as happy as we chose to be. So for a while at least, appreciate the good life we take for granted otherwise. God Bless us every one. The idea that a new baby can turn our attention to hopes for a just and a peaceful world is profound. The premiss of Original Sin is, I think, a human construct. We are certainly born with the capacity to be mean and evil but you have to know you're being mean and evil before it's a sin. When Baby draws that first breath and imprints with its mother’s odor, that is pure innocence. I’ve never been one to handle little babies but never the less, I am smitten with them at a distance. It’s not until later when we understand both the selfless We and the selfish Me, and we chose the latter at someone else’s expense that sin sprouts. I have some devout relatives who pray for me regularly so I feel like my heresy is covered in that regard. 

I remember Christmas when snow and cold was pretty much guaranteed. My brothers and I got mostly clothes, a toy of some kind and a bag of fruit and nuts. Not saying the old days were better but they were good. Television hadn’t made it to our house yet so we played board games and worked on jigsaw puzzles, listened to the radio. We got together with my aunts, uncles and cousins, kids ate in the kitchen while grown ups circled the dining room table. After dinner the men all smoked, ladies went to the piano, sang carols and declared the kitchen off limits. Kids play, always have. I don’t know what it is that we do now but some day my grand kids will tell their grand kids how cool it was. 

Gone away is the bluebird.

Here to stay is a new bird.

He sings a love song, aw we go along . . .