Correction: it looked like dry snow, but it was actually wet. Still, fortunately there wasn't much of it. Together Dad and I cleared our double driveway and then the neighbour's next door.
Now it's raining ever so lightly, almost like a mist.
An old-fashioned Christmas?
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
Now it's raining ever so lightly, almost like a mist.
There is no such thing as an old-fashioned Christmas. Never has been, never will be. There was never a time when Christmas wasn't about materialism and commercialism. There was never a time when peace, love. and charity filled mens souls and ruled across the land. It is a myth born of our desire to believe it was that way when we were children. What we are desiring is not the Christmas of our childhoods, but our childhoods themselves. The time when life seemed much simpler because it was. It is not so simple anymore. Not only should we admit this we should embrace this. Christmas is the denouement to another year that you survived. Christmas is about gluttony and avarice and indulgence. And that is the way it should be. We all deserve as much.
It is certainly those things...if you choose to surrender to and embrace that perspective.
Christmas has never been perfect and pure, just as any other celebration has never been either. Like many things in our society and history the beauty of Christmases past is founded upon myth. For me the most immediate example is Columbus Day celebrated in the U.S. Columbus never touched (pre)American soil. He never made it to America. And it is documented that others did make to North America long before Columbus came on the scene. And yet Americans continue to celebrate something that isn't supported in fact. But it does make a good story just as much of the mythology of the Old West is a good story that's way off the mark of truth.
But such stories and myths are perpetuated because they hold messages and meaning to successive generations that there can be hope in the world and that all isn't inevitable chaos and existence without meaning.
Yes, an "old-fashioned" Christmas is founded upon our yearning for the simplicity of childhood where the adults shielded us from the much of harshness of real life. But it's also an aspiration against the cynicism that often runs riot in the world.
I acknowledge that greed and avarice exist within Christmas. Only I choose to not to surrender to them and to fashion my Christmases founded upon my ideas of what it should be.
