My Simple, Opinionated Christmas

Not doing too much for Christmas this year.  I usually attend a performance of Messiah done by Phoenix Symphony, but I chose not to this year.  I didn’t go to the electric parade like I sometimes do.  I haven’t even played any Christmas music yet. 

I will eventually find my Christmas music collection and I’ll listen to my own favorite songs – “The Gift” (written by Stephanie Davis and also performed by Garth Brooks), and “Little Toy Trains” sung by Roger Miller.  There are others I love as well, but I get weary of some of the ones that are played over and over ad nauseum. Like “Jingle Bell Rock.” In that I guess I am like everyone else I know – we have our favorites and we have those we’d like to forget.  I could listen to Suzy Boggus sing “O Holy Night” over and over to the end of eternity. She has the voice of an angel.  Yep, her and Andra Suchy.

I have no travel plans at all.  Not that I might not go – I just have not planned anything.  I always think I should go north to find a good “snow” picture to put on next year’s Christmas card.

*They weren't cheap, but here they are...

I haven’t even hung Christmas lights yet.  I guess I will work on that today, but I shall keep them very simple – which is my usual choice anyway.  I think simple in Christmas lights is often the most beautiful.  My aim will be to use the lights to elicit and represent some of the hope and mystery of Christmas, a kind of quiet glory, rather than the all-out “glitz and dazzle” that some go for.  Each to his own, I don’t resent that option but it’s not me.  I might use all blue lights if I can find some and they are cheap enough.*

I might go drive around at some point and gawk at all the glitzier lights others have done though…

I don’t begin to celebrate the approach of Christmas until December 15^th – I resent the cheapening of Christmas as enacted earlier and earlier each year by Corporate America as they seek to increase their profits at the expense of everything that is holy.  It’s calculated and crass – and I will resist it and resent it as long as I live.  Standing in line to get into a retail establishment to get a “bargain” on Thanksgiving Day (or night) is asinine – and we ought not to do it if only so that more of our neighbors can eventually stay home with their families at those times.  I can sometimes agree with our nation's critics that we seem, some of us, to have lost our souls.

My Christmas shopping is done, virtually all of it right from my desk here and on the internet.  I designed some little gifts for my closest family and a few friends will get something I’ve made in the kitchen as a token of our friendship. 

On Christmas Eve, which for me is the most mysterious and magical time of Christmas, I plan to attend a midnight service at a Lutheran Church nearby which I have found friendly in the past.  While I am not a Christian,  I think that Christmas can also represent that act of our God reaching down to us, and showing us or reminding us that the love we give to each other, in whatever way we can do that, is the best and truest part of our well-lived lives. At Christmas, some of the everyday hatreds can recede into the darkness for just a few moments – in our part of the world anyway.

Here in Paradise Valley, it will be a good Christmas if all goes as planned. I wish the same for you.