Thinking person's nightmare.

Pondering Traditions

“Sometimes I wake at night and I ask, 'Is life a multiple choice test or is it a true or false test?'...Then a voice comes to me out of the dark and says, 'We hate to tell you this but life is a thousand word essay.'”

Charles M. Schulz

There are some real disadvantages to being a thinking person. I don't know whether you've found this to be true, but I have. One of the down sides, and there are a several, is that you have a hard time taking things at face value. You, or rather, I, have a strong tendency toward pondering and questioning everything, and all this probing turns up stuff I don't necessarily like.

Take Christmas, for instance, since most of us have just been there and done that. The whole gift-giving tradition throws me for a loop every single year. It seems that all the people on my list need absolutely nothing, and yet I strain my brain trying to come up with something unique and thoughtful. I was watching the news on the 26^th, being filmed from a shopping mall in some large city. The reporter talked about the prevalence of gifts that are returned—more than 50% for most of the people polled. And the numbers were staggering—14 or 15 gifts per person! Of course, that got me thinking about the whys and wherefores.

Did you know that until the late 18oo's people did not exchange elaborate gifts with one another. The tradition of gifting came out of the aristocratic practice, back when there were landed-gentry, and impoverished laborers, of giving gifts to the poor at year's end. Back then the gift was typically money or food, much needed items. Since the turn of the 20^th century, the whole idea of Santa Claus bringing gifts to “good children,” plus a giant retailing explosion have made giving gifts to one another the central focus of Christmas. Most people feel the “wrongness' of this, but we don't seem to be able to change it.

This year, I noticed a big difference in how I felt when I was buying warm cloths for some folks who live in a nursing home, and when I was cooking food for a recovery community. I felt good about those things. It wasn't hard even though it meant more work. I felt the “rightness” of it—the true spirit of Christmas in it. I want to plant that seed now, so that next year, when I'm awake in the middle of the night asking questions, the answers will come easily.

                                                                 In the Spirit,

                                                                      Jane