My Holiday Hypocrisy
Happy holidays my substack family
Holidays are a bittersweet time for many of us. Some of us find it painful to enjoy “the most wonderful time of the year.”
For many it can reopen old wounds and longing for loved ones gone too soon.
Opening gifts and celebrating the season is a time that, to some of us, brings a melancholy that can sting.
For me it has been a strange mixture of emotions. At times I find myself feeling that childlike joy of anticipation. At other times all I do is miss the “good old days.”
It's a complicated series of emotions. I struggle with them as I think about my mother and how she loved to celebrate Christmas. I struggle with all the celebrating while kids are starving all across the world.
Do I really need to be driving all over town, wasting gas, trying to find that perfect item while children lie on dirt floors as beds? It brings on guilt of a sort that rides around in the back of my mind. In hypocritical fashion I continue to shop anyway.
If you read my newsletter, you know I love my family ferociously. They are forever my most precious gift.
Those that start Christmas shopping on November 1st can keep their materialistic desires. Fighting crowds on Black Friday is such an indictment of how lost we are.
I try to stay positive and enjoy the gifts and the silly traditions, but deep down I have a visceral disdain for it all. I continue to smile, and don’t get me wrong, I am happy for my kids as they get their desired presents.
Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanza or whatever way you celebrate should mean more than just things under a tree.
I see all of this naked hypocrisy, and I am just as guilty. I stew in this feeling that we are just getting it so wrong. On the other hand, I don't even know the correct question to ask.
I come to you, my friends, as someone who wants to share love and friendship with everyone. Yet we are continuously in conflict.
I think a starting point is recognizing how different we all are. Yet we have so much in common. That is a gift.
Most of us want peace. That is a gift.
Most of us want people to be food secure. That is a gift.
Most of us don’t want to see people suffer. That is a gift.
Most of us have empathy. That is a gift.
We are all in this together. The people that I get to speak with on a daily basis here on Substack are a gift. It proves to me that there are so many like-minded people that want to share kindness with each other. That is a gift.
So what I think I will try to do today as the gifts get passed around and the Christmas cookies get eaten is reflect on the beautiful relationships I have been so blessed with. Relationships here on this platform, in my home, and at my workplace.
No physical gift needed.
For those of you who don't have someone to be with during these holidays, know you are not alone. People are thinking of you, and please know that you are loved. You are just as important and worthy and deserving as everyone else.
Please know that I am thinking of you all and wish you nothing but the best during these holidays.
I love you all.
Erik
(Liberaldad)
Well said WR. Those of us that are warm and have a soft bed to lie down on, is very humbling, when seeing so many that are much less fortunate.
A perfect expression of what is important, how to be good to oneself, acknowledging our common threads. Blessings to all in this day -- filled with promise, aloneness, hope, faith. Thank you for your thoughts regularly.