MAGICAL?
The day is nearly upon us, once again. The lights went up like clockwork, - actually better than. They went up on the weekend before the Turkey day celebration. But they went up as LED's - the old fashioned C-9 power-eaters have been retired, and the departure is most bittersweet. They'll burn in memory for years to come, but they'll not be missed come utility bill time.
The search for the perfect tree met with a 25% approval rating this year. But the 25% approving was Mrs. LOST, who for the first time in her household had a tree that neither scraped the ceiling, nor fell down, nor was ant infested, nor was sap engorged. It was shorter but perfectly proportioned, and so happiness was achieved. The cards went out - all the thought and creativity is on the front end - it goes into the card design, the letter, and the rest of it feels, at times like cold, impersonal processing.
The gifts were all purchased, and stowed, and hidden in their usual stowage, wrapped in spare moments, then spirited back from their undisclosed location to the garage, awaiting deposit 'neath the tree. Contact was made with several friends and fam members, and good wishes were exchanged.
Bowl Season for this band o' Bruins has already come and gone, and this gets it out of the way and into the memory - where a dismal season of disappointment belongs, so that basketball can burst forth in full vigor when the Holiday trappings are back into their boxes for another 10 plus months.
It was a time for finding oneself a year older, but richer in ways that are poorly measured by the world at large. And there is so much to look toward this year, a full pageant of possibilities for LOST's brood. May the same be said of all people. May this Christmas bring miraculous transformation to all of humanity - at least in some measure - in the way the Savior from Bethlehem might envision. Amen
WANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST . . . CHRISTMAS?
One of LOST's good ol' boy buddies - a decent man whose head has been stuffed far too long in the psychic excrement that flows like pressurized pipeline from the fevered brain of Michael Savage and other assorted closed-minders - sent LOST a poem knockoff of "The Night Before Christmas" which recounts the dozen or so absolutely truly apocryphal ways that Christmas is under attack from God-and-America-hating Secular Progressives who love bin Laden, Hitler and Charlie Manson. Fascinating reading it was. LOST had no idea that all those liberals on Wall Street and Madison Avenue had ingeniously conspired to make us helpless Americans salivate at the sound of the sale bell and prostrate ourselves in homage before a giant-sized cast stone replica of a Macy's 20% off coupon, and in so doing throw Jesus Mary and Joseph under the nearest bus. Shame on them godless, queerboy gun hating humanists.
LOST had no idea whatsoever how far that this creeping Godlessness had slithered! Oh my, they weren't callin' 'em Christmas Trees no more! The stores - LOTS of stores - were having Ramadan and Kwanzaa sales, while evil non-breeder Libs danced around in rainbow colored burkhas! SHIT! These Islamofascist bastards are everywhere, destroying our creches and peeing on angels and telling us all how to worship! We gotta stop that, right? RIGHT? And listening to Bill O'Reilly and company is a great way to start, isn't it?
And lord don't the Mainstream churches get into it now, too? My second parish home away from home parish featured a Sunday sermon 2 sundays back about "Elf" the horrendous movie featuring Will Ferrell (stifle - I hear you already, saying "whaddya mean 'THE' horrendous movie . . . ?"), complaining that the baby Jesus hadn't been worked in there somewhere and that this movie, too was part of the insidious march of the Atheistic Sugar Plum demons.
Well, yeah, except for to quote Phil Leotardo "a coupla three things." Or more. The Christmas tree is not mentioned in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Not even a line or two in Revelation. Its borrowed from pagan Solstice celebrations; yet there's been at least two of 'em in every Catholic Church LOST has attended in nearly 50 years (yes, FIFTY - since Eisenhower was President) during the Holiday Season. Was there a loud hue and cry of that sacrilege then?
LOST's kids went to their CCD Christmas party and had a gift exchange, with all the presents wrapped in pretty red and green paper. Short of using swaddling clothes for wrapping, what Christian tradition is gift buying again?
What of the music of the Season? For every "Silent Night" there's a "Silver Bells" and a "Sleigh Ride" which speak about those long held Christian Holiday traditions of shopping to you drop, and eating til you burst.
That's it, isn't time to indict Andy Williams on heresy charges - especially since that rascally Nat King Cole "died" and got off scott free? Those Chestnuts weren't being roasted open fire by the Shepherds - or any wise men for that matter.
Or would it be better off if we took a step back and realized that, just like the recently posited, idiotic (yeah that's a fancier way of saying brain-deadly stupid) notion that celebrating Halloween was tantamount to devil worship, this clap trap about Wars on Christmas is a yule log of bullshit, conjured up by religious nutcases who see the Virgin Mary in French Toast and Satan lurking in every record store, and that corporate right wing media has glomed onto it for fun and Seasonal profit, just like Macy's, Target, Nordstroms and Wal-Mart have? "Christmas" is under attack by those who would use Christ for cover of their own seedy doings, not by purveyors of reindeer and snowmen as iconic Seasonal symbols.
