I may have said it before, so my apologies if this is redundant. Christmas is not my favorite holiday, sacred or secular. I’ve lived long enough to remember how it was ‘back then’ knowing that the old days were not always good, but those days and the experiences shape who I am. I am in touch with how my past informs my present and continues to teach me how I follow that inner moral compass into the future. My past has a voice, but not a vote. Hard as it is to change your narrative, change it can; and this time of year people believe that idea a little more than they do at any other time. Maybe it’s because culture markets this feeling more in late November and December. About this I don’t mean to sound cynical, but ‘selling’ Christmas begins in October. Over twenty years ago I stopped listening and buying. I’m content with the responsibility of recognizing the context before I wish someone I know, or is unknown to me, “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas.” I’m not on the ‘war on Christmas’ team, because it’s always been about selling the feelings that get consumers to spend more even if that means taking on debt. I’ve done it.
That cynicism aside, that is not what Christmas or the holiday season is all about. Think about your favorite Christmas cartoon or movie. Imagine the characters or a scene in your mind. There is a character or group that experiences an “aha” moment of vision that changes the way the character or group sees the world, interacts with the world, or expands the heart. My favorites are: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s A Wonderful Life, and Love Actually. Yes, I’m admitting that last one in print, but I also think Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Odds are your favorite holiday film encourages self reflection about your motives, desires, and communal life using the “olden times and ancient rhymes of love and dreams to share.”(1)
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year.(2)
That last bit of lyric that Lee Mendelson wrote invites us to go, and see, and ask.
What would that spirit look like in your community?
What dreams do you share with your neighbor? Not the neighbor you like, but that other neighbor?
What kind of maintenance plan do you have for your moral compass?
Christmas day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp
Welcome Christmas bring your light
Welcome Christmas while we stand
Heart to heart and hand in hand.(3)
May the Spirit of Christmas inhabit your dreams, and your living, as you make your way to Bethlehem to see this thing that God, or simply living, has made known to you.
______
1) Mendelson, Lee / Guaraldi, Vince. “Christmas Time is Here.” Lyrics © Lee Mendelson Film Prod., Inc., 1965.
2) Ibid.
3) Geisel, Theodor S. / Hague, Albert. © EMI Music Publishing, 1966.
As the President Elect continues his made for TV cabinet selection process, many of whom are as qualified as I am though I would tell this President Elect “no” if asked to serve, if falls to those that voted for former Sec. of State Clinton, to those that voted for Libertarian and Green Party candidates, to those that didn’t vote, and yes, to Republicans who preferred the con artist Bigot in Chief to the over qualified woman to be the resistance, and hold our Congressional Reps accountable to be a ‘check’ to President Elect Trump. He has proven, in this age of cameras everywhere, that he will say and do anything to enrich himself, legally, unethically, and outright lie. His exploitation of women, his words and actions, would bar him from serving as a camp counselor for any secular or religious affiliated summer camp program. Americans still do not know the web of business connections that Trump has because we have not seen his taxes. How can we trust that he is making decisions based on the common good for these United States instead of his own bottom line. He has begun extracting wealth openly from American tax payers by charging the Secret Service rent for space at Trump Tower in New York to provide him protection. “Trust me.” he says. I think not. I shall not.
As I wandered through the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC back in March I didn’t want to believe that American had become a place where the characteristics of Adolf Hitler would be persuasive, and yet I had accepted that Trump’s election as President was probably going to happen. Senator Mitch McConnell and other GOP Congressional Leaders are responsible for the polite racism that daily worked to nullify President Obama. Senator McConnell and others like him in the GOP stoked the racism that led to Trump’s slogan, tactics, and inability to denounce the White Nationalists and actually employ Steve Bannon who is too eager to take the money of White Supremacists peddling all kinds of conspiracy theories that blame everyone for their lot in life without need to take responsibility for themselves. It is everyone’s fault, but their own. Students at Harvard Business School put it this way about Bannon and Trump.
“Trump brought racist ideologues into the mainstream. Harvard is furthering the process of normalization for racist hate,” the group’s event page says. “We do not accept hate and bigotry as normal or legitimate. Come protest.”
(Steve Annear. The Boston Globe. “Warm Welcome Unlikely for Bannon, Conway at Harvard this week.” November 28, 2016.)
Multi National Corporations and corporations like Koch Industries are the real reason for much of the economic suffering. It could have been different had Senator McConnell and the GOP Congress governed with President Obama rather than treating him as a “boy.” Though never calling the President “boy” their actions during President Obama’s two terms is evidence they were ready to allow middle, white America to suffer to regain their reign of the federal government as well as many of the state houses. At all costs McConnell and the other GOP leaders could not allow a non-white male to successfully rally community to the greater good. Had they done so it would be harder for a white male to get elected. That kind of obstruction of governing has set back democracy and the economic future of a generation.
Americans, sadly, have not learned from our history and the election of Donald Trump mirrors the same dysfunction that troubled the world at the turn of the 20th century. Problem is that nuclear winter is part of the revelation guide for the apocalyptic minded needing a war of civilizations. I’m trusting it doesn’t come to that. In the end we need journalists to do that journalism thing instead of chase ratings. We need people who will follow the money and be willing to stand up in defiance to President Elect Trump and those that serve at his pleasure; his pleasure, as he demonstrated during the campaign, is all that matters.
Barbara Kingsolver, writing for The Guardian, offers some good thoughts about the need to “count ourselves out loud.”
“Trump changed everything. Now everything counts.” (November 23, 2016)
Wariness of extremism doesn’t seem to trouble anyone young enough to claim Lady Gaga as a folk hero. I’m mostly addressing my generation, the baby boomers. We may have cut our teeth on disrespect for the Man, but now we’ve counted on majority rule for so long we think it’s the air we breathe. In human decency we trust, so our duty is to go quietly when our team loses. It feels wrong to speak ill of the president. We’re not like the bigoted, vulgar bad sports who slandered Obama and spread birther conspiracies, oh, wait. Now we’re to honor a president who made a career of debasing the presidency?
But politeness is no substitute for morality, and won’t save us in the end. We only get to decide who we are. As a writer and a person my bedrock is perennial hope for a better world than this one, and for that I’ve borne the radical brand, not by choice. As outlaws go I’m as boring as toast, a polite, southern female who’s never broken any law but the speed limit. Despite this gentility I’ve endured FBI investigations and personal threats, and once had to travel on book tour with a bodyguard. This was during Republican administrations that sounded infinitely friendlier to dissent than the one that’s now on deck. So you’ll forgive my weak faith in broad-shouldered American tolerance and the guaranteed free pass for good behavior.