Untainted

For many people, Christmas is the best time of the year.  The whole season is full of good tidings and cheer.  We seem to rise above the doldrums and embrace our better selves and the better parts of those around us.  It’s a time of hope, if only because we choose to believe that people are still good and, for a day or two, can channel their generous side.  But it’s not that way for everyone.  For some, Christmas is a miserable time.  Whether it’s because of loss or strained relationships or an aversion to crowds and chaos, some people dread December.  For them, Christmas is far from the best time of year.  It is the worst.

I’d like to suggest that both parties have got it wrong.  Both the “Whos down in Who-ville” and the “Grinches” are wrong for the same reason: they see Christmas from their own perspective.  They evaluate it based on how it affects themselves.  It’s the idea that Christmas is what we make of it.  Sort of like a baked potato.  The potato is just a platform for butter and cheese and sour cream.  The potato itself is rather tasteless and unremarkable.  While we may think that Christmas is what we make of it, we are very wrong.  Christmas is not simply a platform we decorate with generosity and gifts, family and food.  Christmas is the defining event in history.  It requires neither presents nor carols, neither relatives nor eggnog to be remarkable.  We don’t decorate the birth of Christ.  It decorates us.  We don’t make it good.  It makes us good.  Christmas is unenhanced by our revelry and untainted by our humbugs.  So don’t let yourself try to make the best of Christmas this year.  Let it make the best of you.