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December 14, 2005
Happy Holidays?
At some point in my life, I started to feel the charm of Christmas eluding me, a feeling extending to the secular aspect of the holiday, far beyond the candlelight midnight Mass.
Children who still believe in miracles make the holidays beautiful. Having grown up in a Communist country with so few material goods easily available, I was ecstatic just to receive a new pyjama or a pair of slippers under a tree lit with real candles. I never could understand how the angels had slipped it through the window in the first place.
Now, in North America, and in many places around the world, so many of us live in an affluent society. When it comes to gifts, a few of us need anything. But there are different ways of being happy during holidays.
Last week, as I pushed through the dense crowds populating the streets of Manhattan, businessmen with briefcases, holiday shoppers, families striding toward the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, awsome in its festive, colorful lighting and holiday air, I wondered: how many are not celebrating Christmas? How many are there because they enjoy being part of the festive scene regardless of their religion, content to witness joy around them and being part of it.
What is all this discussion whether to say Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or Happy Holidays? So much damage occurs in this world in the name of God, each religious faction claiming theirs to be the One and Only Supreme Ruler. Why can’t we just be happy in our own niche, drawing happiness from within, as Maddalena did?
Posted by Eva Siroka at December 14, 2005 10:17 PM