Give me at least twelve days of Christmas, and I’m not taking down the decorations on the 26th. That’s Boxing Day, and the Second Day of Christmas, well deserving of a bit of holly and a twinkling light. The number of homes and businesses still decorated during the first week of January tells me I’m not alone in my desire to extend the season.
Our time on this earth is fleeting enough without the tyranny of urgency that permeates this age. Holidays and celebrations, our moments of vacation and renewal, are scarce compared to the hours of work and worry we endure. Then there are the commutes between those hours, or as a friend once said, “I drive to work so I can afford a car and gasoline so I can drive to work.”
Even the time we lie down to sleep is bathed in a harsh glare of drama and doom from the ubiquitous devices we use to stay connected to…something. Ancient societies we consider “primitive” worked fewer hours than we do, and they slept better.
All too soon the work week begins after the holidays, and we have to pay for the gifts we bought. The pressure and conditioning to buy for Christmas started in September. Then came Black Friday, which mutated into Cyber Monday, then Cyber Week, then Special Holiday Savings, Extended and the After Christmas Sale. The smartphone that was $899.99 before the big sale was suddenly the doorbuster special at only $999.99 – marked down from $1299.99. Cash or credit? Credit, of course. The holiday that invites us to replace our materialistic concerns with spiritual ones now serves to further obligate us to the material.
The remedy, while difficult in a material world, is at least uncomplicated. We can refuse to borrow money to pay for things we don’t need but have been conditioned to want. We can learn to want what we already have. We can spend less than we earn and invest the difference wisely and dispassionately. We can remember that we resolved to do all these things last year and try again in the next.
Even though we may again be part of the traffic on the way to work on the 26th of December or the 2nd of January, there is no externally activated kill switch that cuts off the spirit of the holiday. We control that switch, though the combined efforts of all that struts and frets urges us to throw it, to click on to the next needful thing and the next crisis.
Join me in defying that urging. On this minute miracle world in a limitless expanse of eternal, unfathomable mystery, we can try and try again to preserve and recreate the moment of gratitude and childlike awe which the holidays bring, and we can leave our Christmas trees up until the needles drop off if we want to.
Outside The Box 