Here Is What Christmastime Means to Me

[rockinlibrarian]

 

Yuletide

 

Religious holidays

Are exclusionary, they say

If one does not know this Christ,

Why should one celebrate His Mass?

The more some insist, Christ is the reason,

The more others feel, but I do not follow, why do you

Force your beliefs on me?

But I say,

You need not know Christ to celebrate his Mass,

All you need to know about Him:

The World was in Darkness

He brought us Light.

 

“Secular” is the wrong word.

It’s an everyday word.

A word of shops and sales

Of bustle

Of struggle

Christmas is too mythic to fit

 

Not for eras of peoples who gazed at the sky, asking

Where has the sun gone? Will it return?

So they lit fires

And hung evergreen

And slaughtered a beast

So that everyone could partake of its nourishing flesh

Together

They would gather

To dance and sing and share

Until the sun came back.

 

If you strip it away

The shopping, the proselytizing, the scolding,

The obligation

The disparity, the waste

Every Who down in Whoville

Continues to sing

 

We cannot afford to be exclusionary

In the cold winter storms

We must gather, and welcome, and share from the heart

We must kindle the Yule fire to warm each other

The World is in Darkness

Let us be Light.

Or, of course, Kermit sang it best: https://youtu.be/givAZ05_wJg Same meaning when you get right down to it. There's my wish to all of you!