Many of the values that we espouse during the Christmas season are just that – seasonal. A once a year explosion of kindness and cheer overflowing with magnanimity and good deeds; abounding in charitable actions. Peace descends upon our towns and cities and love is expressed in a pervasive manner that calms the beast in each of us and soothes our frazzled nerves. And… what planet am I now on?
This is all wishful thinking and “pie-in-the-sky” musing. There is definitely a spirit of the above that resides in the Christmas season, but it is not pervasive. There are those that would do away with the whole idea of “peace on earth, good will to all.” They would also do away even with the word and whole idea of Christmas itself. Keep in mind that in order to have peace, we must first have tolerance. And that is the most difficult idea to implement. Tolerance.
When we drive on any freeway in long lines of vehicles practically bumper to bumper, most people will ease back and let you into the next lane if they see your light blinking. This is tolerance. However, there are people who will shoot you for interrupting their place in line and chalk it up to road rage. Is road rage now an excuse for intolerance? There are also many amateur and professional “robin hoods” who feel that it is their duty to redistribute wealth. They take whatever they can get from wherever they can get it and give it to the needy, usually themselves and their need for anything, including drugs. There are also those who will take packages from your doorstep with unknown contents just for the possibility that there might be something valuable inside, or just for the surprise factor. Do we tolerate bad behavior in order to have peace? No, of course not. Tolerance does not equate with submissiveness. Tolerance means that we allow for individual expressions, religions, customs, traditions and honest mistakes that occur in many ways, as long as they don’t including bullying at any level and in any way.
In a free society our lives are conducted using the honor system; as long as we live within the laws we have in place to help us to interact with others on a day to day basis. Kindness, ethics, morality and individual responsibility are necessary in our lives, but do they need to be mandated or made into laws? I hope not. These need to be instilled in us by our parents and reinforced by our schools. They need to be explained and shown to us by example why they are important by all of our forms of religion, our belief in a supreme being or creator of everything in the universe as we know it. We learn the above ideas by listening and watching and hearing the ideas of those who have the experience of tolerance. This becomes the path to peace. Not to be mandated, but taught.
December and the Christmas season in whatever form are very important to our society and its continued existence as we know it. The ideas of goodness and kindness and peace are valid and need to be carried through the rest of the year. In December this can become a magical feeling of rising above our normal harsh realities. This magical feeling is good for us. It gives us an overview that can carry through the rest of our lives if we can only remember what it was like to be a child and then to apply these feelings of wonderment and magic to our own existence at this point in time. This temporary suspension of reality can provide us with a permanent feeling of tolerance and then to its logical conclusion – peace! Let there be peace on earth! But it must first begin with me, and us, all of us. Have a magical, mysterious, and very Merry Christmas…!