December is a holiday month. Everything we do is pointed toward Christmas Eve and Day, and New Year’s Eve and Day. Shopping for gifts, food, decorations, Christmas trees, spirits of all sorts, clothes for the winter weather, or at least a slight change of season, and all sorts of items for parties continues throughout the whole month. Ideally this is all for relaxation and celebration, good times with friends and family, and welcoming in the New Year. It would be nice if everyone everywhere was as light-hearted, but nothing on this earth is perfect.
All holidays, celebrations, sporting events and large gatherings of people for any reason are possible sites for terrorism at this time in our history. There is a remote and underlying feeling that beauty and revelry can be turned in an instant into death and carnage. World peace? Not while there is an attitude of terrorism in sick and twisted minds among us. And the obvious question becomes: How do we prevent evil things from happening anywhere? And the only possible answer is: Security. Security at all levels of our society . Law enforcement becomes crucial from security guards to police to all types of military organizations. Everyone craves safety and security, and usually this implies restrictions that we might resent in our daily lives and our travels to other cities, states and countries. But these restrictions are the price for safety and security for our parents, our children, our friends and extended families, and our country in general.
When safety and security are assured, then good times, celebration, relaxation, peace and prosperity are all possible at any level of society and in any place on earth. This is a discipline that we all must re-learn to bear from childhood through adulthood. We are a people of laws. We make the laws and then live with them. Democracy and our republic demand that we participate in this continuous process and pass it on to our children.
Another of our disciplines is faith in a higher power, belief in God, unfettered worship as we choose. Without this discipline our laws tend to weaken and crumble through lack of confidence in a being or an entity more powerful that we are, without whom there is no life anywhere. When tenets of this freedom and discipline start to weaken and disappear we need to sound the alarm and push back. In our form of government, apathy begins the process of handing over the keys to the kingdom. And this thinking brings us back to Christmas!
Christmas is a time to push back. It is a time of belief in a God greater than us. A God who assures us that when we pass away we can be confident that “away” is somewhere safe and secure, a place where we can celebrate and relax with music and the arts, and finally enjoy unfettered peace. An existence without qualifications. A place with the unlimited potential for our hopes and dreams. All religions are similar in this faith, which means that there should really be no conflict in our individual views of eternity.
So, as we progress through this season of celebration, let us keep its reason for being in mind, and keep our faith alive in the spirit of Christmas and the coming New Year and in the music of our lives and our songs. And may our assured safety and security provide the foundation for our faith and our beliefs. And may these all make possible the peace and prosperity that we who live on earth crave.
Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year to all of us!