Front Page
IT CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR
“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men, from heaven’s all gracious King! The world in solemn stillness lay, to hear the angels sing.”
The Christmas season sort of came in quietly with temperate weather and light-hearted highs and lows. By the time this issue goes to print there will only be four more days until Christmas, and those four days fall from Thursday through Sunday, the most discomforting mix of days and dates the holiday can provide. Oh, for Thanksgiving, with its almost automatic four-day celebration! Who can argue with that?
The cities that surround Geneva Lake percolate like bubbling coffee in a strangely shaped glass pot, with shoppers trying to choose those last-minute gifts, or decide whether to give any gifts at all when things on the national political scene seem so unsettled. It is the Christmas season. It is a time for everyone who lives and remains around the lake in winter to reflect on generosity, compassion and care for one another. Everyone should watch Holiday Inn, the movie, or maybe It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart. And then, following that, sit by the fire, look at a decorated and lit tree, and think about the fact that what you might be feeling, in the way of love and care, is relatively rare. You can have the television playing in the background and see the conclusion play out. The cold “Mr. Potter” types are trying to shove through a tax bill to hurt the poor, the downtrodden, the disabled and even veterans. Is it the bitter nature of some anthropoid apes, as so many men in Congress today evidence and represent, to be this way? Yes, it is.
The biblical struggle between good and evil may not be valid from a literary proof, but it sure plays out to be valid in the real world, or those nasty-looking and acting men in Washington D.C. would not be doing what they are doing. But it is Christmas, and it is your Christian duty, your human duty, to love them too. Yes, the bible says that. Is loving them, and wanting God to take them into His loving arms just as quickly as possible, a part of that?
Paul Ryan, one of those hard-faced mean-spirited, men is going to retire? No, evil does not quit and walk away like that, and certainly not that easily. These hard-edged old white apes almost all American’s have somehow confused as being leaders, are hard-edged to the core, and to overcome them and their exhibition of evil, takes patience, tolerance and an acceptance that life is indeed flawed to its very foundations.
But there is hope. Hope that the relationships of those around us, who are not men like that, can be built upon to overcome and surpass them. Hang around with giving, caring and loving people during this holiday season. They abound, but they are not as noisy and boisterous as the alpha males doing their chest-beating thing, so they may be tougher to find. Merry Christmas! Celebrate not only the mythological event of the coming Jesus, but celebrate that there are people of great goodness, honor and loving intentions all over the earth. Those uncommon men and women are not going away and while this season plays out you must work, bear down, and think deeply about the fact that you are not going away either.
