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CHRISTMAS IS COMING, NO MATTER WHAT!

For so many people, across the length and reach of the USA, Christmas is all about the celebration of the coming of Christ. It is as symbolic to many, as it is real to others, and then there are those who merely use the occasion of the holiday to have a wonderful celebration of life itself, irrespective of its religious foundations.  The virus has changed everything, but it won’t change Christmas, other than how the citizenry chooses to react to the holiday, and stay as safe as possible.  The phrase “Merry Christmas” has never been replaced or supplanted by “Happy Holidays”, or any of that.  The core of America is all about Merry Christmas and the positive meaning of life the celebration illustrates.

In order to promote the celebration this year, the Business Improvement District (BID) is going all out while also going intensively responsible (financially). Treasure Hut, the business in Delavan that has done a great job of providing the city’s flowers and decoration for special holidays, has been discharged.   Treasure Hut was expensive to have aboard, and the city, at least the BID part of it, is running much leaner and greener…and tougher. For about sixty thousand dollars a year less, the new firm is going to do twenty percent more, especially in the area of Christmas decorations. Look for more trees to have lights, and brighter lights too. This is a particularly challenging Christmas season, what with the polarization of the country into two opposite poles so intensely emotional it is hard to discuss the subject without almost anyone. Christmas surrounds that and hopefully drops a warm Christian cloak over the whole thing.

And then there is the virus and the nation’s response to it. In the days of the time of Christmas, most people died of so many causes that the virus would probably not been noticed, but not so today, and although Christmas the event, is set back in time two thousand years ago, Christmas as a concept and celebration is new to everyone every year.   The holiday is all about sharing. Some may call that crass commercialism since most gifts are manufactured, sold, wrapped, and then delivered. But, in truth, the meaning of sharing, the love of it, and transmitted by it, is still there, no matter who big or small or expensive, or seemingly innocuous, that gift may be.

Give the love and prayer with it. Pray for our return to a better time and for the ability to make it a better time. Share the gifts, and do so with the idea that we will one day soon be sharing our presence with one another too, as God wills it. The Lake Geneva Street Department is also responsible for many of the Christmas decorations the public is about to begin seeing and enjoying. Treasure Hut will be out and about in the community still, as they have contracts with many of the businesses downtown to provide private decorations and lights too.

The electric Christmas parade will go on this year, as scheduled. Santa will be back and the Lake Geneva Christmas Tree lit in the downtown area, as well. Lift your heart to smile, even though that smile may be unseen behind your mask. Lift your heart and smile anyway…and those around you, smiling along, will assume yours as you do theirs. It’s time to be merry, hearty, and hale, and to enjoy all those things that we still have to be so very happy about. America is such a wonderful and generous place to live and work.

Celebrate that and thank God.

 

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