Wednesday, October 18, 2006

I face, as I do every year, the tug of war inside myself over the holidays. On the one hand, I understand the idea that we are to celebrate things, that God isn't telling us to shut our curtains and lock our doors and never have fun, but, then I see the shape of things around me and I wonder, is this what God really wants me to celebrate? Halloween is kind of self evident, and IMHO has gotten darker and darker over the years, to the same degree that movies have turned darker and darker. It is almost as if they want to wallow in the blood, gore, despair and evil, not simply nod to it. It is one thing to say we are just aknowledging the darker elements, and in the case of some churches, even saying we are showing how light overcomes darkness (I don't see how that is being done by our current celebrations, no one had really given me a good explaination), it used to be a fun, pretty lighthearted event. Now there is such strong representations of evil. Wallowing is the best way I can describe it. I can't in good consience as a Christian just shrug it off and go with the flow. I can't ignore it either because my husband and I are not in agreement about the whole thing. He thinks its just fine and doesn't see anything wrong with it. That doesn't releive my conscience.

The best I can do is minimize the dark parts. I try not to play it up too much, and instead I celebrate the fall, which I do really enjoy. It is my fav time of year. I love the colors and the cool weather, the fruit, the harvest, all of it. So I don't put up halloween decoration but I do put up fall decoration. I try to give Thanksgiving more than the cursory nod that the rest of the culture allows. I am surprised to find the fall decorations wedged in one half of one aisle inbetween the Halloween and Christmas stuff.

Christmas, there is another winner. Why do people who aren't Christian even celebrate it? Why is the store so busy pushing the marketing when it isn't even halloween yet? It isn't a race. I want to savor the time we spend in each season. I want to remember the pears we canned in September, and the caramel apples we ate in October when I am enjoying the turkey in November. Each time I pop the top on a quart jar of applesauce and smell the aroma, I remember our trip to Hood River to gather the apples and the steamy hours spent over the stove making the stuff. I don't want to be sick of Christmas before it even gets here. The waiting and the anticipation is a treat in and of itself. My kids hate waiting, it seems almost painful to them. If I can give them anything, it would be to learn to enjoy the waiting as much as the arrival. I spent so much of my life trying to get to a place, and looking back, realize I was always somewhere, that I missed out on the joy of where I was thinking about where I wasn't. Why can't we just enjoy where we are when we are there? Why must the culture push in our faces what they think we should be wanting, instead of just let us enjoy what we have.

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