Have two or three.
It's natural to be stressed around the holidays. There's so much to do -
shop for invectives for Warren and Kennedy, deck the halls with boughs of paranoia and half-bake all kinds of fruitcake scenarios about how the change we voted for, ain't going to show up under the tree come inauguration day.
I hear ya. I could go there too.
In my house, a nice, slow descent into depression is a holiday tradition. After the thrill of Halloween and the tryptophan coma of a Thanksgiving rife with family drama, the darkest days of the year loom like some specter out of Dickens.
Especially this year. The dkos fir could be decorated with pink slips and repossession notices, just in time for the most hallowed retail holiday of the year.
You might not feel like celebrating. Something is off about your precious Nativity Scene. The baby Obama won't stay in the manger where you want to put him, he keeps running around, ignoring the Wise Men you've chosen for him and instead, inviting dissident shepherds and upstart street preachers and provocateurs into the barn. He's got lions mixing it up with the sheep and he even lured that crusty innkeeper, (who didn't think his folks were good enough to stay in his swanky hotel)to join the party. What was he thinking?? Who knew that true inclusiveness looked like such an unholy clusterf**k?
This Christmas, Solstice, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Rationalist season is a train wreck. Jobs, houses, our illusion of security and our cherished expectations have been torn away from us. That's the reality.
So. We can retreat into our decaying mansions of certainty and holler Bah Humbug from the windows, or we can take a leap of faith, knowing we may land next to someone we cannot abide, whose beliefs appall or even threaten us. Because you can't make change from a safe distance.
Harvey Milk knew that. He said, "My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you." Not "I'm here to marginalize you." Or "I'm hear to shut you up." He was speaking directly to the people who hated him because he dreamed of something lasting - a change of heart that can only come through close personal contact, an intentional consorting with the enemy.
You can't make change without sitting down at the table with all the "wrong" people, even if it turns your stomach. But hey, you got through Thanksgiving with your Uncle Tom and Anti Joyce, even though you despise them. You did it for the sake of family unity and the hope that one day, they'll have that change of heart and stop seeing you as defective.
With any luck, you'll move into Tiny Tim territory - defective, but lovable - and then slowly, insidiously, you become just plain old lovable. (Okay, we'd all settle for equal, but I'm milking the metaphors for everything their worth. Making alot of nog here.)
Change happens one person at a time. And Obama is a helluva smart little elf. Maybe not smart enough to gift wrap every solution we want, but then, who is?
Right now, I'll settle for progress. I'll settle for a job. I'll settle for a better Christmas, Solstice, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Rationalist season next year. And I'm willing to challenge my own thinking, beliefs, expectations to make that happen.
Here's to everybody staying warm and fed and surrounded by people who love them.
Hang in there and let's raise a glass of nog to the passing of the old year and the rebirth of the light.
Happy Solstice.