Merry Christmas and Happy Holy Days to you and yours. I may be an agnostic, leaning Atheist, but I do enjoy the holiday season at the end of the year. I celebrate in some fashion (I play Santa Claus for the town of Estes Park, which might scandalize some if they knew, but if they have a problem with my attitude, they haven’t told me. I do enjoy the lengthening of the daylight hours, the holiday caroling and I don’t begrudge anyone however they wish to celebrate the season (so long as they’re not hurting or harming anyone).
I hope you are able to spend your days with whoever you’d like. This year, I have my cousin and his long-time friend from the Boston area visiting. He’s been out once before, in summer, and this past summer I went to Boston to see the Colorado Rockies play the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. My cousin has full or shared season tickets to the four major sports teams from Boston, as well as the Bruins’ minor league hockey club. He is very much a sports fan. We saw the Rockies win, in an extra inning game that was delayed by rain for about two hours, so we spent lots of time at Fenway. Later in the year, we learned that the New England Patriots football team would be traveling to Denver for a football game on Christmas Eve night (last night) so I invited my cousin to Denver for the game, so I invited him to come out for the game. He agreed, but his wife wasn’t interested in coming — she’s not a sports fan nearly like he is, and since my wife wasn’t around any more, Lori decided she wasn’t interested in coming just for a football game. Last night, of course, was just after the cold front came through and dumped snow for Christmas, so the three of us (cousin, friend and I) went to freeze at Mile High Stadium and while we saw an entertaining game, my cousin was annoyingly happy to have his Patriots win.
Previous to yesterday, over the weekend I had shown them around town and we had gone up into the National Park so we could see that before the snow arrived. We had about four inches of snow at my house — not sure how much you might have had, though I didn’t see much on Sunday when we went to the game. We did see some charismatic megafauna (elk, deer, a coyote), but I had hoped to see some things a bit less common. Still, the Bostonians from the coast were very impressed with the scenery and the state.
For some reason, I was able to upload pictures and then I couldn’t upload more, so if I’m able to, I’ll add them in the comments.
I’d love to hear any thoughts you might have about how your holy days are going, anything you would like to share about something you’re doing or even a rant about the over-commercialization of Christmas, or how wars are being fought right now in several places during what should be a holy, peaceful period. The floor is yours...