Merry F'ing Christmas

Christmas cards arrive in the mailbox, some accompanied by an “annual” letter detailing a year of travel, adventures in child-rearing, business success, or, in one case, a bizarre recounting of the restaurants the author had dined in, as if this accomplishment is of signal importance.

Weird shit to be sure, but these are Weird times. It takes a strong person – or a delusional one -- to stand in the maelstrom of bad news and visible misery and still feel the spirit of this Christian season moving down his or her spine. Goodwill toward Men and all that stuff becomes hard to muster when the daily news is filled with evidence that in places like Africa, Gaza and Afghanistan, Goodwill is in short supply. Even here in our beloved US of A, where criminal politicians are lining up to pardon themselves for a host of heinous crimes, Goodwill is scarce. None of this horror is happening to me personally, so I suppose I should shove these dark thoughts out of mind and pour another glass of cabernet and let the world roll on as it will – and as it always has.

Maybe. Except I find suppressing these musings a difficult feat, even with a glass or two of cabernet sloshing in my belly, because the inescapable fact is that the outrages visited upon innocent human beings anywhere diminish human beings everywhere. We can close our eyes, turn up the sound on our iPods or change the channel on the Tube, but the fact remains and remains and remains.

Meanwhile, it’s Christmas Eve and a heavy rain is supposed to fall; the sky is leaden and the mountains wear a shawl of puffy clouds. The eucalyptus trees in the yard yield to a gust of wind, bend and writhe, then snap back and dare the wind to come again. My little family has light and warmth and food, none of us are ill or infirm or mutilated by war, and this seems miraculous, if not just flat lucky.

And on the nightstand next to my bed, the statue of Buddha is still smiling, so yeah, Merry F’ing Christmas.

Amen.