COVID CHRISTMAS
Virus and restrictions change many plans for the holidays this year, but celebrations continue »
It feels like we kind of limped our way to the finish, eh?
Christmas — for Christians and non-Christians alike
— is a signpost of the end of a year, a marker of what we’ve done, a marker of how we lived.
Feels a lot different this year.
The last few weeks should’ve been a funfilled adventure, trips to the mall, visits with Santa, making plans to see loved ones.
Instead? Masked up, socially distant, Santa via Zoom, fear of giving grandma and grandpa a potentially deadly disease.
This isn’t a political statement, not an argument about how we handled the coronavirus. It’s just a fact. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, the last nine months have been — for almost all of us — the longest nine months of our lives.
And so, Christmas 2020 just isn’t feeling much like Christmas. But. But maybe this year, instead of seeing Christmas as a marker of the end of the year, we should instead look at it as a marker of the beginning of the return to our lives. Science is galloping to the rescue, vaccines are making their way around the world. This isn’t the end of 2020 as much as it is the beginning of the post-coronavirus world. The beginning of a return to our way of life. The beginning, period.
And not for nuthin’, but it kind of fits. After all, Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, and it doesn’t take a religious scholar to tell you that sure was the beginning of something pretty momentous.
Obviously, in a week, we’ll celebrate the new year, and there will probably be a lot of belly button-gazing columnists like myself putting out similar ideas. A new year, a new start, a new beginning, a new outlook, a new everything.
And while that’s all well and good, I think I’d prefer to start today. Christmas may not be part of my religion, but — and it doesn’t take a sociology scholar to note this — Christmas is bigger than that. Christmas is part of the American fabric, part of the way of all our lives. I’m not saying I’m going to church today, but I sure do enjoy good cheer and the all around jolliness that comes with the holiday.
Christmas 2020 can easily be a time to look back at the year, to remember all we’ve lost. Or Christmas 2020 can — and it’s not as easy — but it can be a time to look ahead, to start anew, to know the light at the end of the tunnel is real and we’re barrelling down the tracks to meet it.
I am ready to put this year behind me, and I’m sure you are as well.
Christmas — a day that celebrates the most important beginning is western culture — is the day I am choosing to begin anew myself.
Sure, it’s going to be a few more months before we wrangle this monster to the ground, but it’s coming. This Christmas, instead of looking back, let’s all decide to look forward.
And so to everyone reading this … well, I’ll let John Lennon bring this one home ...
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one Without any fears