My Kind Of Xmas

I am faithless. I am not an agnostic; I never had any faith to give up. I'm not an atheist; I have no feelings on the matter that could support such a position. I am not a Deist; that would require belief. I don't believe in anything beyond the natural world that surrounds and torments me. In a related development, I don't trust anyone or anything either. Notwithstanding these caveats, I do try very hard to enjoy Christmas. 

I embrace Xmas* as an end-of-year holiday when we can all take a break and show some appreciation for making it to the finish line of another year of all of this bullshit. We could not have done it without help, none of us could. So take a moment to generate some more or less genuine happiness, or at least some sense of relief, and thank the people who helped us along the way. 

Thank all of you, dear readers. I enjoy writing this blog, but it is much nicer knowing that there are some people out there who enjoy reading my complaining. What can I tell you? I'm a New Yorker at heart. I lived there for almost thirty years, I was born there. We love to complain. 

I enjoy the tree idea as well. The evergreen tree. It nicely represents the good friends who stay with you in good times and in bad. Let those other trees abandon you when the going gets rough (cold). The fir tree remains at your side. 

Another thing that I take no position on is the idea that there really was a Yeshua who made a fuss around the year thirty, common era. This holiday is really the Winter Solstice. It's been a holiday for at least 20,000 years. Those ancient tribal people knew very well about the passing of the months, marked by the passage of the moon and other planets. They knew all about the lengthening and shortening of the days in the course of one year. They marked it with log circles; in Siberia then marked it with circles made from the skulls of megafauna. They observed the shadows, tracking the movement of the sun. After the Winter Solstice, the days began to get longer. That was a pretty good  reason to have a festival. Perhaps the best reason. 

So Merry Xmas, Happy Solstice Day, Happy All of the Holidays. I wish for all of my readers, family, friends, for everyone, in fact, a better year in 2022, a happy, healthy year. Hey, it could happen!

*Xmas is not impolite. The "X" is for the Greek letter representing the messiah.