Annamaria's Christmas 2024

 

CHRISTMAS 2024

 

This holiday season just doesn’t feel normal.  It’s supposed to be joyful, but even for an optimist like me, it’s going to be difficult to get all the way to joy.

 

Christmas celebrates the birth in Palestine of a Jewish baby boy.  I went to Catholic school for 17 years—Kindergarten through college.  I know a lot about what Jesus did and said.  What I hear from the so-called Christians of great influence in the US today… Well, it does not jibe with what we know what about Jesus’ teachings.

 

Jesus was born at a time of uncertainty and conflict.  He grew up to be a brilliant man, who taught his people a new way to think about themselves.  He preached of a merciful God, who wanted His people to be kind to each another.  “By this shall they know thee, that you love one another.”  That was his credo.  He practiced what he preached.  He fed the poor.  He healed the sick.  He befriended ordinary people—fishermen, a tax collector, a fallen woman.  He rejected no one.    As far as we know, the only people who angered him were the money changers in the temple.

In that fraught time, not unlike our own, people wanted, needed his lessons.  He soon had such a large following that the elders of his culture wanted him stopped.  He was executed in a horrendous way.

 

I recount this here because the so-called Christians who are operating in the US these days hold forth a body of religious beliefs and practices that are the very anthesis of the teachings of Jesus.  He preached love.  They profess hatred of anyone who is not exactly like them.  He fed the poor.  They promise to discontinue government programs that have  been doing just that.  Rather than abhorring the money changers in the temple, some so-called Christians instead align themselves with the hyper-rich and want to enhance their power. 

 

The ordinary worshippers in the modern-day sects are not the problem. Their leaders mislead and manipulate them.   Those leaders call themselves Christians, but they most resemble the very people Jesus went up against.  The ones who, in the end, wanted Him dead because He preached God’s love.

 

Jesus came to be called the Prince of Peace. In his day, it was Satan who was the Master of Chaos.

 

I no longer practice a religion, but I still embrace Christ’s message of love.

 

Given all of this, how does one celebrate Christmas in 2024?

 

The Christmas after 911 was the most difficult one I have experienced.  Some of us New Yorkers living south of 14th St. in Manhattan decided to make Christmas as normal as possible. We knew it would not be easy. There were still remnants on neighborhood walls of photos of the lost, left by their loved ones who had hoped to find them in the nearby hospital.  We could still hear the grinding noise of the clean up still underway two miles to our south.  The members of the Waverly-Bank Neighbors Association decided that, in addition to the typical wreaths and garlands, we would all put up lots of lights. In our windows and on our stoops and around our doorways. I’m doing a version of that this year.

To hang on to the spirit of the season this year, I am also harkening back something else I did in 2001.  Of course, since it is me solving an emotional problem, it involves music.  This is the song, I hope, will help you enjoy the holiday, whatever your religious affiliation.

 

 https://youtu.be/jxxTHzERTsk?si=ZSlnXsFfqtF7C42n

Do what my friends around the world did in 2001.  Sing this song on December 24, Christmas Eve.  Twenty-three years ago, I got messages from all over from people who told me they had sung it.  Those messages included an audio recording of a young Italian girl who had taught herself to play it on the piano and sang it with her parents,

Try this: sing it with your loved ones or all alone, but do join me and my other friends. Sing it along with Judy Garland. Here are the lyrics in case you need them:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away

Once again, as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more

Someday soon, we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Next year all our troubles will be miles away…

If the fates allow…

Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.