Two days to go, Gentle Reader, till the Big Day. Right now I am seeing a YouTube video in Spanish about Lucrezia Borgia, the infamous trollop daughter of Pope Alexander VI. I know, I know, what a thing to see so close to Christmas. I have a simple excuse: the selection of schlocky Christmas music being served on the CBC was just a little bit wanting for this listener, ademas, de verdad necesitaba escuchar algo en espanol, or, I was really needing to listen to something in Spanish. While searching YouTube for some other Christmas music I came across this in a selection of Spanish documentaries. Now it's the biography of Mata Hari, also in Spanish, hardly the Blessed Virgin Mary, nor the blessed virgin anything, but this seems to be the day for famous bad girls. It is also the day following my mother's birthday, a bit of a bad girl in her own right. She never gave me much in the way of details about her disorderly life before she married my father, and I'm glad there are things I will never know about her. She did drop her share of hints. And I finally put up the bloody Christmas lights this morning. I was going to do it yesterday in her honour but couldn't find them in my closet, so this morning I had to perform a major excavation. I finally found them. In case you are so insensitive, Gentle Reader, as to judge me as a hoarder, please understand this. I live in a tiny bachelor apartment of perhaps three hundred fifty square feet or less, with only one tiny closet. Satisfied? I thought you'd be.
Yesterday I was listening to some of the usual horse manure on the CBC about Christmas. Various common folk had been interviewed on the street and for each and everyone it appears that Christmas is a secular celebration involving family and only those you really care about. I phoned in two comments: that I found them to be incredibly selfish and narcissistic in their take on Christmas, which really is about Jesus and his message of love, and that our love and care has to extend beyond our immediate families and loved ones. My second comment was in reply to a presentation they were doing about being alone on Christmas. Everyone they talked to was not really alone for Christmas. It was merely their first time away from their precious families. Everyone who spoke on the program had friends to look after them for Christmas Day. Absolutely no mention was made of the many who have absolutely no one to welcome or care for them on Christmas and how traumatic this often is. I spared them no quarter in my second phone call. I told them they were behaving like smug, cowardly bourgeois too afraid and too ashamed to make mention of this horrible and ugly elephant in the room (with all respect to elephants). I really hope that I have given them enough of a kick in the ass to persuade them to grant us, the rejected and unwanted at Christmas, existence and presence on future programs.
It is somehow easier for me this year. A friend with whom I have reconciled following some rather difficult years between us has invited me to his home for Christmas dinner, just following my two hours working with some of my clients. Speaking with a counselor yesterday we agreed that it isn't just because I have a place to go this year. Some real healing has occurred.
To the rest of you, let me offer this counsel. If you are okay for this Christmas, please think of anyone you know who isn't. Don't feel guilty, but reach out. Invite them for dinner. If that is completely impractical, make some time to spend with them, even if it's just on the phone on Christmas Day. But try to spend some time with them, with maybe some treats and something nice to drink. No one should have to spend this day alone unless they really choose to, and those of us who are fortunate enough to have people around that love us are not exempt from responsibility.
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