By Bill Zastera
The Holiday Season is a time of visiting, family members, good food, and a regeneration of life and family values. It creates hopes of grasping the images of long lost cover paintings of the Saturday Evening Post and fabricates an idea of family strength of work.
I’m not really an avid fan the happy-go-lucky glamour and pizzazz of the holidays but I can see the need for support from the family gatherings we all participate in as well as the feeling we get from exchanging gifts with friends and relatives. But what really gets to me is how the whole season is like watching a bad sit-com rerun, year after year.
Around my house it NEVER changes. Take Thanksgiving for example. Every year the same people come over to eat the same food at the same time to have the same conversations about the same things and it goes on and on. Only their medical problems change.
Why do we put ourselves thru this bothersome push-pull game of repetition? “We must remember our family and ancestry!” But let me ask you…
Have the ancestors of our past achieved spiritual enlightenment through this ritual of tradition?
The task I place before you simply involves a little change. Find something new this year to celebrate the experience of life (try to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on lights and decorations that have lost all meaning and remain as but a status symbol.)
Have the kids take grandma and grandpa sledding. Or have a Hawaiian Luau instead of turkey or ham. Go swimming or have a keg and get wasted……. IT DOESN’T MATTER!!! Enjoy the freedom we have. You have a job to keep the ritual in your life.
Thanks for listening.