{"id":32276,"date":"2010-12-18T07:35:48","date_gmt":"2010-12-18T12:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=32276"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:06:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:06:00","slug":"a-changeling-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/a-changeling-season\/","title":{"rendered":"A Changeling Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

HAPPY Holidays! My gift to you this post is very little political detail. It won’t cheer you, encourage you or make the coming days happier. It would even be productive, perhaps, to fast from news\u00a0the next few days. I’ll keep an eye on it for you, if you insist on knowing when the sky falls or the Congress implodes or George Bush chokes on another pretzel. Let me be candid, though. I’m struggling with the season. I think many of us are, certainly many who can’t seem to find time, money or energy to do what we managed so smoothly even a year ago. It’s part of our shift and it’s calling for a change in how we handle our experience of the holidays.<\/p>\n

Of the many things that need to change if we are to make an evolutionary jump, our traditions are the toughest to let go. We define ourselves through our participation in them. They’re dear to us, they comfort and calm us even if they’ve become anxiety-ridden and shallow, as has our excessive holiday season. Face it, today’s version of Santa might as well have been slapped together by the G20 as the ultimate profit booster, and I could go on indefinitely about the misery Christocrats have produced with their politicized culture wars.<\/p>\n

Andrew Sullivan thinks that the reason the Christocrats feel free to demonize Obama as a probable Muslim is because he’s an actual Christian, as opposed to their religious embrace of capitalism in tandem with politically-operative theocracy. They’re not familiar with what they’re seeing, similar to when they tell us about how the Constitution works without having any idea of its actual transcendent quality. Me, I think those trapped in this kind of fervor wouldn’t recognize a real follower of Christian principle if they ran one over with Santa’s reindeer at the mall. Especially at the mall.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Santa and the Baby Jesus have morphed into a single reason for the season these days. Secular or religious, this time of year makes us largely bi-polar, swinging unsteadily up and down the emotional spectrum. Nostalgia for Christmas past and trepidation over Christmas future may fill our Christmas present with anxiety this year, and it’s safe to say that feeling has been growing stronger, year after year, for quite awhile. Our conditioning puts us into spending mode, even as that proves difficult and often unwise. Our emotions beg us to join in for the contact high found in filling shopping bags while our common sense advises caution. When we are unable, as many are these days, to manage any but the smallest reminders of the season, depression often moves to sit like an uninvited guest at our table. The holiday season should not be about class and affluence, but in our culture, ‘more is better’ isn’t a suggestion, it’s a mantra superseded only by ‘shop ’til you drop.’<\/p>\n

We live in a universe of plenty, and the thought that there isn’t enough is ludicrous; on the flip side, when IS enough enough? The inequity of our class structure and culture has center stage these days, and it’s time to look at that honestly and unflinchingly. I think we go a little — ok, a lot — nuts at Christmas with giving and getting and having because we’ve lost a sense of magic in our lives. We want to give our kids, and the little kid in ourselves, those glimmers of transcendent experience, so we make sure to provide that dearest wish or greatest desire, yet too often we’ve merely passed along stuff.<\/p>\n

Stuff doesn’t make us happy; there are studies. And maybe we spend because we’re subconsciously pushing back at our own deadening nerve-ends, our inability to break through the societal constraints that limit our creativity and freedom. We have to get the money, so we give up giant bits of our life-force to get it; spending it is what there is to do, the slight and shifting power base of the working stiff. Not a good substitute for living authentically, but a carefully constructed charade that needs plenty of maintenance. Time to rethink that. The universe appears to be helping to slow that down to a crawl so we can.<\/p>\n

Stuff isn’t evil, nor is our desire for stuff — but what we’ll tolerate and what we’ll compromise to get it surely appear to be at the root of our undoing. Within the acquisition of stuff, itself, is that moment when we realize it’s too much, we’ve gone too far, we’ve hurt ourselves. That’s where the PR folks rush in to soothe and calm us, silence the little whisper with loud voices, clever commercials and encouraging hoorahs. Listen for the softer voice. We must learn to recognize the authentic voice of our better angels, begin to experience the limitations of stuff as opposed to the reward and satisfaction of actual substance. We must break our dependency on the illusions that keep us prisoner.<\/p>\n

Our ability to give to one another can certainly involve money, and in most instances must involve some, but that must never be the most of what giving is about. Money, of itself, is not impressive. We have to get over thinking it is. We have to grow beyond thinking we are what we do, hence what we earn. Despite brief periods when it wasn’t so, class distinctions in this country severely limit our upward mobility. If we want to change that back to the days when American sweat-equity and ingenuity could cross class lines, we’ll have to turn back forty years of conservative damage to the rules that made the American Dream possible. We can do it. Need I remind you that within any challenge we have everything we need to master it, Grasshopper?<\/p>\n

And listen — despite PR to the contrary, an occasional lotto ticket doesn’t count as a legitimate way into prosperity, but it makes a damned fine stocking stuffer. Easy on the pocketbook too. Me, I’d rather go over to Heifer International<\/a> and give a chick or a goat in someone’s name, and have for years; if you’re vegan, you can choose bees or trees. How much more life-affirming can you get than to give someone the means to sustain themselves? Warning: if you give this gift to someone who only looks up from the card, owl-eyed and mystified, their head cocked like a dog hearing a high-pitched whistle, you are no longer in the company of liberals. They’re better off with the lotto tickets.<\/p>\n

This is largely a make-do Christmas for a majority of us. That may be a good thing, a changeling energy in a shifting paradigm. We ourselves are becoming something other than a 20th century version of American; our holiday traditions must follow in short order, and perhaps that’s the blessing in the manger of this new century. The less we have, the more we look around and actually see one another. Perhaps that’s the gift that’s been missing all along.<\/p>\n

May your days be merry and bright, dearhearts. Happy Holiday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves HAPPY Holidays! My gift to you this post is very little political detail. It won’t cheer you, encourage you or make the coming days happier. It would even be productive, perhaps, to fast from news\u00a0the next few days. I’ll keep an eye on it for you, if you insist … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}