I am going tonight to a Christmas party, not a holiday party, with a choir I used to accompany. I am decorating a new Christmas tree, not a holiday [Arbor Day, Sweetest Day, Ides of March] tree. The feast we'll eat with Mom at her retirement home is on Christmas -- not Eid or Kwanzaa, not Valentine's Day or Independence Day of Qatar.
The unnamed "holiday" makes a vague image in my mind, a random access that never arrives at an answer. But lo and behold, at my mother's residence there are poinsettias and a giant Christmas tree in brushed golds and deep reds, not decorations remaining out-of-focus because the holiday was not specific. I love the phrase Happy Holidays ... it can mean any or all of the holidays one is celebrating, or (for me) the sequence of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and Epiphany. But it doesn't mean nothing in place of something.
By naming and honoring what we each individually are celebrating, we represent ourselves. We are who we are, and it never has to be assumed to be at anyone else's expense simply because we didn't add a disclaimer.
Welcome Yule!
Thursday, December 22, 2011
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