"Winter Holidays"

It's that time of year again.  The season of love and joy.  The season where everybody complains that everyone else's holiday traditions are ruining theirs.  Ah yes, the holidays....

I wonder how celebrating MY traditions lessens anyone else's?  It's the same STUPID argument being levied regarding Gay Marriage rights.  Somehow, someone else having something make what I have less?

Here is what I have been thinking about ALL the Winter Holidays- Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice and Kwanza.  (I've been hearing about a humanist Holiday called "Human Light, but that's a new on e on me)  ALL of these holidays hold one theme in common: hope.  The birth of Christ gave new hope for salvation according to the Christian religion.  Hanukkah celebrates the hope that when all seems lost, faith will carry you through.  Solstice celebrates Winter and the hope of Spring. Kwanza celebrates the hope for unity and wisdom.   Winter is traditionally a time of reflection, a time when we remember the hopes and fears of the fading year and look forward with hope toward the new one.  Instead, we have turned it into a loud bickering shoving match.  Commercialism runs rampant and we forget the joy and wonder of the season.  We forget this is a time to count our blessings, remember our friends and the good that people have brought us this year.  We are inundated with BUY BUY BUY in the media and in the stores.  We strive for the "perfect" Martha Stewart holiday, not remembering that perfect is having your friends and family together not that magazine glossy photo style dinner on the table.  I have had a "perfect" holiday cheeseburger with friends.  The laughter and the warmth mean more to me than anything else.  As I place my food on the table this year, I will remember two things.  One- the main ingredient in a perfect holiday is love Two- Martha Stewart has a cast of thousands getting her meal camera ready!