Do they know it's Christmastime?

I see beauty in the hustle, decorations and bustle that cities have during Christmastime.  I love how places decorate, I love the lights, I look for window displays each year in the big department stores on Fifth Avenue and I even brave the Rockefeller Center shove and push to see the tree at least once. I love the season and it's total devotion to just making the ordinary look dressed up.    

I will admit that the crowds get the occasional curse words, short lived because then I look at a pretty light display and I am like dog with squirrel, distracted and slightly amused in a way that I may not otherwise be. 

I also really get so psyched to give gifts, to get gifts and to hopefully have given something that the person receiving it just totally loves.  So in that spirit here are my virtual gifts to all the amazing people who read this blog. 

In this year for those of us who may not have gotten the candidates we voted for it is easy to fall into cynicism but that's not going to change the outcome nor will it be a driver to keep going, to keep working for what we want for the future.  So my gift to all in this category is a pretty snowflake, look at it, so pretty, unique and independent yet put together with other snowflakes it is a force to be reckoned with.  

In this year that we have seen so many reign terror on innocents I give you the gift of knowing that we mourn those lost by celebrating life to the fullest.  Here is your shiny gift, wrapped in a bow, pretty paper and all full of opportunities and dreams.  These acts of terror remind us not to put off for another year those things that we want to do.  

After knowing that many live in war zones take a moment to appreciate your moments of peace. Maybe it is a warm cup of coffee or tea, maybe spiked or not, but there is no maybe about how good it is to have the ability to just stop and enjoy a moment.   So here is your mug, bow on the side go fill it and take a deep breath - peace begins with each of us. 

Here is to fun - yes fun, the kind that is not good for us because it is too much of whatever you enjoy, it is fun with kids and laughing at ourselves for having a piece of tape stuck to our hair after wrapping presents (oh is that only me?).  It is fun in letting people rip the paper that you did everything to wrap so meticulously. The joy of laughter that reaches the eyes when the gift is just as perfect as you hoped it would be. 

Here is to all that holiday music - yeah, yeah but admit it there is a smirk when it comes on, a sing along here and there.  

Christmastime - full of pagan rituals like the tree and decorations - celebrating a man whose birth came to his parents who struggled to find love and caring instead of cynicism even when things got rough.  Jesus is the reason for the season because you can be a devout Christian or an atheist and appreciate that he was a man dedicated to the possibilities we all have to be better to one another, to forgive and most of all to enjoy the moment (after all he did turn water into wine). 

Do they know it's Christmastime is from a song done many years ago to benefit a drought devastated area but really it applies to all of us - we can give more if we love, live and enjoy our own lives more. 

So with that I wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and all that jazz