Hallelejah! This year my gift to myself is blissful – a nearly complete shunning of the holiday spirit and practice. A few calls interstate and overseas to distant friends, one card to my mum, and plans for a quiet day at the coast with my offspring. In the yard this morning, picking raspberries for my breakfast, I heard the recorded strains of ‘Venite adoremus’ [sic?] and felt happy to be both unadoring and unrepentent. My worship is confined to the wonders of my garden, ripe red berries that are hearty, not holly. Canberra summers have their delights.
It’s not just that I no longer have the required moral resolve to fuss with decorations, or even that I resent the hijacking of a perfectly functional pagan ceremony for the winter solstice into traffic jams and orgies of consumption. I just don’t care, beyond rejoicing that this will be the first Christmas in can’t remember how many years that my children and I will have been together. Hell, Number One has been in custody for at least the last 4. If he makes it in a bus down the coast from his rehab (and straight) that will be cause enough to celebrate.
Any religious fervour that might bubble up at this time of year is muffled by my ongoing confusion about the actions of my betters: a news feature tells of the Bush family’s dogs and their cutesy adventures. They are also reputed to be intensely devout. (The Bushes, that is, but probably the dogs too.) When the twin towers went down, a result of another religion’s fanaticism, I was therefore expecting a strong Christian response, a reaffirming of the deepest values of the Saviour. Perhaps, I hoped, they would emphasise turning the other cheek, and learning to share. But still I wait for the second coming when the sinners will be turned out of the mall (or at least have their tires let down). No wonder I’m keeping my distance.
This is my first blog posting, ever. Your tolerance is asked for (may I insist?) and in return such blessings as I can offer are tossed like benedictions into cyberspace. On the Internet, no one knows….Wuf!