Christmas comes whether we want it to or not.
Silent Night Comes Early
Been terribly quiet ‘round these parts of late. Too quiet. Postings are way down. Why is this? Where’s everyone? Is it the holidays? Or another round of “defections” and abandonments? Silent Night Holey Blogging.
White Christmas? Not Necessarily.
It comes in blue and black too.
I wonder how many ‘round here are suffering through the holidays. The stories of happy holidays abound. People anticipating Christmas … the get-togethers with friends and family …. the gifts … the festivities and parties and shopping, oh my!
I’ll be blunt. I don’t wish to read that. Christmas isn’t all merry and cheerful and bright — though you’d never know it by stepping outside. That portrayal ignores, overlooks and diminishes the truth for so many of Christmas and holidays as a time of deepest sorrow, of pain, of loneliness, of hurting, of suffering, of loss and loneliness and grief and isolation.
Of hardship and lack and poverty and being without, without work or home or hope or even opportunity, the numbers of which have multiplied exponentially since 2008/January 2009.
It’s from these people, this segment removed or excluded from the hoopla and cheer, that I wish to hear .. people who are truly hurting … those for whom the holidays are not the most wonderful time of the year (as the song goes) but rather the worst …. a day not a-glitter and a-glow but oh-no … a day wished away … a day to be gotten through.
It’s not those who feel blue yet are surrounded by Christmas accruements, festivities and social gatherings I seek in the blogosphere and 3-D world. If you’ve got all that, you’ve got far more than so many. You ought be counting your blessings rather than your blues.
I seek those who truly lack and are without anyone or anything resembling the holidays. Every year my holidays differ from the one before. One thread remains consistent, however. Those I most love and need to be with are far away, and the means to be there are {empty space}.
Each season then has its own character and quality. This year my mission and “theme” is: to extend a hand and connect with whose for whom Christmas is not about making merry but making it through.
If you are a soul hurting or perhaps hating the holidays, I want to “meet” you. I want to hear your story. How do you get through Christmas and holidays in general? What do you do to cope? What do you do, if need be, to forget?
Share at your blog or here. Sometimes it helps to speak and to be seen by others who truly understand and are there or have been there themselves.
Merci and to you Mary Christmas.
(a circumventing of the other spelling … an invented character, an imaginary friend if you will, who can be whoever you need her to be.)
Barefoot Blogger 