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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

On Christmas Day, 2012




It's Christmas Day. We have enjoyed a late sleep-in, and awakened to a wonderfully warm and sunny day. There's no snow anywhere in sight, except our cat, blancanieve, although she is only partly white. Every time she returns home from her wanderings she is another shade of gray from the ash she picks up after the great fire in our region. In fact, she has been all  fifty shades of gray. (Sorry about that.)

Our next door neighbours, the ones below us are still screaming at one another as that is how they communicate with each other. I think the idea is that he who yells loudest gets heard.

The people who won money in the El Gordo lottery draw are still pissed as loons. The lines were long yesterday at the lottery kiosks with those waiting to go in having a look on their face that suggested they were about to have the best sex of their lives. Across the street stood those people who did not win with a look of jealousy/happiness for those who did win.

I didn't win a thing in El Gordo, my numbers all stayed in the big ball until next year. However, this year my family and I won another lottery to have survived the great fire that roard over and around our house leaving no so much as a smudge on the house itself. My neighbours behind us and in front were not quite so lucky.

As a family we are together, my wife, our son and myself. My Bermuda family will all join together over the holidays and form the solid unit that they are. One of these days we will reunite into one big wonderful unit to share the Christmas spirit.

There are many wonderful things about Christmas time for families who are able to be together, but it is also the one time of the year that drives more people to take their own lives or to drink or drugs.  Anything that is wrong in your life is accentuated. Homelessness, loneliness, just divorced,  and inaccessibility to your own young children are some of the things that are so depressing. However, there are two things that top the chart of depressing factors:  The first Christmas without your partner, or parent, or grandparent due to their death this year. The other is the loss of your child because of an act of murder. I find it unbearable to think of the families in Newtown, Connecticut, or in Syria where wanton violence has ended so many young lives before they have even had a chance to start. I am absolutely lost for any idea of how the families are supposed to cope with their losses, or even of how to help them get through this time of year.

If you have your family around you today, I suggest you do not argue and fight over trivial things. Appreciate what you have and how lucky you are and give one another a hug, and say out loud, I love you, and I appreciate your place in my life.

It's not necessary to be a Christian to appreciate this time of year. You can look at it as simply the end of year celebrations and that you have survived the year so far. To have done so is not something to be taken for granted as 100 people were lined up at a bakery shop in Syria to buy bread, and they are all dead today.

On those thoughts of reality, I truly hope that you will make the best of today.

Copyright (c) 2012   Eugene Carmichael