Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Seasonal Decorations and Other Inappropriate Crap...

12/11/2007

I rent a room in an old house for use as an office for those days when I actually spend a little time working at my real job.  There is an attorney downstairs who occupies the entire floor; we share an entrance.  At the front door is a small room the attorney uses as a waiting area.  Once in a great while, someone will even wait in it, while the attorney does other stuff and pretends to be extremely overwhelmed with the immensity of his caseload.  I think it’s a joke he likes to play on people.  He works about as hard as I do.

This past Thursday the attorney’s wife came over here to his office, and the wife and the attorney’s secretary drug Christmas, oops! excuse me, I meant to say, Holiday Decorations down to the first floor from somewhere up here on the second floor.  I could hear all the commotion and new something was going on from all of the huffing and puffing just outside my office door.  I was way too busy playing Spider Solitaire to be interested in offering assistance.  I didn’t want to get sweaty.

Friday morning when I arrived at my office to begin a day of new games, sometime between 7am and 10am – I need to judge the time because the clock in my office stopped working, so I am giving a range that I am sure will fit the actual time I arrived ready to start my busy day.  I walked through the front door of the building into a veritable wonderland of Christmas Cheer.  There are wreaths and garlands and Santas and elves and Christmas decorations of every kind…almost!  The secretary, when I told her how nice the place looked, sneered at me, and with a half smile on her face told me the decorations lacked the “Reason for the Season.”

I had to think on that one a while, and told her later that while I am not a religious sort, I am a spiritual one.  The reason for the season is to celebrate the birth of Jesus, after all who’s birthday is it.  Well, here’s my take on Holiday Decorations and the Reason for the Season.  Whether you are a devout Christian or of any other religion, I think you will have to admit that the Jesus portrayed in the Bible was the ultimate “Giver,” at least that is what I take away from the songs of the quartet, “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.” The Decorations of the Season we stole from the Pagans (not the motorcycle gang) when they melded into Christianity about the same time The Church decided December 25th was The Day.  Santa came later out of the imagination of Clement Moore from a poem he wrote in 1822 entitled, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas.”

My mother always defined Santa Claus as the “Spirit of Christmas Giving.” This is the Season of Giving, is it not?  The Ultimate Giver gave us the Season, and the Season gave us the symbol of Christmas Giving in the form of a little round man with a fluffy white beard in a red suit.  So if we decorate for the celebration of this birthday without a sign of anything religious, does it diminish in anyway what the Season is for?  Personally, I don’t think so.

I think this Jolly Old Elf needs to go buy some gifts now.  It is a time of giving.

And that is all I have to say about that…