Winter of Discontent

More than any year previous - or perhaps unlike any year previous, I have been annoyed, burdened, depressed, and plain turned off by the Christmas preemptives. I have always been able to let it go and chalk it up to the world's sort of naive festive way of anticipating Christmas. It has never been from the standpoint of a snob, or "taking it in stride", but simply seeing the positive in it, and really I have never had to make an effort. I like the charm as much as anyone.

I'm not one to boast about how I put up decorations on Christmas Eve (I typically decorate around Gaudete), and while I give a spontaneous dearth-like sigh at the first lights going up at the start of November, I have never gone into the fray as it were. But I can't do it any more. By that I mean I don't have the strength any longer to deny or fend off the weight of depression that hits me, as when for instance someone wishes me a merry Christmas in the first week of December. You just kind of want to go under a rock and die. One of the stupid ironies of the conservative campaign to get corporations to say "Merry Christmas" to their customers is the banalizing of what a Christmas greeting ought to be. Really, I would actually be happier if someone in the time of Advent, which is not Christmas time, just cheerily said to me, "Season's Greetings!" Exactly.

I want Advent. I've always loved Advent, and have always wanted it be slowed down to the slowest possible capacity. And I don't like the warm purple Advent candles; I like the cold purple Advent candles.

I simply want to have the quiet presence of Jesus born in my heart - in the deep stillness. From that everything flows.

And those images of immigrant children and families in cages...how can one justify that?