Shortly after my last blog post, I was pleased to see that Haiti is now indeed fashionable. A new relief effort called “Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief,” spearheaded by a group of celebrities (including George Clooney), has raised over $61 million to date.
We can only hope Haiti remains fashionable in the future.
In another year, on another blog…
I had blogged about my daughter’s trip to Haiti, and how it seems Haiti doesn’t get the attention it needs and deserves. Here, in part, is what I wrote:
You see, it seems some underprivileged countries have highly visible spokespersons to make them “fashionable.” Everyone knows Darfur needs help; we have George Clooney to keep their plight in our awareness. Other African countries, as well as Asian countries, have celebrities appearing on People magazine covers with their adopted children—Brad and Angelina and Madonna, to name a few. Even Eastern Europe has made the news lately when Americans have adopted their orphaned children.
What about Haiti? Are there any celebrities out there who’d like to speak for Haiti? We really need only one….
Now, with the devastating earthquake, perhaps—in a weird way—Haiti will finally get that attention. So many lives lost. So many people who, having nearly nothing before, have even less now. So many newly orphaned children. So many beautiful buildings forever destroyed.
Is it fashionable to help Haiti now?
It sounds like a cliché, but it’s often true. Something happens on TV or in a book or movie, and next thing you know, it’s being done in real life.
Sometimes this is a bad thing. A crime or other bad deed forms the plot of a TV show, and in no time “copycat” perpetrators are making the news.
But it’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes a screenwriter or other creative type will think of something that a scientific type hadn’t thought of, or had assumed was impossible. The creative type perhaps didn’t pause to think it might not be possible, or figured it would be believable enough for entertainment purposes.
Sooner or later, someone is asking, Hey, why not? Someone else responds, Indeed, why not? So some creative thinkers get together with some scientific thinkers and they create some great new thing.
Wouldn’t the thought-processing external voice box I talked about in my last post (like the ones in the movie Up) be a great invention to develop? People with speech problems, people who have trouble verbalizing their feelings, people taking a lie detector test…I see lots of applications for such a device. Yes, maybe even pets.
Anybody out there want to tackle this?
Have a great Christmas! If you don’t celebrate Christmas, have a great week anyway, and see you after!
Today I’m going to tackle another Christmas tradition: shopping. Christmas shopping is definitely a modern tradition, and perhaps an American-influenced one. In past decades and centuries, shopping wasn’t something people did much of. I remember the pilot for the television series The Waltons, back in the early 1970s. I don’t remember the name of the pilot, but I want to say it was The Homecoming. The Waltons quickly became my favorite television series—which made me somewhat of an oddball among my age group.
But I remember in the pilot, John-Boy had to go out and help someone in the snow, so Mama Walton gave him his gift to open early: hand-knit mittens. Okay, so it was the Depression, and people were poor. But similar themes play out in Little House on the Prairie, The Gift of the Magi, and countless other beloved stories across time. Gifts were hand-made things, store-bought candy, and very simple things. Pricey items were the exception.
So what that has to do with me…I simply don’t like shopping. In past decades of my own life, I actually did enjoy Christmas shopping, because of the festivity of the experience, and the chance to buy stuff that would make other people happy. But I didn’t like the time pressure or the fear (every year, the same fear, although never realized) that I wouldn’t get it all done. It seems the talk these past few years has focused on buying less, giving gifts of time, shopping at thrift stores, etc. So the rest of the world is getting in step with me.
Old goal out: start sooner. New goal in: buy less.
So, while I don’t like the idea of jumping on the “it’s the economy” poverty-mentality bandwagon, the “new” American tradition of not shopping suits me just fine. This year, I started my Christmas shopping exactly 11 days before Christmas. And I’m not worried about not getting it all done. Really.
Last week, I talked about the silliness of getting stressed out about whether to call a decorated evergreen a “Christmas tree” or a “holiday tree.”
As additional evidence that traditions matter, regardless of where they came from, observe the general attitude toward snow. Some people like and some don’t. Yet when Christmas is approaching, it seems everyone wants snow! Snow somehow reminds people of Christmas. And that’s a bit odd, considering that snow (as well as evergreens) is more reminiscent of Europe and Colonial America than of the Holy Land. It may snow in the Holy Land, and evergreens may grow there. Yet there’s nothing about this in the Biblical account of Christ’s birth, as far as I know.
Let’s be honest. Snow reminds us of such happy things as storybooks, movies, childhood, visits to grandparents, hot chocolate, cookies, tobogganing, snowball fights. Some of these are Christmas-related, simply because Christmas is celebrated in winter—at least if you live in the Northern Hemisphere.
Tradition is important to humans. Most of our Christmas traditions really have very little to do with Christmas. Enjoy.
At this time of year, we must listen to people argue over silly things like whether a decorated evergreen should be called a Christmas tree or a holiday tree.
The premise of the conflict is silly, because there is nothing religious whatsoever about a decorated tree. It’s simply a tradition that has come to us through our primarily European ancestry. People who celebrate Christmas generally have them in their homes and businesses, so they’ve become associated with Christianity. But…so what?
Traditions are important. Consider the places we get our traditions:
–The Bible or other authoritative book of our chosen religion.
–Our particular denomination.
–Our ethnic heritage.
–The region of the country we live in or come from.
–Our extended family.
–Our immediate family.
–Our community.
Now think of all the ways these influences can be combined, and we end up with an infinite variety of ways people can celebrate a holiday. Lots of people like Christmas trees because the decorated tree symbolizes connections to many things, people, and events that are important to us.
Does it really matter what we call it? I don’t think so. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, go to church, read the Bible, or have European people in your ancestry, just enjoy the sight of a pretty decorative item. If you don’t enjoy it, let others enjoy it in peace. That’s my suggestion to those who would get all worked up about the phrase “Christmas tree.”
Over the weekend I rented the movie “Marley and Me.” It was pretty cute, well done, not particularly original, and definitely not a “kids’ movie.”
But it touched upon an issue that pushes a button for me. Now, I don’t want to give anything away in case you haven’t seen it, but since the story covers a number of years, it goes without saying that Marley grows older. Near the end of the movie, the family is concerned about the dog’s health. One of the kids says that his friend says that dogs sometimes just go away to die alone when the time comes. That’s what the friend’s beagle did, the kid says.
No, says the mom, maybe beagles do that, but “not labs like Marley.”
Hello? Why do parents insist upon lying to their kids about something as important as death? Parents offer all kinds of stories to explain the loss of a pet: It ran away. We left him at the vet. With little pets, they can sometimes pull off putting a new one in the cage or bowl while the kids aren’t looking.
Death offers one thing that none of these fabrications do, however: closure.
Everybody dies! Not just dogs and cats and hamsters and goldfish, but people too! And if kids are lucky, they will experience the death of at least one pet before that of a person—grandparent, parent, or—God forbid—a sibling or classmate. Going through the grieving process over a pet is like “practice” for when it happens with a person. Take away the little lesson, and the big lesson is harder.
Letting the kids be “in on it” as much as possible is the best strategy. Okay, if your pet was hit by a car and mangled, that might be too disturbing for younger kids to see. But if you’re having him put to sleep, if the pet dies at home, or even if the pet is hit and killed but not mutilated, let the kids see what death looks like.
Lying to them to “protect” them is an oxymoron. The truth, please.