Season’s Greetings

Recently I received an email, forwarded by a friend to a long mailing list, which challenged me to declare my preference: “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas.”

The gist of this message was that "Happy Holidays" was used only to be politically correct while "Merry Christmas" was the preferred greeting for the vast majority of people, a majority being manipulated and put upon by the PC few.

Each recipient was urged to include his or her name on a list, below the message, and indicate the preferred greeting, then forward the message to their own email address list. The roll of greetings that followed had 148 names entered. Every entry included a “Merry Christmas.”

I didn’t forward the message, but I did write back to my friend:

As it happens, my standard greeting of "Happy Holidays" has been meant to include the season extending from Thanksgiving to the New Year. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I wish folks a "Merry Christmas." In any case, I don't see any serious religious connotation to merriment.

Nonetheless, when I was the boss at the hospice, I instructed our chaplain to offer a non-denominational prayer at our Tree of Lights ceremony; I knew folks of non-Christian faiths had contributed and would be in attendance. I never pictured this as politically correct—it was simply courteous. It was the prayer that was important, not the formula. (Even the Lord's own Prayer is non-denominational.)

It became part of our hospice lore when, that first year, our chaplain, of Baptist persuasion, began to close his meaningful, nearly poetic prayer with what I'm sure was almost hard-wired phrasing: "This we ask You in the name of, uh...," and he paused awkwardly before the assemblage. He realized too late that his beautiful non-sectarian effort was about to crash and burn. He stumbled through some patched together neutral closing words—and we never let him forget it. "Hey, Jim, tell us about that time you couldn't remember Jesus' name."

The tree itself was called "of Lights" because the emphasis was the lights memorializing our former patients. Their families were our most frequent contributors; a book containing those patients' names was part of the memorial. Obviously, it was a "Holiday" season fund-raiser that would have seemed silly if not for the association with the "Christmas" tree—a holiday custom which, by the way, may have its roots in "pagan" ceremonies. Go figure. 

I think the Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas controversy is a manufactured product. The two phrases have different meanings, different uses. From a Christmas-spirit point of view, at best, it can be quibbling. At worst, it can pervert that spirit of love and inclusion for which Jesus was born—and died. It always saddens me when people try to turn Christianity into a weapon of exclusion and division.

I'm sure most folks see this issue as a matter of Christian pride—but those two words really don't go together.

Amen.

!

Man oh man!

What a piece of work is a man!

How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty,

in form and moving how express and admirable,

in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god—

the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 2, scene 2

I’ve been having some issues with my writing style lately.

I began using the outline layout because I thought my message was being obscured by my prose style. The numbered paragraphs were meant to make each point stand out.

But there’s no flow to it; it’s like climbing stairs when what I’m after is more of a stroll in the park. And it’s pretty impersonal.

I’m up in the air about this because what I’ve been trying to convey are, to me anyway, some very significant ideas, concepts that have shaped my life, especially over the last decade. Exactly how to get these ideas across has had me a bit flummoxed.

So I’m doing a reboot on my approach. I’m going to fall back on the style I used in my emails with my friend the Otter; I'm comfortable with it and he seldom complains.

Let’s get into it.

I want to talk about our vanity. No, not just vanity—arrogance. That’s a subject with which I have some first-hand experience.

Let me tell you what I consider our ultimate arrogance: that many of us believe that we are created in the image of God. 

In the image of God. Just wrap your mind around that for a minute. Go ahead, take a moment….

Feeling god-like? Okay, now let me compound that conceit: the reason we know that we are created in God’s image is because we believe that God told us so.

That's right. We know we are created in God's image because God told us. Who can argue with that?

Well, me, I guess.

For many of us, the source for this message of creation is the book of Genesis.

The book of Genesis, written, we generally agree, by one or more human authors—divinely inspired authors, any true believer will insist.

My problem is this: whether it’s true or not, we would still believe it.

Go ahead, dwell on that notion for a bit: if it wasn't true, we'd still believe it was.

And, even more, it seems a mighty convenient dogma in either case.

Quite the conundrum, I'm thinking.

Well, I reckon that’s enough for now. I’d welcome discussion, if a reader would be so inclined.

That feels better. I think this approach comes much closer to what I’m after. By the way, this whole style business is why I didn’t post last week; I was still rasslin’ with the problem. So, my apology for missing my self-imposed deadline.

!

Free will*

*Does not include administrative fees, shipping and handling or dealer prep.

So, where do several weeks of my psycho-socio biobabble leave us?

Perhaps with the notion that our so-called free will is not so free after all.

Think about it. If you can.

!

Psycho-Sociobiology 101: Is that all there is?

Here’s what it boils down to:

1. Each of us has a unique experience of life because each of us has a singular genetic structure, including our brain and other organs and, to some degree, because of our particular life circumstances.
2. We share some similarities with one another, most noticeably within families, but on a broader scale as well, within discernible ethnic and racial groups. These similarities can include physical, perceptual, emotional and behavioral traits.
3. There are other broad groupings of similarities and differences in these traits, among them:
1. Gender
2. Culture
3. Social group assimilation, i.e., group vs. individual
4. Sexual preferences
5. Age
6. Societal interests, concerns and goals, e.g., liberal or conservative, etc.
4. Our physical traits, including our brains and the way each unique brain perceives, processes, stores and dispatches, cause our behaviors, including emotions to which we respond.
5. To the degree that our brain (and body) is similar to or different from others will largely define similarities or differences in behavior among individuals and groups.
6. Changing these differences and similarities is as simple as changing your brain structure.
7. Think about it.

Psychobiology 101: It is what it is.

When I was a kid, I used to wonder if everyone saw colors the same way. Was the color blue seen the same by everyone? How would we know if it wasn’t?

Much later, I had a sweater. It was woven from multi-color yarn and it was loose and comfortable; it became my favorite. Typical of favorite garments, after a few years it began to show its age.

One evening we were getting ready to go out to some friends’ house for dinner and my wife asked me what I was going to wear. I told her I planned to wear my favorite blue sweater.

She asked, “What blue sweater?”

I said, “You know, the blue pullover, the crew neck that I like.”

She said, “You mean that green one?”

I said, “No, the blue one.”

“What blue one? Show me.”

I pulled the sweater on and said, “Ta-Da!”

She said, “That’s a green sweater and you’re not wearing that ratty old thing out of the house.”

I was immediately interested in our differing descriptions of the sweater—the color, that is; it was definitely ratty.

I went into the bathroom and looked at the sweater in the mirror. Multi-color it was, but it seemed predominantly blue to me.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this blue-green controversy so, to further my research, I went to our teenage daughter’s room. I asked her, if she had to use just one color to describe the sweater, what would it be.

She pondered a few seconds and said, “I suppose brown, or maybe rust. You’re not going to wear that tonight, are you?”

The only thing I was sure of was that I was not going to wear that sweater to go out that evening.

Some years later, though, I became certain of this: to a greater or lesser degree, we all experience existence—life—each in our own unique way.