Happy Whatever-you-celebrate

Holidays.  Yippee.

Oh, and the end of the world.  Forgot about that.  Sigh.

Ok, so when everyone wakes up Saturday morning and everything is still there and we go on about our business as usual, I’ll be sad.  Because it will be business as usual.  There will be no great revelations by the masses.  There will be no savior to suddenly appear and help us all get our shit together.  It’ll just be us, like it was yesterday and the day before, looking at each other, waiting for someone else to do something to make the world a better place.

I was fortunate enough to have an acquaintance a few years ago whose fascination with the Mayan theory of the end of the world led him to do a massive amount of research into it.  Apparently the Mayans were able to chart dates back for thousands of years with complete accuracy, noted celestial happenings that the rest of the world didn’t even notice, and managed to predict solar and lunar eclipses far into what was their future.  So the calendar ending is something a lot of folks looked at as a prediction of the end of time and, logically following that through, the end of the world. Well, not so much.

It is the end of A time, not all time.  Mayans measured time in various units, some that encompassed thousands of years.  It just so happens that we are at the end of a cycle of time called a baktun or a long count (7,886 years).  And you know what happens when one ends?  Another one begins.

Ok, so there may be some celestial things going on, too – I’m not real up-to-date on all of that.  But that doesn’t mean everything is going to come crashing down around us.  Hell, I’d be thrilled to see some real change in this world, but I’m not holding my breath.  The only thing I really can do is change myself.

So back to the holidays.  I like the time off.  I like getting to see my boys for more than ten minutes at a time.  I really dislike all the pressure to SPEND! SPEND! SPEND!  That’s just ridiculous.  Seriously, if all these “war on Christmas” people were really concerned with having their holiday taken away, shouldn’t they stop contributing to the commercialization of it?

Maybe that’s what will come to an end – the insane need to overspend and buy crap that will be broken or abandoned within the week.

I’m gonna go spend some time with my boys, before it all comes crashing down on us.

Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice and Merry Yule to all of you that celebrate this holiday.  I love this time of year because of all the love that just seems to ooze out of people.  Well, ok, most people.  There are a few grumpy butts out there that want to make this time of year about anything divisive.  I don’t understand the reason for putting out that much negative energy during a time when we need all the positive we can get. 

They come from all religious and non-religious backgrounds – Pagans who say hateful things about all the other religions stealing our holiday, Christians who insist anyone not celebrating a strictly Christian holiday are trying to destroy it, atheists who don’t celebrate any religious holiday and make fun of people who do – is this really what we need?  We’re supposed to be able to celebrate our holidays as we please, without all this arguing and drama.  Don’t you get enough of that at your family gatherings?

Ok, that last bit was a joke, but think about it….there is so much energy and anger put into pointing fingers and making accusations.  What if we spent all that energy working towards what should be the message for this time of year – peace and love?

I saw a picture recently on Facebook of a guy wearing a t-shirt that said “Unfuck the World.”  It really struck me right then how many people I know who have declared their hate and disdain for all human life, no matter what.  They spend most of their waking hours condemning everyone they come across for some small non-crime or simply because they exist.   I realize this would be asking for the impossible, but what if all those angry FTW people decided to stop being so angry and started putting out positive and loving energy?

Well, like I said, that would be asking for the impossible.  And I know full well there’s a good amount of people reading this right now who are thinking, “You are so stupid and delusional – it’ll never happen.”  Ok, that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean I have to be angry at the world for existing.  And I’m certainly not going to waste my time LOOKING for an excuse to be angry, or to start shit, or to pick fights.  I have much better things I can be doing with my time.

So tonight I’ll celebrate the Solstice, and Sunday I’ll gather with my family and hang out for a while.  The way I see it, it doesn’t really matter what day you celebrate, gather, worship, open gifts, whatever – as long as you can find some way to share some joy, it’s all good.

There’s one more thing I want to bring up today – December 21, 2012.  It’s exactly one year away.  So what do you think, if anything, is going to happen?