This year, we have found our Christmas. This year is different.

Maria can speak for herself, and will, but I can say that finally, and after much searching,  I have found the meaning and purpose of Christmas for me.

“Want to keep Christ in Christmas?,” asked the author Steve Maraboli, “feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

This Christmas, in partnership with the Army Of Good, I am finding my Christmas. I am taking steps to feed the hungry, clothe the needy, welcome the unwanted, care for the sick, empathize with the enemy.

With all due respect to the sad divisions all around me, this is one of the best times of my life, all the turmoil in our world has been a gift to me, it has shown me a new way to live.

And I am embracing it with so many of you, the Army Of Good, we are in sync, we are on the same track. I don’t think we will be de-railed.

Norman Vincent Peale wrote that Christmas “waves a magic wand over this world, and behind, everything is softer and more beautiful.”

I am feeling that this year. Other people can join the left or the right and argue all they want, even Christ’s life is becoming a partisan political argument.

I get messages every day chastising me for saying Christ devoted his life to helping the poor and vulnerable. That, they say, is wrong, he never spoke much of the poor or the needy.  They say I misquote him.

And these messages are from people who call themselves Christians. “Why are you always misrepresenting Christ as being all about the poor?,” a woman demanded to know on my Facebook Page.

I didn’t skip a beat. “Because I am obviously a tool of Satan,” I replied, “Why else?” She went away and did not return.

What a strange world we live in, there is no shame or common truth for many, we are losing the idea of sanctity, we are reducing every shared value to an argument. Our souls are sickened by conflict and grievance.

—

We start our Christmas holiday by bringing light.

Our house sits off a state highway that is dark and empty at night, this year we decided to light the house up for the holidays and give those lonely drivers something bright to see as they pass by in the dark.

There are no street lights where we live, only the stars.

We were excited about this, we bought all kinds of colored and white strings of lights and put them all over the front porch, the back porch and  the living room and dining room. Maria and I both realized that this Christmas is different, we feel good about it, excited about it.

We are hosting two Christmas gatherings, a small dinner for some good friends this week, and then a Sunday afternoon drop-by for the people in our community. We have never done that before, we wish to celebrate our new community in this season.

We are buying food, pondering recipes, eager to spend time with friends. We are excited, like little kids going to Rockefeller Center in New York for the first time.

I have been all over the lot about Christmas in my life.

I was born into a Jewish family desperate to assimilate, we had a giant tree and literally hundreds of presents we collected for one another all during the year. There is nothing that makes many Jews crazier or more confused than trying to figure out Christmas.

It was an almost desperate kind of overkill, a kind of flailing for connection from a family that didn’t have any. it was too much, over the top, and too fraught. You can’t tear each other apart all year and wash it away in a day. We were miserable all year, and this one day we simply drowned each other in things we didn’t really need or want. It was forced joy at its worst.

And it wasn’t even our holiday. Maria had the same experience, she could never be herself during the holidays. It was brutal and and painful for her, and no one around  her saw it or cared.

You couldn’t be real at either of our family Christmases,  you could only be the person they all needed you to be. We had to hide ourselves, and for victims of abuse, that is just another trauma.

So Christmas had no real meaning for either of us, too much pressure, obligation and too little feeling and joy. It felt fake. When we got together, we usually fled to some quiet Inn to be so far from family we didn’t have to deal with it.

We always had an excuse, we were going away.

In December, Maria started to fray.

She seemed more like a PTSD survivor than a holiday celebrant. She burst into tears when I gave her her first Iphone for Christmas, gifts were a truama for her.

It never felt good, we could never get to a good place.

I always struggled for the true meaning of Christmas, i didn’t wish to let it go, I couldn’t figure out how to live with it. I don’t worship Christ, I am not a Christian, but the more his spirit is kept in the holiday, the more comfortable I am with it, and the more I can celebrate it in my heart.

I did know what I didn’t want.

I remember a friend who passionately embraced the Disney and Hallmark Christmas idea of what a family is in America, she asked everyone in her immediate and extended family to don green elf costumes and they all did, posing happily with wide grins on their faces. They almost danced out of the photos.

This made me gnash my teeth, perhaps out of jealousy. This was not my Christmas, not my family,  or the Christmas or family of anyone I knew.

My friend’s holiday was her business, of course,  not mine, and I am no one to judge her.

But it personified for me everything that I did not like about Christmas, and that had been lost in the translation. What on earth did smiling rows of elves in green outfits have to do with the birth of Christ?

Our friendship did not survive, it was perhaps never real.

 

The things I am doing now are new ways of interpreting and celebrating Christmas. Supporting the Mansion and the refugee kids are not things  I did on Christmas before, and like old Ebenezer,  I am finding the joy in Christmas, the state of mind that it can be.

Let other people dress up as elves and go to mails and pile gifts up under the trees or fight with one another about what Jesus said.

Many people, most of whom I don’t know, have joined me in this enterprise. I am finding Christmas once again in my life, and in a different way, and this time, I think I have found the true spirit of it, and the right one for me.

I feel the magic and the softness of helping and giving and thinking of people who are not me.

I don’t want people to dress up as elves and smile for my camera, I will not make my life an argument, want to feel as if I am doing something to keep the magic and softness of Christmas in my life.

I am liking this Christmas a lot, and it’s about time.