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On the road again: The Christmas spirit 1
I hope that you all are filled with The Christmas Spirit because it is a beautiful thing. There used to be a TV commercial for a packaged rye bread called Levy's Jewish Rye that said "You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's" and you don't have to be Christian to love Christmas.
My parents were the most secular of Jews but sent me to an after-school Hebrew school so that I could be Bar-mitzvahed, a ritual entrance into manhood at the age of 13 that could have been a good thing for me had I understood Hebrew enough to know what I was saying and not just learned it phonetically by listening to the record of what I was expected to say! One good thing about Judaism is that there is also the Bat-mitzvah, the ritual celebrating the entrance of a young girl into womanhood, but that is where the equality between men and women stops in Judaism and that inequality is one of my main problems with Judaism, Islam, Christianity and all other situations where it occurs.
But that doesn't mean I'm not filled with the Christmas spirit! We're back in New York City staying at the wonderful Regency hotel on Park Avenue and New York is a gorgeous place at Christmas time. There are huge brightly decorated trees on the islands that run up and down Park Avenue and everywhere you look it's a visual treat as some of the most creative people on the planet turn their talents to making holiday displays.
As you know, the word holiday comes from "holy day" and the concept of holy is closely linked to being separate for the purpose of remembering our link with the divine unseen forces that surround and sustain us during our brief time to make history. In my humble opinion, anything that helps us to remember our true nature and our place in the world - marvelous but temporary - is a good and useful thing.
We arrived last night fresh from attending the best Christmas party we have ever been a part of. Every Christmas, our best friend Pam of Fort Worth, Texas, throws a Christmas party and asks everyone who attends to bring a toy for an underprivileged child. She used to do it in her home but over the years it has grown and grown until now more than 300 people fill the River Crest country club and fill about 300 square feet of space around the tall gorgeous Christmas tree with Texas-size Christmas presents. I mean there were bicycles big and small and the best kind of Christmas presents I've ever seen. They give with both hands and don't hold back in Texas! But not everyone there was from Texas and most of the rest of the states of the union were well represented, an inspiration to us all!
There were so many presents that the Fort Worth Fire Department, who distributes the toys to the needy kids, had to call for a second fire truck to come haul them away!! It was quite moving and I'm getting goose bumps as I write this.
Christmas is a gift to us all if we let it into our hearts, just as the story of Christmas and the birth of baby Jesus is a gift to us all if we let it be. More of that in Part 2 of this blog. |
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