CHRISTMAS IS DYING

Reindeer and Christmas trees are two of the most recognizable symbols of the Yuletide season, 



but future generations may never get to see either of them.

 New research has revealed that both are at risk of being wiped out, as a result of climate change.


 Arctic reindeer are becoming smaller and lighter due to the impact of climate change on their food supplies.

But is the Christmas Spirit itself being starved?  Are we becoming a country of Scrooges?

We cross out Christ in the windows of our stores with Xmas; 

We decree it illegal to show Nativity Scenes in front of the Courthouse, 

whose sculpture of the Ten Commandments over its doors have also been taken down; 

TV's bombard us with commercials of people only being made happy with the acquisition of more and more things.

 And we wonder why we feel cold and alone as we wander this culture of frozen hearts and grasping hands.

Do you long for that childlike innocence you had so very long ago?

Or does your sense of your childhood seem as far removed and cold as the withered, dead leaves of your past?

 But the wonder and awe still live in your thirsty heart and bruised mind.

Search the corridors of your heart and find a memory of a time as a child when you felt loved and safe.

Reach out for a smell that lives in that moment: 

Perhaps it is the scent of vanilla your mother is pouring into the preparation of your favorite Christmas treat.

Perhaps it the tingle of the cold morning grass beneath your bare feet as you play with your puppy as it runs beside you.

Love can have a feel like the tickling of your mother's hair about your cheeks as she hugs the pain of your scuffed knee away ...

Love is the sense of being made to feel grown up, though a child, as when your mother included you in adult things.

The Christmas Spirit lives within you still.

But like a fire that dies to cold embers if it is not constantly fed, 

the Christmas Spirit must be refreshed with such memories ... and more ...

It must be fed with acts of kindness to strangers, and even more importantly, 

to those close about us who we have stopped seeing as feeling, hurting souls

as we dwell on past hurts and slights.

Love is a perfume that lingers upon the fingers of those who give it to others.

Happy Christmas, Everyone, from me and Midnight