Letting go (is it a holiday or is it Christmas?)
Last night I attended a benefit concert for Aphesis House. Aphesis gives recently released prisoners a place to stay to readjust to the 'free world'. It's a wonderful organization that has been quite successful.
I'm about to trespass into Mother Tongue Annoyances territory, but I love the implication of the word aphesis. It comes from the Greeks and literally means 'letting go'. There is a linguistic meaning (forming a new word by losing the first letter of a word, e.g. squire from esquire), but the nuance of forgiveness as letting go is what caught my fancy.
With so much seasonal folderol in the air - 'merry christmas' or 'happy holiday', 'holiday tree vs Christmas tree', the Falwell Christmas gaggle of lawyers ready to pounce at the drop of a creche' and the eternal dismay over the crassitudining of Kringle, we need to let go.
The season is going to be commercial. Some people don't like the Christ in Christmas. Other people are manger-centric. Some people want to kick the creche into neverland. Others choose to avoid the whole mess altogether.
Here is a gift you can give yourself: Let it go. Have the season, the Christmas, the non-Christian holiday, the ceremony, the mass, the feast, the fast, the time, YOU WANT. Haunt the malls, curse the malls, deck the halls or have a ball. Skip Christmas or watch the entire 24 hour marathon of 'The Christmas Story' or just share a fire and a hearth with your family or friends. Let other people do whatever it is they choose to do or choose to call this time of year.
Practice random acts of forgiveness and then let it go. Give yourself and others the grace to be different and then let it go.
I would say Happy Festivus, but that would mean you would have to air your grievances, and we have double-damn enough of THAT.
I'm about to trespass into Mother Tongue Annoyances territory, but I love the implication of the word aphesis. It comes from the Greeks and literally means 'letting go'. There is a linguistic meaning (forming a new word by losing the first letter of a word, e.g. squire from esquire), but the nuance of forgiveness as letting go is what caught my fancy.
With so much seasonal folderol in the air - 'merry christmas' or 'happy holiday', 'holiday tree vs Christmas tree', the Falwell Christmas gaggle of lawyers ready to pounce at the drop of a creche' and the eternal dismay over the crassitudining of Kringle, we need to let go.
The season is going to be commercial. Some people don't like the Christ in Christmas. Other people are manger-centric. Some people want to kick the creche into neverland. Others choose to avoid the whole mess altogether.
Here is a gift you can give yourself: Let it go. Have the season, the Christmas, the non-Christian holiday, the ceremony, the mass, the feast, the fast, the time, YOU WANT. Haunt the malls, curse the malls, deck the halls or have a ball. Skip Christmas or watch the entire 24 hour marathon of 'The Christmas Story' or just share a fire and a hearth with your family or friends. Let other people do whatever it is they choose to do or choose to call this time of year.
Practice random acts of forgiveness and then let it go. Give yourself and others the grace to be different and then let it go.
I would say Happy Festivus, but that would mean you would have to air your grievances, and we have double-damn enough of THAT.
