@HomewithDean – Homily 12/4

These thoughts are dedicated to those of you who aren’t having the best holidays ever. Those for whom life is not ideal right now, not easy, not something that feels deserving of celebration. This is for all of you who are just flat out tired, or bearing up under sickness, or worry, or grief. For those of you whom this past year has bitten and bloodied and taken something or even someone. You know you’re in that place when Christmas lights don’t so much twinkle as burn. When sounds like laughter or music only somehow amplifies the silence. When you feel secretly, silently alone, even in that crowded room. When you’ve just been carrying too much for too long. <br /><br />I feel you, I do, and I wish with all my heart I could snap my fingers and fix it. Instead, all I can do is encourage you to not give up, and if possible, take some comfort in the real reason for the season. No, I’m not talking about any particular religion or any one tradition. And yes, the holidays have evolved into all sorts of things over thousands of years, some lovely, some useless, and all sorts of folks have jumped on board along the way to claim them as their own. But long before all of that they all began with a deep universal need … survival. The real reason for the season is our need to survive life’s coldest and darkest moments.<br /><br />Our holiday traditions were born in a much simpler time and have been handed down by those whose singular goal was just to survive the winter. There’s a very funny line in the movie “Spirited” where Ebenezer Scrooge explains to someone living today that in his day, “The leading cause of death was January.” The struggle that gave birth to our most precious traditions was very, very real. We didn’t devise these celebrations because we have no struggles, but precisely because of our struggles. The real truth of the holidays is that they were not created by the happy for the happy. They belong, first and foremost, to the hurting. And if that’s you, then know this … you are the reason for the season.<br