A Holiday Consideration

The holiday season is over for anyone not celebrating the Epiphany, but while the festive spirit fades, a chill wind blows outside.

Though modern humanity longer experiences weather with quite the same ferocity as our ancestors, the brutal cold evokes a remembrance of societal solidarity. Of huddling together for comfort, for survival, wishing and dreaming of an end to the darkness, and a burst of light. Though we no longer stand transfixed by the magical falsehoods imposed on us by our elders, having outgrown fantasies in adolescence, hopefully we haven't abandoned certain truths and ideals from which these fictions draw their strength.

Having retreated from each other over the past year, decade, and century, and not looking to fix the blame on any particular source, we should strive for a re-connection with our local and universal kin.

Almost every ethical system, from the Ancient Greeks, to Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam (and many more unrecognized) have expounded on the values of generosity, charity, and hospitality. Today, as malignant forces worldwide seek to divide, dehumanize, and denigrate, humanity must seek to draw ever closer together in fellowship, with an outstretched hand to a person in need, or an unknown stranger. Reach out with an unexpected invitation, casting aside concern over his political affiliation, or her religious tradition.

With the inhospitable weather, it's the season to invite society's less favored into life, community, and home. Draw those with and without family into personal celebrations and form new connections with those who seem alien and those who suffer.

In this citizens are called not to institute a compassion measured by an issuance of cash, but of a warmth in personal charity which overcomes the winter weather. Serving others is more admirable, and rewarding for both participants, than a deluge of donations.

There are those today, who speak of their own personal moral excellence, of the supremacy of their compassion, wielding power across the world, who prefer humanity's subdivisions, seclusions, and contempt for those unlike ourselves. They'd balk at offering their roof to those most in need, those different in particulars, but the same in essential core.

In this season, and for all the year, there are none who suffer more than the denigrated, the dispossessed, and the convicted seeking redemption. In an effort to express our kinship and to offer comfort, let us open ourselves to them, and offer without being asked.

And while the man in the red, the reindeer, and the tree are wondrous fictions, let us not be confused into setting aside those truths from which they share a source. That we can, through generosity, compassion, charity, and hospitality, ennoble the lives of those around us, buttressing our communities and lives with meaning beyond basic economic and political values.

The Ancient Greeks believed hospitality essential because any guest might be a god in disguise. Let humanity seek to greet the guest, not because they are superior, but because they are of the same essence, a wondrous creature capable of great joy and unendurable suffering.

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