Blog 1557 – 12.23.2019

Christmas In Your Eyes

First let me say to all of my friends and fans around the world that I realize many people in my own country and everywhere do not celebrate a religious tradition Christmas, their own religious traditions being different. Even for many here in the United States of America, myself included, Christmas is not a religious holiday but a time of sharing gifts and fun with family and friends. To us unreligious the magic of Christmas is not about one baby child but all about baby children, big or little. Comedy commentator, Bill Maher, with whom I mostly agree but not always, is quite offended by religion and as well by people who think everyone has to have children. I see his point and believe how we celibrare holidays and having children are personal choices.

I love dearly the daughter and son that I personally fathered but still I smile when I do my W.C. Fields impersonation (Bill was famous for disliking children like the other Bill). I say, “Kids are nice if they’re cooked right…go way, Boy, you bother me.” Lighten up, for me it is all in fun, it is funny, yet rings too true, like the frustrated black mother who said to her son, “Mind yo Mama, Boy, or I’ll kill you and make another one just like you.” Did she mean it? Probably not, well maybe for just a moment. Children can be a pain in the tookus and not just birthing them, Mommies, but raising them to adulthood, especially through those terrible two(s) and even more terrible teen(s). I always think of one of my favorite supervisors who said that he knew what he was getting his daughter and son for their eighteenth birthdays – a set of luggage. And he loved his kids but looked longingly forward to the day when they would leave the nest and be out on their own.

On my 1,150 mile journey from my work assignment in Indiana back to Houston, Texas, the past days I kept trying to find radio stations that were playing Christmas music from standards like Bing Crosby’s White Christmas to the latest hip-hop Christmas tunes. One of the loveliest and most moving Christmas songs that I heard again was Gloria Estefan’s, Christmas Through Your Eyes. Here is the first verse and chorus for you:

I no longer believe that Jesus of Nazareth is or ever was the “only begotten child, the one Christ” but see this particular teaching as more likely a distortion of his own message. I think what Jesus was saying as all true prophets have said in so many words is that we are all children of God, anointed, Christened, by the Universe, to in our own way make the world a better brighter place by allowing our heart lights to shine. What do you say, E.T.? He now carries a cell phone so he can phone home anytime, by the way. Wanna call him and say, “Hey”, I think his number is BR49. Sorry, that was Junior Samples’ phone number or close to it anyway, as I recall. I always get Junior and E.T. mixed up, their proper diction and clear completions so similar and all. How I do go on.

But back to Gloria’s song, to me it describes the real meaning and magic of Christmas in a child’s eyes revealing a young heart. Jesus warned us that even the light of God that we see shining in our fellows’s faces on the mountain top can grow dark and dim down in the valley marred by the cares of this life and the deceitful promises of security that monetary riches present. Children’s eyes see through the sham to what really matters. Young hearts have not grown tired of the struggle but are still excited by all the challenges of life. We need children to help us see, to help us to focus on the true meaning of Christmas and of every holiday (holy day) – that we are indeed Holy and Whole and should act like it, the way children naturally do, before we try to make them like us. They are here to teach us not the other way around. Except we become as a little child we will never see Christmas, heaven, or happiness – that they are all here in our hearts. This world is ours. Every child knows that.

Merry Christmas in that highest best sense to all.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White