The holiday season is important this year. Regardless of which holiday Americans celebrate, the winter holidays hold special meaning. With the passage of time, the holiday lights get brighter, the shopping gets crazier, and the holiday music gets more familiar – if that can even happen.
The winter months are cold and snowy and it's not hard to feel like Scrooge a little more each year. The holiday message of being thankful is usually overplayed by this point – but this year is different.
Times are tougher, not just for a select few but for everyone. However, it's easy to appreciate the important people in your life, to gather and spend time together. This year, in light of war, the economic crisis and constant heated debate, appreciate the people in your life and all that we, as Americans, have.
Many have lost rather than gained, but remember that Americans are far better off than many others. U. S. citizens have the rule of law and the promise of hope to make their lives better.
As time marches towards the New Year, spend some of that time thinking about the year ahead. Never has it been plainer that there's no telling what the New Year will bring. The way this past year has blown off course would make skeptics of us all, with the deflation of confidence in even the most sober of expectations.
Use this holiday season to reflect and evaluate personal goals. Remember that resolutions have a way of expiring on their own.
Most Americans sketched a new set of resolutions recently, consciously or not – resolutions that had more to do with taking care of the necessities in life rather than the typical Jan.1 goals of self-improvement and promises unfulfilled.
This coming year will require more than the usual hard work from America. It will take more than declarations, more than the optimism that this nation is already good enough, should American ideals fail.
The Rev. Sydney Smith has some words that will offer some guidance to Americans this year: 'Look evil in the face, walk up to it, and you will find it less than you imagined, and often you will not find it at all; for it will recede as you advance.'
The trivial anxieties of life will melt away, leaving the more substantial problems. Happiness is less often a matter of courage than of changing the way Americans live their lives.
In spite of all the bad this past year, Americans still want to know that they can love and be loved, and imagine the world as a place as pure as that ideal.
Happy holidays to all from the entire Spectrum staff.
