Christmas 2023

   

   At 6:18 this Christmas morning I got a text from a dear friend, “Merry Christmas Mark!  I assume you up writing…”  I texted a Christmas greeting back and noted that I was just about to start my annual Christmas post.

I try to write a Christmas post every year.  It began in the early 2000s when I would email my work colleagues a Christmas greeting.  It was a bit selective in that I wrote the ones I really liked and valued, the people who were my indirect reports that were scattered around world, but mostly Latin America. 

This tradition migrated over to this blog in 2010.  At that time, due to the Great Recession, I was unaffiliated with any company or enterprise at the time.  The post was simply titled:  Christmas 2010.  In 2005, when This Side of Fifty was still a monthly e-letter, I wrote December 2005:  Christmas Holiday/Letters which was for the most part a parody of the letters that we receive in Christmas and holiday cards.  Since 2010, I have written a Christmas post every year except for 2017 which was a very unproductive year for this blog.  In 2020, I actually wrote two posts one on Christmas Eve and another on Christmas Day:  Christmas 2020.

I like to write my Christmas posts early on Christmas morning beginning while it is still dark, very quiet in the house, and using the “not a creature was stirring” image from the famous Christmas poem. By the time the post is crafted and sent, the day has usually dawned.  In these posts, I always note that it is Christmas morning, it is still dark, and that all is quiet and not a creature is stirring.  It has become my version of “It was a dark and stormy night…” popularized by Charles Schultz via Snoopy.  As cliched this is, and often pointed out by another dear friend, this is something magical about writing in the predawn on Christmas morning.

One of my favorite posts was a December 2004 e-letter.  I penned Peace on Earth on the last day of 2004.  It focused on Luke 2:14 which includes “Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men” that is oft quoted in Christmas cards and carols.  I think about that phrase more and more with each passing year.  It is a wonderful, aspirational, image and goal.  It is also a goal, an ideal that, we have never fully achieved on any sustained level.  And this is our challenge.  We need to learn to do this on our heavily populated planet to stem both the global warming and the senseless wars that result in too much death and displacement of large numbers of people.  Peace on Earth can only begin when we collectively have Good Will Toward each other.  It is a centuries old message that we nod in agreement to but have failed to put into action.

Beyond the joys of the day, being with family and friends, in-person or through the wonders of FaceTime, this is what is on my mind this Christmas morning:  Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.

Merry Christmas to one and all.