Season’s Greetings, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Celebrate Kwanzaa, Happy Holidays, Solstice Salutations, Feliz Navidad. However you celebrate it, I wish you a wonderful Season of Light.

In every tradition, we commemorate the end of the darkest & longest days and the beginning of a time of more sunlight. We light candles and have “sparkly things” that reflect the lights and represent more sun. Throughout the world, this time is acknowledged in many different traditions but they all include special food, lights and gifts.

But most important, it is a time for moving into a “lighter” space and joyously celebrating our connections to each other and the earth.

A NEW YEAR With New Traditions

For many people, it is also a New Year and a time for new beginnings. A time to reflect on what is meaningful and to pay attention to what is important to us …. and to vow to remember those things more. In that spirit, I want to share this excerpt from “A Christmas Story “ by Truman Capote*.

Remember What is Important

The speaker is Sook, Truman’s elderly and disabled aunt who teaches us about life in her simple and profound way. Whatever your holiday or religious tradition, I think we can all learn from her words to remember what is really important and appreciate the gifts we already have.

On a cold and empty Christmas afternoon Sook exclaims to young Truman:

” ‘My, how foolish I am!’ she cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. “You know what I’ve always thought?” she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but a point beyond. “I’ve always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the church window…pretty as colored glass with the sun shining through, such a shine you don’t know it’s getting dark. And it’s been a comfort, to think of that shine takes away all the spooky feeling. But I’ll wager it never happens. I’ll wager at the very end a body realizes he has already shown Himself.” Her hand circled in a gesture that gathered clouds and kites and grass and Queenie, our dog, pawing earth over her bone, ” “That things as they are, just what they’ve always been, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes. “

So in this special season, let us see it all with Sook’s eyes. I hope this season brings you much light and love.

(*Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory, Modern Library, 1996)

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