Holidays

So here we are, poised on the brink of the 'holiday season', on the eve of Thanksgiving and soon we'll be in Advent. And what happens in the U.S. on Friday? One of the biggest shopping days of the year.

Now, as already confessed, I like to shop from time to time. Recently my dear daughter-in-law and I went to a Christmas bazaar put on by a local German Club. Before we got there she warned me that she'd read it would be 'very well attended', and it was. We had a fun hour and bought some nice things to eat (and keep for later) as well as some small, hand-made wooden ornaments. As she remarked to me, "The Germans do Christmas well". I agreed, remembering one November when I visited Germany and bought such things as special tablecloths, small and medium-sized. The small ones went on the children's bedside table to mark the approach of Christmas.

Then she spoke about various other festive traditions, and how we're all richer for such experiences. But then she lamented the watering down of all of this in order to be politically correct. And she said something very telling. "If you take away all the deeper meaning of a festival, all you have left is shopping."