Holidays, by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

December 16, 2009 Whitney Farmer 9 Comments

Tis’ the Season…to lift your prayers to God and keep your powder dry.

This was going to be cute and snarky, like Ralphie’s “A Christmas Story” or Billy Bob’s “Bad Santa”…He played at the club last week, by the way, and every part of the night was a blast.

I can’t do it. There are wars and rumors of wars everywhere now.  I had someone go around my car and cut me off in the parking lot of Target because I wasn’t going fast enough while I was trying to avoid kids darting between parked cars.  I know of a young man who is joining the military because he is flat broke and can’t get work because he doesn’t have a green card.  He wants the fast track option to citizenship and is willing to risk his life for the chance. Families everywhere are figuring out how to be together for the holidays without damaging each other.

Everywhere the word “Peace” is being used. We just got a Christmas card from a moving company that we had hired to load in a baby grand piano for a performance below ground the flight of stairs which is our main entrance.  Because of this, we never have noise complaints from the surrounding neighbors (which is good), but roadies need extra TLC after they get the gear into our Bat Cave.

So, when this moving company was at the club, there were some issues.  They obviously and with our encouragement stayed during the show that they had helped get on the stage.  During the show, they drank what was in my opinion too much – even though it was within the legal limit – for a crew that will be expected to do heavy lifting at around 2:30 a.m. when the baby grand needed to be loaded out.  And during the show, they tried to pick fights.  At the end of the night, we added our security detail to their crew to make sure that the piano worth thousands of dollars didn’t go boom and get an owie.

And I get a Christmas card wishing us “Peace on Earth”…

Yes, please!  Give me more!  This doesn’t have to be hypocrisy. This is what needs to happen.

The best reason to go to war is to fight for peace.  But sometimes the only way to win is to lay down our swords and open up our hands. Remember the movie “War Games”? The sentient computer says “Thermonuclear war…the only way to win is not to play.” I heard on the radio the other day that every relationship that is longer than a moment will eventually require exercising forgiveness.  That’s one of the wars that we all fight.

Being a peacemaker doesn’t mean that we give permission to others to do damage.  But HONESTLY, how many conflicts begin with arrogance or out-of-control ambition or fear, and not from the Bad Guy on the other side of the enemy but from me?  The good news is that we have a choice over our contribution in these battles. Someone cuts us off in a parking lot. Step #1 is to take control over my own reactions so that I can make the right choices.  It doesn’t mean that I won’t have feelings. It means that my feelings won’t have me. This isn’t the popular choice. Good. I don’t want to be popular in the bad stuff.

All of this is REALLY DIFFICULT.  But the more I practice, the stronger I get.

We are coming to the end of Chanukah – a reminder that light can shine in darkness longer than we can imagine – and we will come into Christmas – a hope that what has been broken can be fixed. Like the little girl that I was who sat on Santa’s lap and asked for a cowboy belt and a set of encyclopedias, what I want to GET is this:  I don’t want anyone to kill themselves. I don’t want anyone to pick an unjust fight. And I want to have two clean hands that will be used to cook a feast rather than leave evidence of a crime.