Aaah! KING-fm has started up their Christmas channel online again.

I admit it: in many ways, I am an unabashed Christmas freak. I love the music. I love the decorations. I love going out at night and seeing all the lights people have put up. (I even love the "Griswold Houses"). I love the chill in the air. I love the Advent wreath at church. I love the specials on tv, even the silly sappy movies that they run on Hallmark channel. I love going out and buying a toy I would have enjoyed as a child and giving it to Toys for Tots, and hoping that it is what some little kid somewhere wanted for Christmas. I love figuring out the "best" presents for the people I love, obtaining them, and hiding them away. I even love the rather silly Christmas sweaters and sweatshirts that some people wear.

I know a lot of people complain about the commercialization of the holiday, and yes, I could do without the "buy your spouse a NEW CAR for Christmas!" commercials and such. But most of what I really truly love about our celebration of Christmas (quite aside from the reason we celebrate) are things that really are not that commercialized. It's the things people do that are not "ordinary" - putting up lights and wreaths, wearing brighter clothes than they otherwise might, making foods they normally otherwise never make.

I guess, for me, all of those "non-ordinary" things, all of those instances of (what I perceive as) adults taking a more childlike joy in life, for me, point to the reason we celebrate - that even if our society sometimes kind of forgets - there's still that underlying joy, and I think, almost, an underlying relief. From what I've read of "older" celebrations, particularly when times were harder, there was a real sense of "relief" that Christ was in the world - that for believers, this hard life was not all that there was, and that for once in the year, they would take joy in that...and have foods they would normally not have, and dance and sing and generally act in a way more like carefree children than burdened adults. And I think that still remains, perhaps just as a ghost of its original self, today.

And the fact that, despite some isolated incidents, I do believe people are generally nicer during this season. More generous. Perhaps more tolerant of others' foibles.

Even though there's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world, at this time of the year, I find it generally easier to focus on the good stuff than I do at other times. Christmas magic, I suppose.