In just a few days Thanksgiving.

Does Thanksgiving feel just a bit early to anyone else? When my wife reminded me that Thanksgiving is "next week", it somehow took me by surprise. Maybe it is nothing more than how the days fall this month, but this whole year has been like that.

According to some, the Mayans have cancelled Christmas this year. Truth is, if you look at the history of Christmas, it has probably never actually been Christmas anyway {and some Christians have banned the celebration as pagan and evil with some very valid reasons}, so if the world ends on 12-21, I'd like to wish everyone a happy TEOTWAWKI {The End Of The World As We Know It}.

In this season there will be much going to and fro, tempers flaring, cars and trucks crashing, and while we give thanks to God for "blessings" there will be men, women, and children being wounded by bullets, grenades, IED's, bombs, etc. There will be those who die of starvation because the government they are forced to trust feasts on the food meant for the people.

Across this whole planet there will be so much more cruelty than kindness, and what kindness there is will be what can be put on the amount line of a check. Not one splinter, blister, or bleeding knuckle will we see when tuppence may suffice. Send money to foreign lands and ignore those 2 blocks {or less} from the house or church in dire need. How much crueler can people get? Keep your eyes open this season, you will see.

I recall that Jesus taught that in all things that we do we are to do unto others as we would have others do unto us {Joe South put it, "Walk a mile in my shoes"}. If we were to put this into action, what better season to begin than now, and carry that forward into the whole year? But we all know this won't happen because people might actually have to engage, might have to talk to someone else face to face, might have to smell the bad breath, or look at missing teeth. Might have to accept the burden that welfare is not a government program but a moral obligation that everyone shares.

This time beginning 3 days after the Winter Solstice was originally called Sol Invictus, a celebration of the rebirth of the sun, and was incorporated by Constantine and the Councils of Nicea and Laodicea to make Christianity look less Jewish and more like the pagan religions the Roman Empire was more familiar with. Personally, I suspect there's a reason that the Bible doesn't tell us what day/month Jesus was born for a reason.

I've never understood why humans will default to cruel apathy instead of love. Why it is so important to find a box to put someone in, why disagreement and hatred go hand in hand, and this list goes on and on. What all this has taught me is that if the Christ were among us today, the vast majority of people {mainly those who call themselves by His name} would hunt Him down and crucify Him again, and think they have done God a service.

The one thing I do love about this season is the Christmas Songs. I indulge myself in the illusion that maybe there's a world out there that isn't the one I've described above. Maybe there are real people that help their neighbor {Love your neighbor as you love yourself}, those who would cross the street to help the beaten publican rather than to avoid him, and those who really would give the shirt off their own back to someone in need.

You see, those in my "illusion" do exist, they are out there. Some call themselves Christian, but others call themselves Atheist. Some call themselves Jews, others call themselves Muslims. These are the ones I cherish, pray for, and call my brothers and sisters. The rest just wear labels that present an illusion of something they aren't, and most will never be.

To these few I offer this Holy Day greeting.

You do good. It baffles the rest. :-)