Yes, Virginia…

Please don’t be afraid, Virginia.  I say that customary plea even though I myself (and many like-minded individuals) am dreading the foreseeable future.   We have spent the last month or so in a daze wondering why things are happening the way they happened.   We’ve also wondered what has jumped up the butts of our fellow citizens to make them suddenly act so…so…uncivilized.

My despondency has given way from time to time to more philosophical moods about current events.  As a historian, I have to reason that these events need to happen, else mankind in all their naivety will never learn their lessons and progress.   So we will have to endure all of the worst case scenarios which our fertile imaginations believe will come to pass.

Indeed, it is a bad time to be a liberal-leaning progressive living in America.

In our collective despair, we have sought to minimize our pain at the expense of our fellow citizens.  Yes, we joke that the vast rural area between the metropolitan extremes of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh should no longer be called Pennsylvania, but rather Pennsyltucky.    

We equate the living space of our neighbors and relatives with the worst possible, most demeaning, redneck hick stereotype imaginable.

It may sound vulgar, but we don’t mean it.  Still the stereotype thoughts do get us through the day.  It’s called “humor”, and it’s how we hope to accomplish what our detractors keep telling us, “Get over it.”

Sorry, Virginia, I got side-tracked.  This is, after all, when Christians all over the world honor traditions.  A tradition of doing good will to our fellow men and women. A tradition of wishing all a peaceful and happy life. A tradition of remembering you, Virginia, as the little girl who fretted that the human embodiment of these other traditions, Santa Claus, did not exist.

I’ll be honest, Virginia.  Many of us are having our doubts this year about our fellow man.  Yes, we’ll paint them in the worst, garish hues to make ourselves feel better, but ultimately we won’t want to keep doing it.

Both sides see the other as bad this year.  Truly, Virginia, we are not all bad. Good people still exist. They just see the world differently than we are seeing them now. We can only hope to change their minds and look at the world differently then they see the world today.  No, I won’t be so bold or arrogant to insist that they have to see things our way.  Just different…

You see, Virginia, we should really look in the hearts of our fellow man and see goodness in all of them.   Sticky sweet sentiment?  Perhaps, but we all need to believe that we can achieve peace and extend good will to men  and women.   That’s all human Christians and non-Christians alike.

I believe that this is the way the rabbi for which we name our holiest of holidays would prefer we live our lives.  Sleep tight, Virginia, in peace and good will.

(Thank you for reading and please have a safe and happy holiday season.)