It's 9AM

What does it look like?

Chris Lowry

Oct 27, 2023

I turned on the radio and Christmas music was playing.

Bing was crooning a promise.

Telling me what it was beginning to look like.

And if you saw the store displays, you would believe him.

Except…

It’s still a few days before Samhain.

All Hallow’s Eve.

And we’ve yet to feast to celebrate the harvest and prepare for winter’s coming long nights.

It’s too early for Christmas.

We say it every year.

But maybe right now, we need Christmas more than ever.

There are a lot of wheels spinning in the big outside world.

Maybe a few turning in our own as well.

Because life happens, no matter what the season.

Bills are due. Babies are born.

People die. Memories are lost.

Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas are all sad times for somebody.

Me included.

The spirit of Christmas used to mean something different for me.

I evolved it into a season of giving.

Part of my effort to make the world, or our small world, a little better place.

But putting up displays while pushing aside the Jack O’Lantern’s does not feel very giving.

Sure, it’s “the commercialization” of the season, and everybody wanting to buy more, the next greatest thing, now.

It’s always been like that.

Unless you lived in the time before TV, and though a few of us on this list grew up with limited access to television stations outside the Big Three,

We have always had TV and radio, which means we have always had marketing, which means our view of “the spirit of Christmas” has been shaped by Don Draper and his ilk.

I’ve argued before that writers have a huge impact on our lives, even for those who don’t read much.

And if you’re in this group, you probably love reading, and like to do it as much as possible.

But marketing is writing, even if a bastard cousin, and more fiction than not.

Including our reasons for the seasons.

Most of it shaped and cultivated and massaged by focus groups and test audiences, with a dash of Norman Rockwell nostalgia thrown in for good measure.

To give us…

Something good.

A spirit of giving, reinforced by messages from the Church about the Christ Mass.

A spirit of hope, reinforced by jingles and songs and blinking lights through the dark night.

And maybe more.

We’ve talked about the way we turn imagination into reality through quantum physics and the collective reaction of humanity.

You can see it at play in the way people react to the news.

Hysteria.

Or Apathy.

Because what can you do?

Still, if we all believe in joy, and we all believe in hope and we all concentrate real hard and pray real hard and think harmonious thoughts between now and December 31

Then maybe that energy will work on the sub atomic level and shift the tilting world back into a better axis.

Like magic.

Holiday magic.

Of course, thoughts are good, we know this, but action is better.

Kind thoughts, lead to kind words.

Kind words lead to kind actions.

And kind actions can change the world.

Maybe it starts with a song five days before Halloween.

A song that feels too early to play.

But the Universe knows what the world needs now.

Love. Sweet love.

And a Coke.