Don't knock it.

Today we turn into the month of December and close onto the celebration of Christmas. Christmas means different things to different people, ranging from sadness to happiness, from inclusiveness to exclusion, from hope to despair. Why is this season, culminating in a few specific days in which there is a collective expectancy to be rewarded by some sort of emotional happiness so important to us. The issue of Christmas, apart from its religious cogitation, pre dates the media/business hype that we are used to these days where we are now conditioned to enjoy and to spend. Our very economy is dependant on the purchasing splurge as people buy gifts for family and friends and of course the stimulation to get out to the shops brings a focus to the high street and the people shopping there. There is a happy glint in the eye, as we think of others and the things they might like to receive on Christmas Day, we move out of our own bubble and think of these others, its therapeutic in a good sense.
Of course for many, when times are hard it is difficult to find the means to fulfil the expectation and it is this expectation and our sense that we are valued by the ability to match up to society around you is the Achilles heel of this time.
It is not an easy time for the individual, the lonely, the excluded and of course, it is difficult for people remembering  past, happier Christmas's which, no matter how hard one try's, can not be recreated.  
The mawkish sentimentality of the Christmas festivity as it effects a fictional American family on TV is recreated every year ad nauseum and makes viewing nearly un-watchable,  (along with the forced conviviality of New Years Eve and peace to all men malarkey !!) But having said that I feel that the effort mankind makes to acknowledge mankind in general is worthwhile, so I won't knock it !!