We think of old friends and wonder how they are keeping, whether they are well and what are they doing at this time of the year. We also, as Christmas draws nearer, look a little closer at the people around us and wonder if the little old lady across the road, is ok and does she need company.
The TV is constantly reminding us of the importance of the family get together, the pleasure we get from receiving a card or a present, it's all tied up with the sense that somebody cares.
Once upon a time, if we were lucky our parents took care of this sense that you were important. Eventually 'you' took on the role and as you developed your own family and you generated that symbolic experience in your own children. If you are luck they are, at this moment exploring the same opportunities to express their love and affection on their own brood and so it goes on generation after generation.
We sometimes become a little sceptical of the marketing and the exploitation of Christmas, of how it sometimes brings out in us the competitive streak to show off and buy gifts that are glitzy and expensive as a substitute for not having been sufficiently in someone's life during the rest of the year.
If only we could sustain this effort, and it is an effort to tear ourselves away for a moment from the "me". To think of others, be they family or friend and even to try, once in a while, to manoeuvre our thoughts to others in the world who are in dreadful trouble, be it sickness or deprivation. Then when we return to the "me" at least we will have a reference to understand how lucky and happy we are.
Happy Christmas to you all.
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