one of my favorite holiday reads
3-minute reminder to help others smile.
Some wonderful thoughts below, regardless of holiday beliefs. I share them every year.
“Keeping Christmas” was written by Henry Van Dyke and published in 1905. I revised some words and formatting to make the tone a little more inclusive and easy to read, but the work is primarily Henry’s. Enjoy!
It’s a good thing to observe our holidays of the winter months.
The mere marking of times and seasons, when people agree to stop work and make merry together, is a wise and wholesome custom. It helps one to feel the supremacy of the common life over the individual life. It reminds a person to set their own little watch, now and then, by the great clock of humanity which runs on sun time.
But there’s a better thing than the observance of our holidays, and that is, keeping the spirit of them.
Are you willing to forget what you’ve done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you?
To ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world?
To put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground?
To see that your fellow people are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy?
To own that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you’re going to get out of life, but what you’re going to give to life?
To close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness?
Are you willing to do these things even for a day?
Then you can keep the holidays.
Are you willing to slow down and consider the needs and the desires of little children; to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old—an age you will one day be?
To stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough?
To bear in mind the things that other people have to bear on their hearts?
To try to understand what those who live in the same house with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you?
To trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you?
To make a grave for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for kindly feelings, with the gate open?
Are you willing to do these things even for a day?
Then you can keep the holidays.
Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world—stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death, and that the eternal power of love and compassion can transcend time?
Then you can keep the holidays.
And if you keep them for each of their days, why not always?
But you can never keep them alone.
Sam Thanks for the always insightful and "how we can be better" thoughts... with the fun and familiar Richmond scenes mixed in. We'll be in The Fan today for the Holiday House Tour... making merry!