Bill's Musings

A mall in Kenya is attacked, and all of a sudden 70 are dead, scores more are injured, and hostages are taken. A series of blasts in Iraq kill well over 100 people, as if there hasn’t been enough of that already. A suicide bomber in Pakistan kills 72 more. Floods in Colorado have taken lives and changed lives forever. A bus-train collision in Ottawa takes 7 lives.

Closer to home, we are dealing with Alzheimer’s, a stroke, and aging parents with their own issues. Autism and society’s perception of this wades into the fray. We are all running around, working, driving, homeworking, bringing meals, fetching meds, soothing, and just trying to maintain our mental balance as the outer world and inner world of our bubbles are in disarray.

It could easily be a time to just sit and tune out of reality on weekends, to recover ourselves. But last Saturday morning, while making breakfast with Anne, we got to talking: what would make an awesome sit-down meal for the family that night? Forget about all the strife and turmoil and medical issues for one day…what could we do? And we came upon an idea of something we had done before, but never with such enthusiasm as we would this year: Fake Christmas!

Before you roll your eyes, think about it a second. It was a blah weather day, we had nothing substantial to do except exist….why not make the day an awesome one? For no other reason as to celebrate life, and appreciate the fact that while the world has hot spots and issues much like we all do, we are still alive and living in a wonderful community and time.

So why not?

It wasn’t long before the kids were on board with the concept. We came up with a plan, one which would allow us to still accomplish our family duties, allow us to visit those that needed some attention, and still let us celebrate this festive day. We posted our day to Facebook as we progressed through this event, announcing how lineups weren’t as bad as expected as we did last-minute Fake Christmas Shopping, how we were lucky to find the ingredients for our Fake Christmas supper, and wishing everyone a Merry Fake Christmas and A Happy False New Year. Many people joined in, watching and contributing comments and well wishes.

We all bought little gifts to exchange, nothing too expensive or elaborate, just things that would mean something to each other and would show how much we appreciate each other. We cooked a large chicken instead of a turkey, but everything else was there: gluten-free meat pie, mashed potatoes, cranberries and vegetables, pie…the works! We listened to appropriate music, and everyone was in a festive mood.

It was a Saturday to remember. We exchanged gifts after dinner, the kids did the dishes and cleaned he kitchen, then we joined together to watch a show on television together. And so an otherwise blah day became an awesome day. We even saw people while out shopping that were following our progress who said they would do the same thing with their families.

Overall, after analyzing what we did on Saturday, I suppose that the message in all this is that there’s nothing wrong with celebrating being alive…that in the midst of all that is wrong in the world there is also much more that is right. Don’t wait for Thanksgiving or Christmas to lay it all out and celebrate. Those are awesome times to be sure, but are so big that they are also stressful. Celebrate the mundane  and regular things. Do it while you can with who you can.

Happy Fake Christmas and a very prosperous False New Year, everyone! Be kind!