not enough connections….

so I’ve been thinking more and more about trying to actually really take advantage of this technology crap. I spend enough time with it, but don’t use it like I should. I am going to try and use this the way that I intended. Upload a bunch of new pictures to Picasa, and write and think and all that. I’ll bet you were just dying to know that too weren’t you.

Anyway.

In the midst of Advent and struggling to find the "holiday spirit" in myself. I feel as though I’ve got a lot going on – trying to stay on top of work (who isn’t), wedding coming up in January and all the arrangements around that, and trying to be somewhat "normal." It doesn’t look like that much in text. I also know I have a lot less going on than a lot of other people.

Advent is supposed to be this time of preparing for celebrating Christmas and what it means. At least in a spiritual, let alone religious perspective, it is totally lost in the midst of the shopping and sales and ….. So why is that? There is still some latent sense of it in the idea behind gift giving, but that has also become completely skewed, at least in my opinion. Check out Buy Nothing Christmas – I fully support people looking at alternatives. But its not just the gift giving – for one thing, at least in the Religious Calendar Christmas starts December 25th. But secularly it starts after halloween almost now. Why the time shift? What’s wrong with celebrating it then? What’s wrong with celebrating things like St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 06th)? And the 12 days of Christmas etc. etc.  So its all fine and good for me a priest to wax eloquent about this, but I still struggle to understand how all of this stuff is totally supplanted by "Christmas" sales, specials, Boxing Day sales and specials etc.  How do you bring this stuff up without people thinking that you are trying to "wreck their Christmas!?" I am not sure. No answers their yet.