Saturday 24 December 2022

Best Holiday wishes to all, Religions aside

 A Very Happy ---- and a Very Merry ----


In extending my best wishes to people around the world, it is sad but I have be concerned that I might offend someone or some group with what they perceive to be an inappropriate greeting. How can this be?

At this time and on many other occasions like festive days and holy days throughout the year, people celebrate and give Thanks. If you are truly faithful - no matter what the faith - I am including you in my wishes. It might not be the best time to do so according to YOUR beliefs and customs. In that case I apologize. To me however this is like greeting someone on the street with a simple Hello despite not knowing their name or where they are from. I appreciate such an initiative from a stranger and I hope that they feel the same. Religion and a God? Both have nothing to do with it.

Sadly not everyone feels the same. Somebody will get upset at a word - like Christmas, or a symbol - like a tree. You are the problem, not my greeting. If someone wishes me a Happy Hanukkah I am grateful even though I know little about Hanukkah. Today I received a greeting from one of my oldest friends - Happy Hogmanay. It is apparently well celebrated in Scotland - his heritage. So as well as being grateful, I learned something this Christmas! I had to GOOGLE it - did you?

More than many recent years, this is one for those who are lucky enough to be enjoying their lives - to REALLY be grateful and to wish from the bottom of their hearts - with or without prayer - a better life and future for so many others.

Off the top I am going to make a list of several things in the last few years that were unique and horrible. I ask you to do the same. Then use whatever means you choose to wish some of them away. I will stop at 10

1. COVID-19 and all the hardships and division it brought
2. The horrific and unjustified attack on Ukraine
3. Brutal - and I mean REALLY brutal weather events and their cause: climate change since the industrial revolution
4. The death of The Queen. This is questionable to some, but the very fact that I only have to say THE QUEEN to identify her speaks volumes. She was overall a good person in a difficult role
5. The return to the rise of extreme dictators and autocrats. They purport to be helping their fellow man but are really only helping themselves - usually men
6. Severe financial crises for many
7. The threat of international war
8. In particular in the USA but also around the world major threats to freedom
9. The continuing attack on many species throughout the world either by massive killing or destruction of their environments
10. Pollution caused by only one of the species "Homo Sapiens": Human Beings.

That's my spontaneous list. What is yours?

I don't have a lot of material wealth but I am warm, live in a house that I co-own and tomorrow will celebrate - in my case Christmas - with bountiful food and drink. I would not classify myself as faithful but I will make an appeal - not a prayer - to any and all powers beyond myself. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there with next to nothing. Some will freeze to death tonight and tomorrow - December 25th, 2022. Elsewhere many will starve and die of dehydration or disease. They really have no future compared to the rest of us.

So please share some of the bounty you have bestowed upon us with as many as you can of them. I don't know what they ever did to deserve their fate. Some of them just want a chance to have what we have. Others have no idea what we have and never will. If that story about feeding the masses with a few fish and some bread is true, how bout doing it again - big time?

If Christ was sacrificed on behalf of all of us and our evil, we haven't learned much from it. 

There is MY wish. It comes from my brain - the one the powers that be gave me. I hope they at least recognize its sincerity.


#thebrewsterblock.