The holiday season can’t last long enough.

By holiday season I mean that time of year when religions have their most profound traditions, and also more generally: when the mood around work lightens, when families and friends gather and are grateful, the season of charity, when things are decorated, when gifts are exchanged, when money is spent frivolously, time for fancy dinners, sacred services, sacrifice, extra long visits, myth and the cascading memories of joyous years gone by. That holiday season, otherwise known as the fourth quarter.

So good it hurts. Last season, in fact, right around Thanksgiving with the house just decorated, festive music already loud, I was looking around to purposefully absorb the traditions, all the lore and love and work that goes into the season; but then, abruptly, flashed painfully forward to the day the season would end, when it all comes down (in February!). I was sad in that moment. Then I was happy again. There’s a general sense of, I don’t know, goodness this time of year which is completely un-quantifiable. Each year when it comes and goes I look back and wonder what came over me. What comes over us? What’s gone on here? Clearly something has.

All through the year we’ve waited to hear silver bells ringing see winter time bringing the happiest season of all…It is the sacredness, and it’s also the snow, the nostalgia, the smell of pine and ringing bells. That word cheer, and jolly, and joy, among other contemplatives, deep feelings, and beyond-our-self visions had this time of year. It’s not a time, it’s a spirit, or at least we try to make it one.

For the religious, Christmas is nearly lost as a holy-day by now. So overrun by money and commercialism corrupting its original meanings. A neighbors front porch says it all: near the door bell is one of those Darwin fish stickers the none-ists love so much, all lit up by a string of lights spelling out Merry Christmas.

Whatever.

Yet falling out of a party into a cold street smelling a burning fire and seeing sparkling lights, the soundless snow muting a city..is like falling in love with something you can’t see. Strangers approach and you notice you yourself feel different. Your forehead eases from cautious and hurried to open and here; the creases around your mouth invert. Could be the alcohol but it feels like compassion.

A living peace – not one that won’t drop bombs or just put money in a donation box – an active peace which manages to smile through it all and wants to be there for others. To love a stranger as thyself – what a utopian dream; yet like a holiness it comes over us.

Whatever it is, it’s definitely the giving and receiving season. Bearing gifts especially for kids, tiny little tots with their eyes all aglow. The simple traditional postcard of carrying a sack of tricks across a snowy plain to a lit laughing home with smoke puffing from the chimney – such an image from my childhood. Being good, being grateful for what you’ve been graced with, thinking of others, doing for others, and all the wishing and anticipation – the cheer.

Giving crushes receiving and this is the season you get it — giving when you normally don’t, more than you usually might, and accepting gifts too – that vicious, beautiful cycle.

What brings us there? Do we like thinking about joy and peace? Is it gratitude? Giving? Or simply a break from the stress of the rest of the year, when we talk about what we don’t have, or want, and ways to get it, taking care of ourselves, if only barely.

No matter how god-full or god-less we might be, we’re all on the lookout for proof of a tender universe, a connected consciousness, clues to what is core. We take-off inside when we see reminders that we can all get along, and have visceral reactions to injustices done to others. Have you ever hoped you were, in fact, connected to humanity? Do joy and gratitude help us encounter a similar universality, one potentially inside us all? Who doesn’t wish to step out of a complicated existence and make contact with the human family

…Even in illusion, isn’t it grand?

In any case…why is this seasonal?….Why is it time-bound at all? If we can feel this all year round, for whatever reason — shouldn’t we.

If this sense were to pervade us at scale what magical spell might it rain down into the cracks of our lives?

Unleashed on us all, as if joy, gratitude and giving were a drug, or a resource without supply limitation that we all needed and pursued vigorously, we wouldn’t need money or gifts to serve our ends, boundaries and laws would change, as would the very rules of existence.

There are many interpretations of goodness. What we call it now is so complicated – how do we capture it, is the question.

/ / KJS, 12/28/16