Christmas is Coming!

I love Christmas.  I really do.  I know this must be a shocking confession.  I’ll give you a moment to adjust.  Okay, moment over.  I’ve loved Christmas all of my life.  However, the love hasn’t been continuous. 

When I was a kid I loved Christmas like any other child of my ilk.  I mean what Christian-raised kid didn’t bounce off  the walls thinking about Santa coming?  It was hard to sleep on Christmas Eve and I mean incredibly hard.  Even if it was Santa it was still a strange man set to enter my house.  Clearly my quirky paranoia developed at an early age and let’s face it, the Santa thing is a bit of a weird social custom.

Like most teenagers I went through a rebellious phase where I could barely stand my folks.  So as you can imagine Christmas and other family-oriented holidays were needlessly rough around the edges.  As you can imagine I’m also regretful about those times.  Around then Christmassy stuff like carols and decorations would annoy me.  However it would really only annoy me if I saw or heard it before the last week of December.  I can’t tell you why because I don’t really know why.  Perhaps it was part of a Christmas metamorphosis. 

At any rate, I believe it was Christmas ’03 when the magic of the holidays finally reemerged inside of me.  I was studying at Rutgers and the trials and tribulations of being a theater major were taking their toll.  Christmas was closing in and I was too tired to get excited about it.  It was some dim break off in the future somewhere that didn’t feel real yet.  However, as part of our Stage Management class our teacher invited us to attend A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden.  I took a train up to the city and stepping out of Penn Station at any point in December is magical.  New York City does Christmas up right.  I started to get a little excited.  Then the curtain rose on the show and I could not stop smiling.  I even saw it a second time that day. (Hey, it was free so why not?)  From then on I think I resolved to embrace Christmas. Afterall Christmas is about being nice, having fun and being of good cheer. Why not, right? Why not, indeed.

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Prop 8

Let me get political for a moment here.  Believe me when I tell you that I hate getting political.  It brings the room down and it is usually confusing and too full of gray areas.  I will get political here only because it is important to me. Also there will be a bonus at the end of this. I promise!

Proposition 8.  The very words upset me.  What happened was what any news story will (or should) tell you.  California gave gay couples the right to marriage.  This was a very good thing.  It is my firm belief that two people in love should be able to be together in any way they see fit as long as it is healthy.  Gay marriage seems just as healthy as straight marriage. So, in my opinion, this was good. Then it went bad.

A few religious groups and conservatives swooped into action. Apparently giving equal rights to a minority group was something that could not and would not stand.  They put Proposition 8 to a vote. Proposition 8 was to ban gay marriage in California. Through propoganda, groups like the Mormon Church were able to convince enough voters to vote for Prop 8. I believe that this was wrong and that we have taken one step forward and then three back in progress as a nation.  Please help to repeal Prop 8 and please make sure that nothing like this happens in your state in the future. Thank you for your time.

As promised, here’s a humorous and educational look at the issue : http://tinyurl.com/67nljr

It was posted at Wil Wheaton’s blog. Wil Wheaton is not a friend of mine but I’m a fan of his.

Also here’s a little song by MC Frontalot that might get the point across too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32K0nq0u0f0