I really dislike the four weeks or so leading up to Christmas, and although I wish that things were different, they are not. I feel badly for having these sentiments.
As a non-religious, but proud ethnic Jew, I tend to feel a bit slighted and unseen during December, as the winter festivity of my tradition, Channukah, seems basically invisble to those that do not in some way acknowledge it. Obviously, this is not true for Christmas, which means really nothing to me, yet I feel forced to see it everyday in the days that begin after Thanksgiving, and continue past New Year's. This includes,, unfortunately for me, wonderful Stow Lake, where I go every morning to escape busy San Francisco and focus on my own thoughts.
During the holidays, someone or some people take it upon themselves to decorate a particular bush there as if it were a Christmas tree, and it irks me. I go there to try to clear my mind, but have found it difficult to do so as I pass those ornaments every time I complete a lap. I have tried for quite a while to find ways to not be bothered by it, but have until recently been unsuccessful.
Then, last December, something just presented itself to me, and has continued until the present.
It is dark this time of year when I arrive at the lake, but as I walk, at the roughly halfway point around the north side of the pedestrian path, I am treated to something wonderful; I can see, faintly in the distance, the red, white, yellow and green lights of the cars and traffic lights on busy 19th avenue. From far away, they look to me like holiday lights.
The quality of those colors remind me of when I squint my eyes to see something in a different way. Sometimes, a lack of visual clarity can help to reorient me differently. It can soften, or rather blur out the things which I find displeasing or unpleasurable.
Those colors in the darkness, blurred by the distance and my human eyes, are a gift which helps me to see December differently. Unlike Christmas, they will be on display as long as I am willing to venture out into the darkness.
