Christmas Morning

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong

And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

War is over over
If you want it
War is over
Now...

I'm spending my first Christmas morning away from home listening to David Sedaris's SantaLand Diaries and watching the cats play. Later, I'll head over to a friend's place for Christmas dinner and movies. It will be wonderful and relaxing. Not being with my family, it feels like just another weekend. Nothing too special. And I'm okay with that. The only Christmas-y thing that I did yesterday was to keep a long-standing Christmas chat date with a good friend. But without my family there was none of the usual attendant stress. It was just nice. I'll probably call my mother soon since I'm sure that they've been up for hours now. The gifts have been ripped open ungratefully and whines have been uttered over the fact that my little brothers didn't get something they'd asked for. Although that rarely happens--they almost always get everything they ask for. In the grand scheme of things, gifts seem like a silly thing. They're nice, of course, but I could do without them. The overt commercialism of Christmas has always bothered me--at least since I was in high school, anyway, and began thinking about these things.

A final thought on John Lennon: why don't more people want war to be over?