Sparks Ignites

It’s the end of the year when many of us do some self-reflection and see what the year has brought us.   Are we better or wiser for our experiences in 2014? Even if we aren’t particularly the introspective type and just want to move on, the media won’t let us. We turn on the TV and see news programs featuring the year in review. Magazines on the newsstand display highlights for 2014. Of course, we’re always reminded of the celebrities that died during the last twelve months. I just watched a news program that reviewed all the notable deaths in 2014. By the time the segment was over, I was huddled under a blanket under my bed -nothing like an overload of death to happily end the year. It saddens me every year to be reminded of my mortality and just how many notable figures of my childhood have taken their last curtain call. It all seems so melancholy as New Year’s Eve approaches and the festive holiday season comes to an end. I ...

I was watching A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV the other night, and I started to think about the commercialism that disgusted Charlie Brown. I remember watching this cartoon every year since it premiered in 1965. The themes it portrays are still alive today. In fact, they are in hyper-overdrive. We’ve moved so far away from the original celebrations of Christmas, that it has become a whole new holiday. It is the Christmas of the 21 st century complete with LED lights and Apple Pay. It is the season of consumerism, consumption, greed and stress.   Celebrating peace, love and joy has been replaced by fighting in the mall over a parking space, punching out a fellow shopper during the Black Friday melee, and maxing out our credit cards buying gifts we feel obligated to purchase. We feel so compelled to have a Holly Jolly Christmas, that we lose the joy and beauty of the season.   Our style of the celebration of Christmas gets its origins in Germ...