REGARDLESS OF THE THEME, XMAS IS FOR HUMAN FAMILY

By Juan Montoya
We were disappointed when we learned that my youngest daughter from the cosecha temprana and our granddaughter wold not hazard the ice storms in the Midwest and Great Plains to spend the holiday with us.
However, given the icy roads, subzero weather, snow flurries and heavy traffic, it was the prudent thing to do. Spring Break is just around the corner and God willing, our grand daughter – just past a year-old – will finally get to meet her great grandparents.

When we were talking to my daughter in Michigan she said something that struck me as very revealing. She is a member of a Native American tribe in Central Michigan with a world-class casino and given the tendency for snow-bound Michiganders to gamble, is lacking for nothing. In fact, she and her sisters often travel abroad to winter in places like Jamaica or the Bahamas on tribal-sponsored trips.
The gifts, the tinsel and the rest of the commercial trappings of the holiday that Christmas has become is lost on them.
"Christmas has just become a day with a title," she said. "We would much rather have enjoyed spending it with our Texas family."
And in that short phrase, she had hit it on the head. It isn't about how much you spend at the mall, what new electronic toys you get, or how much people are impressed with the outlay of expensive gifts you shower upon them. The value of human fellowship and warmth has much more value.
Given the Judeo-Christian tradition of the holiday and its ingrained tradition in the American culture, it's easy to forget that it is not really the celebration of the birth of a human being somewhere in the Middle East who went on to be viewed as the Son of God some 2014 years later. He would say that his message wasn't really Him, but of our treatment of each other.
On that score, we have been quite remiss. We still can't get over people of other faiths, people of other cultures, peoples of other races, people of other beliefs.
And we've just began to try to accept people of different sexual persuasions.
There is, of course, no requirement that we do.
There is something comfortable about having things done as they have always been done, where people know their places as they have in the past, and the status quo remain the same as it always has been. Some people still think segregation was right. And some still think that certain races and classes should be in charge and their inferiors below them.
Change, it is said, is a constant. And the acceptance of change is always lagging behind.
Whether you celebrate this Christmas with family, with friends, or if you find yourself alone, live with the hope that we make it through another year which may bring a better understanding between us and others.
That is the one gift that I wish I could give my granddaughter.