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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-12-23, Page 2Box 50, Brussels, Ontario NOG 1H0 519-887-6641 1872 Brussels Post BRUSSELS . Established 1872 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston How can we have a Merry Christmas? Andrew Y. McLean, Publisher Evelyn Kennedy, Editor WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1981 Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of Circulation. A Authorized as second class mail by Canada Post Office, Registration Number 0562. $13 a year 40 cents a single copy Do your best, where you can Christmas--the message of Peace on Earth. With all the wars going on in the world today, peace on earth seems like a far away and unreachable objective. People in peaceful countries wonder what they can do to help ease the crisis in the world. Perhaps they can't do anything about other places in the world but they can work at keeping peace in their own countries, their cities, towns, villages and in their own homes. Patience, tolerance and understanding of family members, neighbours and friends is a first step in retaining that peace. Ask gently for explanations before jumping to conclusions and jumping down a person's throat. Talk things over. Aim for peace, instead of war. Sometimes it seems as though people are on their best behaviour two weeks before Christmas and after the season is over, such is their _goodwill toward their fellow men. For the rest of 1981 and in the New Year 1982, let's remember the message of Christmas and be kind our fellow man. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Merry Christmas? How can we have a merry Christmas? Isn't the interest rate so high people are worried about losing their homes? Aren't people losing their jobs everywhere because of businesses going under? Aren't farmers in danger of losing everything they've worked for? Don't we have the feeling that the people in control aren't in control? The magnificence of the human spirit has often come out at Christmas. We've heard tales of both sides in war setting down their weapons for the day and celebrating the birth of the prince of peace. We've heard of people with very little food still sparing some of what they had with others who had even less. The number of heartwarming stories bring a lot of the true meaning of Christmas into our lives each year. Yet if humans have the capacity to make the best of a bad situation, they also have the ability to make the worst of a good situation, an infinite capacity for feeling sorry for themselves. They see only what they don't have, not what they have. So this Christmas for many the Christmas spirit will be badly bruised, if not broken, by the pressures of a modern Christmas. The Lord's name., be used many times, more often in crushes of Christmas shopping and nerve-jungling traffic jams than in retelling the Christmas story. Wal lkill complain about the high prices and our shrinking dollars and the rip off that Christmas has become while we heard television interviews with merchants who worry that Christmas just isn't as good from an income point of view as usual and what are they going to keep going what with costs the way they are today. On Christmas morning many of us will find our microwave ovens, our digital watches, our mini-computer home entertainment centres under the wrapping. But there are a lot of other precious gifts which we don't find under the tree. We've already got them, and like the kid who quickly discards the first toy he opens because he only has eyes for the newest one, we have taken these gifts for granted. One of the gifts we have that we forget is the gift of just being able to celebrate this holiday without fear. There are parts of this world where religion has been banned as dangerous to the state, where people have to go to all kinds of subterfuge to practice their religion, meeting in the dead of night, afraid they may slip and reveal their religious feelings to some stranger who will report it to the authorities. On the other hand we have the right to celebrate this holiday as we wish, or not at all if we wish. There are parts of the world where the religious zealots have taken over completely, where they, who have the only answer about their god, insist that everyone go along with their ideas, sometimes with the penalty of death for disobedience. We have the peace part of the Peace on Earth proclamation of the angel choir. We have had this blessed peace for so long that most of us don't know what it really means. We hear of wars and rumours of wars but we have no first hand experience of the horrors involved. It's impossible, no matter how vivid the television news footage, for us to understand the grief, the frustrations and fears of those who have to live in a country torn apart by war. We don't know what it's like to have our homes, our communities reduced to rubble, to have sons killed, daughters raped, children maimed. We don't know what it's like to go to bed at night not knowing if we will awaken. We will sit down after the gifts are open for a bountiful Christmas dinner, a tradition, something we would feel robbed if we couldn't have. Yet looking at the heaping tables of food would likely make the eyes of many third world children pop out as far as their distended stomachs.' That amount of food could keep a third world family alive for weeks. We will spend, most of us, more on Christmas dinner and presents than most of the people in the world earn in a year. After if we grumble about what is wrong, that the government is to blame for all the hardships in our lives, we have the right to grumble. All we have to do these days is look at Poland to realize how precious a gift that is. In many countries, for instance, you wouldn't be reading this column because the writer would have been in prison for his past "crimes" against the state. You would be cautious who you grumbled too because if those grumbles were reported to the wrong ears, you might be spending Christmas behind bars. There are those who would make us feel guilty at this time of the year for the blessings we have that others don't. There is no real 'need to feel guilty, unless we are so closed-minded that we fail to see that we are privileged. We need not feel guilty, but at least we can pause long enough to be thankful for the gifts that aren't under the tree. And then if we can take time to give to those who aren't so fortunate, here or abroad so much the better. At Christmas I'm a middle fa& Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Some old fogies get all het up every year, and write letters to the editor, deploring the increasing commercialism of Christmas. I used to do this when I was a young fogie, but I've quit. What's the difference? Well, a young fogie gets all upset about things that should upset only old fogies. As he gets older, he really doesn't give a diddle. They can play "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on the first of July, and it doesn't bother him. An old fogie, on the other hand, is a young fogie who has molded his ideas early, and left them there to moulder. Or increased the rigidity of his early opinions until they are molded in iron. He likes "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas", but doesn't want it played until there is some snow, and Christmas is imminent (not eminent, as my students insist). I prefer to be a middle-fogie. This is a person who listens to young fogies, old fogies, nods solemnly in agreement, and wishes they had buried "White Christmas" with Bing. Crosby, its perpetrator. In other words, the young fogie dances in the latest, frenetic style, because he doesn't want to be called an old fogie. But he thinks it is decadent. He'd like the return of the Waltz and the schottische. While an old fogie shakes his head at the modern, openly sexual dancing, knows the dancers are all going to the hot place, and would like to see'the return of the waltz and the schottische (polka, what have you?) The middle-fogie says, "Jeez, there but for the grace of God, Go I." Or "Holey ole moley, I wish my arthritis would ease up. I'd love to try it, especially with that girl who's just kicked off her shoes and displayed her navel." He'd'like the return of the waltz, but never learned to count past two in the one-two-three of the waltz, and gets tangled up, and falls on his face, in a fast polka or schottische. This brilliant analogy, gentle reader, if you are still there, represents my attitude toward the commercialization of Christmas. I can turn off the commercials- and ignore the town's brave decorations. Or I can crab when they commence, or are erected (sorry, that's a dirty word now). Or I can say, a Cheeze 'n rice, I wish I were back in business again, pulling In all those dollars that should be going for food and fuel." As a middle fogie, I choose to shut out the carols that begin Nov. 1st, ignore the drooping angels on the town decorations that were erected (there it is again) on Nov. 8th, and merely set my teeth, grit them a bit, and try to get throtigh the ChristMas season, bearing in mind that the Minister of Finance wants a little piece of every action going on in town, out of town, and across the country. The aforementioned gentleman, if you'll pardon the euphemism, after preaching a budget of equity and restraint, went out to lunch with a few of his ilk, and ran up a lunch bill of between $600 and $2,000, depending on which version you read. That, to me, is the real Christmas spirit. His boss. King Pierre the First, has expressed similar sentiments. "If they can't afford filet mignon, let them eat boiled sumac bushes". Very tasty, by the way, and a true national dish, along with pumpkin soup. I don't really know where I'm going with this column, but I have to live up to the billing anotherteacher gave me this week, after he'd arm-twisted me into talking to his creative writing club: "Wednesday afternoon, we are going to. have a seminar on writing, headed by Bill Smiley, former reporter, editor, publisher and author of a syndicated column that' appears in more than 150 papers across Canada." It sounded great. Like those November Christmas carols. But I cannot say, "That'S a lot of crap, john." Little do the kids know that I was a reporter because everybody else was doing something useful; that I was an editor because nobody else wanted to take the blame; that I was a publisher only because I owed half of a $30,000 mortgage; and that I am a household word across Canada, almost inevitably preceded by the prefix "full". My colleague didn't mention that I wrote stories about nothing happening in town that week, just to fill up a hole on the front page; that I infuriated merchants and township reeves and little old ladies, and had to bear the brunt; that I personally carried the newspapers to the post office in bags weighing about 280 pounds; that I helped stamp and roll up the out-of-town papers; or that I am neither rich nor famous. However, the show must go on, whether it's "Good King Wenceslau" in November, or yours truly talking a group of youngsters into adopting the glamorous life of journal- ism, at 60 hours a week, and basic pay a little below unemployment insurance. But I must admit, the Christmas spirit sort of grabs you, whether it's by the pocket-book, or the short and curly. Just this week, I wrote a letter of recommendation for a student. If somebody checked it out, I would be on the stand for perjury, mopery and gawk. But, what the heck, a commercial is a commercial, even though it's a 'tissue of lies, half-truths and exaggeration. Those Christmas commercials don't bother a middle-fogiej just wish I were being paid for writing sonie Of them.