Christmas is over. Thank you Jesus.

As Christmas approached, I went into one of my holiday depressions. There is no doubt that Christmas is not one of my favorite holidays. I am supposed to feel full of good cheer. I am instead, depressed as I usually am (although it is a low grade depression, the one I always have).
I always say that I discovered the true meaning of Christmas the year that I was working as an ambulance medic in east Oakland. Ghetto kids mugging an old lady to get money for Christmas presents. A suptuously appointed home in the Oakland hills where we got a call to find that hubby had thrown his wife across the room, breaking her tailbone, and being met at the door by their daughter, who, when we arrived, pointed her face toward her mother with an expression of "here we go again." People getting plastered and crashing their cars into traffic barriers, and wasn't it nice that they didn't kill anyone else in the process?
I try not to take Christmas too seriously, except for the exchanges that I go through with my sisters family. Every year, on my birthday, my sister sends me a check for a hundred bucks (which I consider rather nice, considering that I don't even remember the day that SHE was born). Every Christmas I send the family a Honeybaked ham (the largest one they offer which is sixteen pounds, which will feed her, her husband, her nine kids, all grown, with eight of them married, and seven of them with kids of their own).
For the most part, I do not send cards, I do not give presents, and my great relief is when the whole process is over, which occurs on December 26.
I finally figured out how to celebrate Christmas without jumping off the Golden Gate bridge.
Here is my secret.
Every year, my church (the libs in my congregation insist on calling it a "Society", but I continue to consider it as a church. For your information, my church is the First Unitarian Universalist CHURCH of San Francisco) . On Christmas eve, we hold two candlelight services. One is the family candlelight service, which is held earlier in the evening. The other is the later candlelight service held at 8PM.
I was one of the ushers for the 8PM service. We sang Christmas carols that acknowledged that the whole purpose of this day was to celebrate that Jesus Christ, the son of God, was born. Whether He was born on December 25, or whether the Catholic Church decided to preempt the pagan solstice celebrations by planting the date here doesn't matter to me. What mattered to me that was that Jesus Christ, the son of God, was born. I don't care about the date.
It occured to me that the real meaning of Christmas had nothing to do with shopping, had nothing to do with Santa Claus (who in real life was a bishop in Asia Minor now referred to asTurkey, who, when he was confronted with a father who was ready to sell his daughters into prostitution, had anonymously given three bags of gold, so that the father had dowrys, so that his daughters could marry).
After the service, (where I had a great time saying Merry Christmas) I went to my favorite watering hole where I had a pitcher of beer.
After finishing up the pitcher, I took Muni to go the midnight service at Grace cathedral.
You talk about smells and bells. The Episcopalians really know how to do Christmas.
Orchestras, choirs, organs playing Bach, holy communion (which I partook of) and holy water, (which I crossed myself with) .
Christmas is a celebration in which we celebrate the birth of Christ. There is no other meaning to it.

Put the needle in. Please.

The Governor is going to make up his mind tomorrow as to whether Stanley "Tookie" Williams will be granted clemency. If he grants it, Tookie lives. If he doesn't grant it, Tookie dies on Tuesday December 13, 2005.
The headline in the San Francisco Bay View, a local African American newspaper reads, "Let Tookie live to lead everyone to redemption." Just below the headline is some commentary by the self described political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Also below the headline is a picture of Tookie's new book, "Blue Rage, Black Redemption." Below the picture, Tookie writes "To say the least, I am a controversial figure with an unenviable gang legacy-Crips co-founder - that will forever haunt me."
Tookie has written a number of "age appropriate" books for children, describing the perils of gang life, and warning young people to stay out of it. His best-selling one has sold all of 330 copies.
His petition for clemency sidesteps the question of whether he actually killed four people in eleven days with shotgun blasts to their heads. Tookie says that he didn't do it. Tookie says that it would wrong for him to apologize to the families of the victims for a crime that he didn't commit.
The problem is, that as a founder of the Crips gang, now estimated to number in the tens of thousands, there are many murders that Tookie must have a hand in and/or knew about. While Tookie says that he has turned his back on gang life and become a new person while on death row, he refuses to cooperate with law enforcement officials who might like to know the circumstances of dozens, if not hundreds of deaths. That would make him a snitch. Tookie doesn't snitch.
Tookie has gotton a lot of support from Hollywood stars like Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. James Foxx starred in a made for TV movie titled "Redemption" all about guess who? The movie is a big hit at rallys to save Tookie.
Much of his support comes from people who, aside from the usual death penalty opponents, argue that even if Tookie did kill those people, he has become a changed man, and doesn't everyone deserve a second chance? Actually, those people often won't admit that Tookie might have killed those people. They believe that his redemption, his turning around his life, his new outlook, and his efforts to educate young minority children that gang life is not the way to go, outweigh anything that he might have done before he changed his mind.
There are other considerations besides "redemption" that enter the picture. According to stories in the newspapers, (specifically the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times) there is a lot of support for clemency in the African American community of south-central Los Angeles. South central is Crips territory. Dire warnings of what might happen if Tookie gets the needle are hinted at by some of the people interviewed. California prisons are also filled with Crips. They are not happy that a brother might be executed. Who knows what they might do?
Doesn't everyone deserve a second chance? You might ask the four people who Tookie is alleged to have killed that question. Oh wait. They're dead. They don't have a second chance. Silly me.
Wouldn't having a real gang member as famous as Tookie, telling young people not to do what he did, have a positive influence on young peole who might otherwise be influenced to join a gang? But the whole reason that Tookie is so famous is that he not only joined a gang, he founded one. A real big bad one.
I think that a good lesson for young people is that, if you kill someone, there's a very good chance that you will end up as Tookie did. And if Tookie gets the needle on Tuesday, that's another very good lesson for young people. It says to them that no matter what line of bullshit you come up with, no matter how many influential people intervene on your behalf, no matter how many people are ready to riot in the streets if you are executed, if you kill another human being you are going to die.