The Elfin Blog

Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Christ, is fast approaching. Christmas is in many ways the last bastion of serenity for the common man in America. It is a time for vacations, relaxing by the fire, family, and good friend. This time of serenity, this time of peace and hopefully reflection, while quickly being eroded away by the never ending onlaught of commercialism, is still a sacred time for many Americans and Christians.

This time of year is also a holy time for many people who follow the world’s other great religions, such as Judaism and Islam. Christmas, Hanukah, and Ramadan all have at least one thing in common, as do these great religions: the celebration of peace. All of these religions place peace and love of fellow man at the top of their list of requirements for being a faithful follower of God or Allah; for being a good person.

Daily we are bombarded with advertisements for that certain product that will make our holiday season perfect, or news reports of the lowest retail spending at Christmas-time in decades. Our President has urged us to spend, travel, and go about our normal business in this time of trial for Americans, as if to say, “Spend money, make the economy better and we will all be okay.” Well without arguing against the virtues of a strong economy, I would like to point out for the record that, at this point in the world’s history, everything is not okay.

America is, as I write this, waging an undeclared war against an elusive and ambiguous enemy who lies in hiding in potentially sixty different nations. Our government is waging not only a military battle against terrorists and hard-line Islamic fundamentalists, but also a fierce propaganda campaign in an attempt to sell this policy to the American people. At the same time Israel has, for all intents and purposes, declared war against the Palestinians because of the actions of a different group of terrorists, who also happen to be Islamic fundamentalists, and the alleged inaction of Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat. This is not to mention the oppressive and violent measures that the Israelis often take against comparatively innocent Palestinian people, and their apparent unwillingness to concede the fact that they need to leave the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Before I head off on a tangent, allow me to boil all this down to the simplest possible terms. People are killing each other as I write this, and many of them - of us - have probably already forgotten why.

Many of us have, I think, in the course of all this war, propaganda, and commercialism forgotten something else. God, or Allah, does not want us to kill each other. All three of the aforementioned great religions have a Golden Rule. “Do unto others…” Treat others as you yourself would want to be treated. Even if you are Buddhist, Hindi, pagan, or whatever, I hope you would agree this is a pretty fucking good rule. At the risk of sounding apocalyptic, if we don’t take a moment to pause and reflect on the useless, mindless atrocities we are inflicting on one another, if we don’t stop them, we are going to soon witness the end of days - the end of man.

This all brings me back to what I wanted to say in the first place. This is a time of year to celebrate peace; to celebrate love of fellow man. Christians celebrate the birth of Christ, the Son of man, the Prince of Peace. Jews and Muslims, while they do not celebrate Christ, celebrate equally peaceful, good people who all shared the same message with the world: Love one another. Since religion seems to be inextricably involved in our conflicts, and since it is often used as a reason to kill our fellow man, I think we need to remember that our religions actually tell us that killing each other will never save us. Killing each other will never solve our conflicts, or make things better. Killing each other will only end us, and God will not be happy about this.

So please world, please - stop killing. Celebrate peace. Forget about the great new rate on this credit card, or the super bargain at that store. Stop freaking out about the economy. Let go of your anger, let go of your hate. When you think your last bit of understanding is gone, when you think you have less than no patience, then find more. Think of the alternative. Think of the end of the world. Think of all the children and innocent, good people who are suffering and dying. Think about peace. Think about how pissed God is right now. I don’t care who you are, or what religion you follow. Man is capable of nothing more perfect, nothing more necessary, than peace on Earth and good will toward all.

Merry Christmas. May God bless us all.