Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

     Do you know anyone who has a hard time finding the Christmas spirit? For many of us, this time of year can be especially hard. Maybe it is the loss of loved ones, or time alone, or just the over commercialization of what was once a more simple holiday. I like to ease myself into the holiday, but when the big chain stores have Christmas displays and local radio starts playing Christmas music the day after Halloween it becomes really hard to ease into it.

     Part of my problem is sometimes not really understanding what the Christmas spirit really is. Does it simply mean buying things for the kids that they don’t necessarily need and will be bored with by the end of the day? Is it about going to church four weekends in a row only because it is the Christmas season? Is there more to it? Yes, there really is. I decided that this year instead of waiting until I had the Christmas spirit to commit my annual not so random acts of kindness, that I would instead use them to lead me into the holiday.

     I started off easy by sending flowers to a friend who had been feeling a little under the weather lately. Oh sure, it was really nothing more than a nasty cold, but hopefully my small gesture helped to brighten their day. Besides, who doesn’t like flowers when your nose is so stuffed up that you can’t breathe? Yeah, probably should have thought that plan through.

     Next I decided to up the ante so to speak and went to the local HyVee and got two $25 gift cards. My plan here was to wander aimlessly around the store finding someone who looked like they could use a little free grocery money and slip the envelope with the card into their cart. It didn’t take long to realize that my plan here was a bit flawed. Do you actually know how little time people are not paying attention to their shopping carts? After twenty minutes I decided to try just handing a couple of people the cards using the old stand by “you dropped this.” Needless to say both cards ended up back at the customer counter in the lost and found.

     Since things weren’t working so well I thought that maybe I should try something different so I went outside and stood next to the red kettle outside the store. I didn’t have a bell so I decided to shake my car keys excitedly. They would sound like a bell right? Now I am not going to bash any charity, but some people get really excited about having “untrained volunteers” attempting to help raise them funds. After explaining to the officer what I was doing and taking a field sobriety test I decided there was only one final thing I could do.

     I went to Mc Donalds (note to self…the food still tastes horrid) and decided I would go to the drive through and pay for the order of the two cars that followed me in. I thought of this because of my past trips to Starbucks with an addict in which I learned it was often commonplace for people to pay for other peoples coffee. Oh sure, there isn’t anything that works so well as a “pay it forward” kind of gesture to help lift ones spirits.

     So I pulled in and ordered my McRib and when I pulled up to the window I told the young woman that I would also be paying for the two vehicles behind me. Had I looked into the rear view mirror I would have noticed that behind me was one of those stretch cargo vans that small college sports teams like to ride to games in. I was somewhat shocked that the Northeast Nebraska State women’s swim team could actually order that much food, but since I had already made up my mind I shrugged off as I watched the total on my debit card rise.

     What I hadn’t realized was that until I pulled ahead the car behind the college van couldn’t get to the order board. What ensued was a large amount of horn honking from a large mustached woman who was driving the van and using language that wasn’t really cheery.

     It was at this point that I decided maybe it wasn’t my job to spread Christmas cheer. Perhaps this year good old Santa Claus would have to handle it all on his own. I drove home dejected sipping on my McRib sauce flavored Peppermint Shake when I saw my house and the lights twinkling in the fog. They aren’t as pretty as they once were and a couple of the strands barely have any bulbs left, but I light them every year for my neighbor Marie who loved them so much when she was alive.

     It was in that moment that I realized that the spirit of Christmas lives within each one of us, and sometimes the easiest way to spread it is to simply plug in a string of old colored bulbs.

See you next week….remember, we’re all in this together.