Whether a person lives fully and righteously is vastly more important than which religion (if any) helps them do so. But I still wish people “Merry Xmas” in late December. Can anybody suggest something with more pizzazz than the generic salutations but w/o religious implications?

When I say Merry Xmas (pronounced like “MEH-ree KRIS-muhs”), it might be heard as an unwelcome hint that the hearer is (or should be) a Christian. I suppose I should say something like Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings instead, but the generic salutations for this time of year sound bland and vague to ears as old as mine. Can anybody suggest something with more pizzazz but w/o religious implications?

I decorate for the winter solstice (with multicultural Xmas lights and wreaths) and hope it is OK to wish U a

chickadee-wreath_el-greco

Merry Xmas!

– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –

A cascade of tongue-in-cheek posts and comments came to an abrupt end with a serious thought, but I recovered enough to continue semiseriously, with a short story about weirdness in the who and how of sudden enlightenment.

– Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –

It started so gaily.
A tongue-in-cheek haiku post about writer’s block led to
a t…-in-c… comment that led to
a t…-in-c… haiku post about Genesis that led to
a t…-in-c… comment that seemed to
merit a t…-in-c… reply.

But the volleyball hit the floor before I could whack it upward.

That last comment in the cascade included a question about a haiku titled Thus Saith the Lord:

What made U the lucky poet whom God speaks thru?

While the comment’s “U” is me and my claim to prophecy was indeed tongue-in-cheek (and perceived as such by the commenter), I could not get past the fact that many people do claim (seriously and stridently) to speak for God. Many of those who are serious and strident are also willing to coerce people they cannot convince. Many of those who are willing to coerce are also willing to kill people they cannot coerce.

While I could not just keep it tongue-in-cheek, I still saw the wisdom in Oscar Wilde’s remark that life is too important to be taken seriously. So I continued semiseriously, with a draft for a weird story to end the original 2017 version of this post. I have removed the draft here because the story has been thoroughly revised and now appears in an anthology of weird stories as Satori from a Consulting Gig. The revised story was also posted to this blog, after I created an appropriate illustration.

I blanked out part of a comment from 2017 that appears below, so as to leave it for the story to reveal the who and how of a weird instance of satori.

Mellow Curmudgeon

Mellow Curmudgeon

Tag: religion

Solstice Salutation

Merry Xmas!

Miracle: Satori from an MBA