The Christmas Date
The date of the celebration of Christmas it is not the date of our Lord Jesus Christ’s birth. Our current date system was established using as its basis the Anno Domini, chart originated on or about the year 525 BC, and used to cipher and identify the order of years of the Julian and Gregorian calendars, widely used by then.
Nobody really knows for sure why the date of December 25 was chosen as the chronological settling of this celebration. It may have been kept from the already established popular celebrations during the ancient Roman Empire’s solar festivals such as the Dies Natalis, Solis Invicti, and Bruma, which were sponsored by the State of the Roman Empire every year on December 25.
The Christmas time celebration has become so universal and frantic – even in countries that do not celebrate Christmas- that gives the impression to many people that the observance of this well-liked festivity it is used mostly, as a contemptible marketing gimmick by pushing and opportunistic merchants.
The Pope Julius I in the 4th century AD did set December 25 as the official public date for the Christian celebration of Christmas. This strategic move was implemented in an effort to Christianize the old “Pagan” celebrations that were taking place for centuries now during this time of the year.
Santa Claus
The henchman of Christmas, Santa Claus, AKA: Saint Nicholas (St. Nick) the Patron of Children, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Shengdan Laoren in China, Hoteisho in Japan (who knows Karate), or simply known best by the masses as "Santa", specially by his Elves, has become nowadays the most popular character of Christmas in most places in the planet. Santa is represented in thick, red winter clothes even in countries of the Southern Hemisphere, which are rejoicing summer in December!
In Chile for example, I used to celebrate Christmas like everyone else. We always had a snowy pine tree decorated with whatever tickled our fancy. We had a nativity with all sort of animals and a naked baby, and pictures of Santa in his wintery clothing. In spite of the 97º Fahrenheit + outside, all decorations depicted a cold, snowy winter season.
In the cities of Central America almost never snows and between winter and summer there is not quite a difference, unless you live there to notice it. However, in most of these countries they still dressing Santa in a wintery attire. I know that Hawaiians dress Santa up more accordingly to the season!
Until the beginning of the 18th century, our contemporary “fat” Santa was unheard of and a totally unknown personage as we depict him today. Santa Claus’ reflection was of a slim man who handed out presents to the children of the entire town; however, in many places this character was not linked with the Christian celebration of Christmas.
Santa is in fact, a cheerful, ebullient, and an exceedingly chubby man who hides his face behind a fuzzy white beard, wearing black icecap type boots, and outfitting a thick winter red suit embroidered with an unknown white fur. Some animal rights activists have been confused about this fact for centuries, and no one really knows if they are going after Santa for animal cruelty -no facts about the reindeer are actually available as well. Santa’s boots by the way are made out of leather too, what is believed also to come from animals. Please take note of that I did not bring up the issue of the belt!
As far as I know, Santa always stays at the same Ho-ho-tel during the holidays, he likes "Jingle Jam” on his toast, he eats Mistle-"toast" for breakfast, and he does not use Travelocity to book anything. It is a widespread thought that his nationality is North Polish. Another important detail is that he will continue working forever, because he currently has not means of retirement after the Stock Market crash.
Here it is some of Santa’s Gear of the Trade (in alphabetical order)
The Carrots
The Sativus sub-specie, Daucus Carota; commonly known as “zanahoria” –Spanish for carrot, it is used by people visited by Santa to pay a sort of tithe to compensate the efforts of the hungry and weary reindeer. It is not known however, how reindeer are capable of eating approximately 36 billion crude carrots between the midnight of December 24, and the dawn of December 25. With the help of Rudolph, perhaps?... No droppings have ever been found to trace any accusing DNA trail! It is known though, that some reindeer skip the carrots for the eggnog! This is something somewhat of a “Miller Time” for them. Baby carrots, by the way, come from mommy carrots. Carrots are believed to make you see better in the dark, so the military uses them to built night-vision goggles.
The Christmas Lists
This is a very serious and delicate issue. Since Santa turned pro-environmentalist, he only receives e-mails with requests for Christmas, and that way he helps to save trees. To accommodate this item, he recently had acquired a Craig supercomputer and he has a squad of geek Elves to process the millions of requests. Now you know why your paper letter never made it to the North Pole! Christmas lists cannot be hacked by members of the elite subculture of corrupt and destructive programmer shoplifters, those mendacious cyber pickpockets, while the lists travel the internet, because the lists encompasses the powerful cryptography of a hash algorithm into a super-chyphered hyperlink directly to your child’s heart and imagination. Incidentally, Ms. Claus hates e-bay.
The Christmas tree
The criminal and prehistoric destructive practice of cutting innocent, unsuspecting pines or other unsullied and unwary trees for the frivolous, transient, and short-lived amusement of a few, it has not stopped yet. Some representatives of the Macacus Rhesus panel think it is not a big deal, and the barbaric practice it is mainly just for the amusement of the kids. Perhaps they are right. I just cannot stop thinking about fire hazards, related expenses, discriminated deforestation, and global warming. Sometimes comes to mind that animal habitat gets terminally affected. The lack of companion trees disturbs the rights of sentient trees, diminishes global air exchange, contribute to the loss of 42 gallons of evaporation a day each tree puts in our atmosphere so we can have rain. After every tree that is killed we receive tons and tons of free unprocessed carbon dioxide, but oh well, it is just old me. Enjoy your tree.
The Cookies
Now we are talking! The cookies play a major role in keeping Santa (and the reindeer) going from house to house looking forward to eat those delicious cookies. These smokeless and stimulant patties of sweet energy fuel the Christmas posse to keep on going. Santa uses the opportunity to drop a few toys and gifts while he enjoys scrumptious cookies. Have you noticed that he gains weight EVERY Christmas? Well, make sure he will make a stop on your roof by luring him with some mouth-watering, fresh cookies. Now folks, I am talking about real cookies here, not about internet cookies or fortune cookies. Once, a slapdash reindeer ate a fortune cookie mistakenly stuffed with toilet paper, and the poor animal choked on it before he was able to flush it out.
The Eggnog
There are somber and discriminating disparities in the conception and in the likes and dislikes about this, sometimes indulgent, holiday’s drink. There are the ones who prefer it the old way, the way grandma used to prepare it, with a healthy and hefty portion of brandy, rum, whiskey, or any other spirit that make a rake of your spirit. The other bunch of hooligans likes the one on waxed cardboard boxes from the store. Whatever! I understand the “egg” part of it, but quite cannot comprehend the “nog” part of it. As you know, Nog is the Ferengi from Deep Space Nine. Whatever! I if you do not like eggnog, when offered just say “Thank you, but Nog!”
The Elves
These are the real heroes of the journey! Unlike Santa, Elves work all year long, during other holidays, with slaving schedules, no sick time, short lunch breaks where they just eat broccoli, and they have to wear (all the time!) those ridiculous and unmanly sissy clothes! Peter Pan accused the Elves of copyright infringements in regards of his suit. The Elves and Elfs Union (E&E) does not function and it is useless because was organized by the same individuals that run AIG, Freddy Mac, Fanny Mae, and many of our pathetic banks, so it is just another complete failure. My heart goes to the Elves. They are not being bailed out like the other losers. Things for the Elves are expected to improve after elections for Chief of Elves, according to the empty promises of the two forerunners, Pickle and Gnome.
The Fruitcake
This is another swindle. I have run into fruitcakes that have an expiration date of March 15, 1906. The so-called “fruitcake” (known as fruitcaka in South America to some) it is not so. First, the elements contained and denominated as “fruit” in it are of suspicious origin and nature, and they do not taste anything like fruit. Fruitcakes originated in the middle ages, and some of them, are still around! Besides the “fruit” in it, there is pomegranate, nuts, raisins, spices, barley, and other rudiments such as marzipan, sugar, currants, candy, citron, dates, flour, mace, baking powder, salt, butter, eggs, molasses, buggers, grime from under the nails, and God knows what else! Enjoy your fruitcaka.
The Gifts and Toys
Gifts and toys are the two most important, critical, and essential constituents of Christmas that must be delivered to the kids, the “good” kids that is, no matter what! Santa has a freaking catalog built up probably with the help of the KGB from Hell that lists the names of all the “bad” kids that do not deserve gifts and/or toys. This is an unsmiling and an accomplished travesty from any possible angle you can look at it! Bah, humbug! What Santa knows about bad kids or any kids at all? He does not live with them, he does not deal with them, he does not pay for their clothes, education, or anything else, he does not raise them, and as matter of fact, he does not have any kids of his own at all! Why? The reasons why Santa does not have any kids are completely unknown and purposely kept veiled. Mrs. Claus was not available to make any comments on the subject.
The Wonderful Kids
Kids are roughly, small young human beings between the stages of birth and puberty, just before hormones replace their cuteness. At any rate, they are the pride and joy of any and every parent. They are the real reason to live. They bring joy and happiness to our homes. They, bad or not -for the record, I do not know any bad kids- deserve a caring break in their childhood. This is an opportunity for them to taste a bit of fantasy, a few cups of illusion, a pound of dreams, a ton of love, a bucket of happiness, a dash of hope, a few ounces of time to be kids, and a small amount of simple toys.
Children are the biggest source of learning for us adults. I know a story that has been roaming the in internet before, but I will tell this story once again because it carries a powerful message. Once at the Special Olympics in New York it was a 50 meters dash race. These very special, smiley kids were waiting for the start of the race and talking to each other. The race got in its way and they started to run down the lanes. About two-thirds of the race, one of the kids tripped and fell in the tartan, scraping his knee. Almost immediately, the other kids realized this, and all of them stopped and went back towards the kid on the ground who was crying. The kids helped him to get up, and a girl kissed the crying boy on the booboo and said, “Now it is not going to hurt anymore. Let’s finish the race”. Then, they all held hands and finished the race together. It was not about the Winner for them; it was about all of us winning in life. How can you be happy if you brother is crying? That is the real recipe for fruitcakes.
If you do not know it, or have never read it in the “Mom & Pop’s Manual”, there is a specific rule to measure your level of parenting dexterity. The directive goes as follows: If you have one kid, you do not qualify as “parent”, if you have two kids, you are just a “parent in training”, if you have are rising three or more kids, then you qualify as “Parent”. Congratulations! In addition, there is something else in the manual. To understand your kids, draw from your own experience as a kid; do not play adult all the time. That is stupid!
The Milk
The milk is mostly for the reindeer since Santa prefers a good quality cold beer. He knows a LOT about beer. Remember that he drinks beer in all the places in the world he goes to, and no one else has done that! Besides, what milk really comes down to is to an unpasteurized animal body fluid. Who drinks animal body fluids? Yuck, double yuck! Powder milk is obtained by grinding the cow, and milk shake is obtained by placing a few ice cubes and a cow in the drier. Milk comes from non-virgin cows, and who knows where they have been making their milk! I hope not in the Red Light District. Nevertheless, most of you who drink milk really do not know what you are ingesting. Milk is a hydrocolloidal compound system that could come from pseudoplastic carrageenan! Hello? I drink Coca-Cola.
The Mistletoe
This must be some variety of magical salad! It is made of Mistle, what is a bird with a very nasty and misleading name: Turdus viscivorus (remind me a bit of the milk and the fruitcaka stuff), and Toe, from your foot. It is not clear if it is the Big toe (Hallux), or it is other toe like the pinky. You must be sure that whatever toe you select, is free of athlete’s foot, better known as a fungal tinea pedis infection of the Onychomycosis . In any case, the numinous fusion of these two erratic and peculiar ingredients of disparity, results in the legendary Mistletoe, a real hemi-parasitic plant! I love the magic of Christmas! As for me, I like the kissing part of the Mistletoe thingy best. Totally, dude! I secretly carry mistletoe all year long in my pocket, just in case of emergency!
The Ornaments
Oh boy, oh boy! Friedrich Nietzsche has a very specific definition of ornament, but I will not go there at this time, it is Christmas time for goodness sake! Ornaments are whatever you want them to be. They are accessories used to “beautify” things like our popular Christmas trees. The Shuar and the Jívaro in the Matto Grosso in the Amazon Rainforest, to ornament their houses and themselves they use shrunken human heads, and they think and believe they look cute! It is very trendy, though, especially if the heads are from your enemies. So there you have it. Ornaments are any “thingies” you hang in the Christmas tree, and everywhere else, including yourself. I have a neighbor that has a shrunken head, and he still alive… I tried to ornament my mother-in-law once, but it did not work, and I do not want to talk about it!
That Santa’s Red Suit…
That problematical Red Suit of Santa Claus which was green at one point before it was red, became tenet due to a publication of a singular poem, "A Visit From St. Nicholas", which nowadays we call "The Night Before Christmas". This limerick was published in the newspaper “Sentinel” of the city of New York, in the issue of December 23, 1823. In this culprit elegy, Santa is illustrated as a fat fellow, with a gang of eight reindeer with names, but without credentials or any police background. Today, Santa dresses in whichever way he wants, providing Mrs. Santa agrees, of course! I do not care what Macy’s says, but Santa DID NOT buy his suit there!
The Reindeer
The Rangifer Tarandus (A.K.A. Caribou), a popular and an abundant habitant of the Holarctic ecozone essentially does not know which members of their family structure actually work for Santa. It is like the Secret Police, they live their normal lives in the Floristic Boreal Kingdom during the year, yet some members unfold their surreptitious doppelganger personalities, and go clandestinely to work for Santa every December upholding their fellow peers in complete ignorance. Cool! After their return to normal life, they are impregnated with a dubious smell of carrots! Weird, uh? Santa’s Reindeer are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen. Rudolph is an undercover instrument and cannot be mentioned here, otherwise, I have to kill myself.
The Sack
I wish we could find out of what material Santa’s sack is made of. The Army says that is made out of flexible Kevlar, the Chinese says that is made out of doubled-padded silk, Virginians says that is made out of genetically modified cotton, and the Australian says that is made out of stretchy rubber bands, “lithe-rally!”. Who knows! Indeed, a small bag can hold a whole lot! Just imagine how much Mrs. Santa’s purse holds! Jiminy Criminy! The other thing is that the sack is always open and nothing falls over! What a bag! There are no records of how many Elves have been hard hit in the head with the freaking bag, while Santa maneuvers around with it on his shoulder. It is enough about the sack.
The Sled
What brand is Santa’s sled? It is probably Polaris or Lodestar. The astonishing means of transportation is environmentally safe, does not use gas, and does not require maintenance. It packs an 8-HP (Holly Pretty-strong-reindeer much better than dogs engine), holds a gazillion Elves, delivers a billion miles per carrot, it received the “Vehicle Of The Year” award for its trendy multi-purpose speed-away flight-toy weather-coaster lightweight-wagon freaking great vehicle, on top of that its reindeer never poop, and of course it is Hot Italian Red.
The Global Celebration of Christmas
This Christian holiday, perhaps the most popular and wide celebrated event ever in the history of mankind, even in cultures where Christianity is not the dominant religion, Christmas has come into being a secular observance, and old Santa Claus has become the symbol and rationale for the season.
Christmas time is celebrated in diverse, but similar fashion around the planet. In the United States, as well as numerous other countries, in commercial establishments, churches, businesses, public places, and homes, they display a crèche –a French word that means day nursery or crib- also called a Nativity scene.
The celebration of Christmas came under fire during the mid 17th century in England, where was abolished. However, nothing stopped Christmas from being celebrated by the jolly Christians. The celebration of this festivity actually has been in effect at least by 4,000 years before Christianity. The roots of this celebration got underway personified in an ancient Babylonian festival –the Zagmuk- many thousands of years prior to the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem of Judea.
The "Twelve Days" of Christmas is another numinous part of the Christmas celebration that actually starts with Christmas Day and concludes with the eve of Epiphany on January 5. Contrary to the popular and very misguided conviction, these mystic twelve days never happened before Christmas!
The Russians call our Santa by the name of Baboushka. The translation of the word Baboushka into Russian is grandmother. Now, how can they call an old, fat, and hairy man, grandmother! Well, I guess some can… As I remember perfectly well, during my last trip to Russia (to Krasnodar) I did not see a single fat woman, and nevertheless, hairy! As I dredge up without any doubts what-so-ever-!, the legions of Russian woman I closely set eyes on was slim, b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l, perfectly well equipped, and none of them wore any beards, of any size, not even a trivial mustache.
Nevertheless, Babushka was very trendy during the Tsarist era, and before the revolution of 1917. Baboushka was and old and sympathetic woman with no known family, like any other superhero, just like the Italian Jedi in the movie Star Wars, Obi Wan Cannoli. Just for the record, NOT citizens, Batman is NOT gay.
One day while she was cleaning her house, the three Wise Men made a quick stop at her house during their journey following the star of Bethlehem to pay respects to the newly born Holy Child. They invited Baboushka to come along with them, but she refused.
After a while and subsequent to the re-assessing of her choice, Baboushka had second thoughts about it. She quickly regretted her foolishness resolution, she hurriedly prepared her luggage and travel gear, and she hit the road in search of the Magi. She never located the Magi, nevertheless the Holy Child, so it is believed that Baboushka is still wondering around in an eternal search. In every sixth of January on the eve of Epiphany, she goes around from one place to another leaving presents to the children with a never-ending hope that someone will lead her to find The King of Kings.
Christmas’ Merry Bits and Holy Pieces
The most popular and widely used items to represent the Christmas spirit are the Christmas tree (Yule tree, or the German Tannenbaum), and the Nativity set. However, people decorate their homes for Christmas in many other ways.
One of the most accepted popular legends in religious spheres is that the reason for the use of the triangular profile of the Fir Tree was to represent explicitly the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Christians and the converted people worship the Fir tree as God's Tree, in the same fashion as they had for centuries venerated the Oak tree. According to history accounts, during the 12th century in Central Europe, people used to hang the tree upside-down from ceilings as profess of Christianity.
In any case, for reasons that unconfirmed legends and tales originated in the Baltic countries of the 15th century, it is believed that the first evergreen tree decorated for Christmas appeared in Riga, Latvia in 1510.
Based on history accounts, the earliest Nativity scene appeared first during the Middle Ages. It is believed that St. Francis of Assisi started the tradition in the small settlement of Greccio, Italy, in 1223.
A methodical and knowledgeable Nativity organizer, will position each figurine (action figures by today’s standards) in the setting having an unambiguous connotation. The manner in which the Nativity planner arranges these figurines will play an important role in the meaning, and in the visual notion of the nativity landscape.
There are plenty of little sculptures that are arranged inside a stable, being the principal characters Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus in the folkloric crib. They are usually surrounded by the shepherds, angels, the Magi (the Three Kings from the East or the Three Wise Man), and several animals who already live in the stable, or are visiting for the occasion, and depending of where do you live on earth, the animals will change!
Depending on where on hearth you celebrate Christmas, the bits and pieces used to decorate, adorn, represent, or otherwise characterized your Christmas celebration also changes accordingly, however, some groups of people might add some trappings of their own harvest from local places, or from activities-related situations. At any rate, these personages’ conception also changes from culture to culture. I mention this because my babyish daughter asked me very specific questions the other day related to Christmas. She asked me “Daddy is it true that the Mafia celebrates Christmas with a Nativity featuring the “Three Wise Guys”?”, also she asked me, “Is it true that Jesus Christ died in the Red Cross?”
As far as the first question goes, I really have no idea. Seriously folks... I had a better answer though for the second one.
Rudolph?
Who Rudolph really is? The mysterious and enigmatic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer did not get his red nose from alcoholism. He is some sort of cyborg life form in the appearance of a reindeer, who is able to produce an extremely powerful and colorful beam of glowing photon energy through his nose. He is capable of accurate stellar navigation in the dark, he can break throughout the most fierce blizzards and inclement weather, endure severe and blinding polar storms, lead a bunch of other clueless reindeer pulling Santa’s wagon through the sky. He prances on the clouds, never goes to the bathroom, and he had memorized every single one of the addresses of every child of our planet. Indeed, an amazing animal.
During his off-season’s spare time, Rudolph pursued a career in Hollywood and he hastily rose to stardom. It is still unclear and today remains a matter of debate the question of who his Agent really is. Some self-defined erudite individuals (mostly lawyers) assure that it is Charlie Brown; some other amorphous clued-up raconteurs (mostly politicians) swear that it is the Grinch. In any case, Rudolph declined to comment on the issue – “It is a matter of conflict of interest”, he avowed to CNN.
On December 4, 2008, Rudolph will celebrate his 44th birthday in a private party. The list of invitees has not been released yet, and the party, as stated by some erudite and raconteur individuals abovementioned, will be held with warmth and affection at Claus’ Manor, in the North Pole. The Playboy bunnies will attend; however, Bambi was not invited due to the “adult” nature of the revelry.
Rudolph still going strong and about to get his first colonoscopy, and in spite of his status of worldwide known celebrity, he never made it to the “Who’s Who” publication.
My Christmas Exit to You
Well, by now you should have learned a great deal about some important Christmas details and minutiae with its associated eclectic concepts. Christmas is a real jolly time, full of love and best wishes. For once, do not become Ebenezer Scrooge this year and do not screw around with Christmas. Please! Go out there wearing your best smile and transfuse your jolliness to others, soak up on massive amounts of merriness, and saturate yourself by absorbing the ebullient Christmas Spirit that will be omnipresent and overflowing everywhere, because it will stick to your spirit like honey, and it will last in your heart just long enough until next Christmas.
I love Christmas dearly, but I love Thanksgiving more. Thanksgiving is not about buying presents for everyone, or running from store to store because YOU HAVE TO BUY this or that for him or for her. Thanksgiving is all about the family, about getting together, share our love, and just spent time together as a solid family unit with our relatives. I wrote this silly chronicle about Christmas during Thanksgiving, while headquartered right at the dead center of my beloved family.
I sincerely wish you and everyone else who occupy a place (of any size) in your generous heart, a very Merry Christmas, and a Prosperous upcoming year filled with Bonanza, Health, Fortune, and Happiness. I also wish that at least one of your dreams came true before next Christmas. Run fast and hard! In order to catch your dreams, you have to run faster than them, so hustle!
Be a child at heart, a dreamer at life, do not fully mature, forgive a lot, smile at everyone, not only stop to smell the roses, but stop frequently to smell a lot of stuff, be honest to yourself, strive to progress, look always sharp at spirit, feed a hungry child at least once, help an old lady to cross the street, even if she doesn’t want to, go Ho!, Ho! Ho! around and forget about what the idiots might think of you, let your imagination roar uninhibited and untamed, call your brother sometime, visit your mom once in a while, and take some time to put a beautiful flower in the solitary grave of your grandfather.
Remember your good friends. There are friends, and there are good friends. You must know the difference. A friend will help you to move, a good friend will help you to move a dead body. And if you happen to remember, and you have the time to spare on it, look carefully deep into your munificent, giving heart, and lend a helping hand to someone you don’t know out there who might need a friend, just the once.
When you are done with all of that, stop for a taciturn moment and look at the immeasurable sky, far above, beyond the limit of your sight. The sky is pitching dark, but if you look straight up carefully, you will see a bright, shining celestial star. If you do not look carefully, you will not see it, however, I can assure you that it is the biggest start of all. I am not sure about the name of this powerful light source, but I read once that some called J.C. Superstar! Just slightly to the right of the cosmic glow, you will candidly distinguish your powerful dreams and diehard hopes, together in the silent night, holy night, patiently waiting in the midst of the heavens for you to reach out for them. Well? Start running! What are you waiting for? Hustle!
Merry Christmas Humanity!
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Dear Santa
Dear Santa:
Perhaps I should have write this note to you some time ago, but the tangles of my life and the procrastination have gotten the best of me during this past time, but finally today I got to do what I be supposed to do earlier on my life.
This is not the standard letter with a long list of wishes and wants, but rather a personal missive to let you know that I would like this Christmas to be different, at least for me. I don't say this in a selfish way, but in my own eccentric way in an attempt to communicate with you.
It is true that I have never seen you, not once, I haven't catch not even a glance of the tip of the tail of any of your reindeers, but I know you have been there every Christmas delivering to all of us your wonderful and inspiring treasure of love and giving. I know you have eaten the cookies and drank the milk, and my first smile and wide googly eyes on Christmas morning were delivered by you.
Most adults say that you don't exist and they laugh at me when I argue the contrary, but what adults know? If you just take a look to what they have done to our world and planet, you will realize that they have no idea. I know that you exist, and you always come to visit, regardless if I have been good or knotty. Thank you for that.
Well, this letter is about that. I think you have done enough for me already. I know that every Christmas you manage to bring me something and to shield me from reality. I sure know that sometimes it has been really hard to get me presents because the economical situation has been hard. I know this because my parents in some occasions have told me that Santa does not have much money for Christmas this year (or the next), and they have told me sometimes that Santa really wanted to bring me what I requested, but unfortunately he was just able to get me a smaller present.
I wasn't happy on those times, but now that I have grown a bit more, I realize that even in the most grueling times you managed to come up with something, with something from the bottom of your sack, but enough to kept my smile and my big surprised googly eyes going. I thank you for that too, Santa.
I know my Mom and Dad were worried in some instances, and I even heard them talking with whispering voices in the kitchen, about the struggle they were going through to get you to stop at my home. I have to confess that I was scared. I wanted you to visit me, but somehow I knew that my parents had to do something to make this happen, and at times that was very difficult for them; I don't know what they had to do, but they always got you to come to our home. I don't know how they did it, but I'm glad they did.
So, I wanted to thank you for all those Christmas you fought so hard to find the way to bring me presents, smiles, and googly eyes. I know you have done this with other kids too, so I thank you for them as well.
Well, for this Christmas what I really want is for you to skip my home. Is not that I don't want to see you; but I want you to take a break from trying so hard to make everyone happy all the time. I will be happy. I have all I need. I am healthy, I have a wonderful and loving family, and I have received so much from you during all the past Christmas that what I really want this time is to give you something back. I don't know what kind of gift one can give to Santa. See? You make and have all the presents in the world, and there is nothing that I can possibly come up with to make an original present for Santa, the King of Presents, the king of Smiles and Googly Eyes.
So I came up with a short vacation for you. Although you will have to skip only one house, it is at least one more stop you don't have to make. Really, Santa please let me give you this present for Christmas. I have had a lot of time to think about this while I have been growing up, and I am now a big kid that can make good decisions. I know this for sure. Trust me Santa, please. I will still smile and have googly eyes on Christmas morning, just for you.
If you still want to make all your stops, please use mine to stop at the home of a kid who's parents couldn't make it happen for him this year, or perhaps you could stop to visit one of our boy soldiers in some forgotten foxhole, or in some non-recalled trench in the battlefront like Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other cold, dirty, and humid hellhole where our soldiers will spent Christmas so we can be safe here back at home.
Tomorrow I will turn 63, and I think it is about time for me to do something for you. I promise you to have double milk and cookies next year for you and the reindeers. Please take my gift.
Thank you.
Always love you Santa, sincerely,
Yeah! that kid.
Perhaps I should have write this note to you some time ago, but the tangles of my life and the procrastination have gotten the best of me during this past time, but finally today I got to do what I be supposed to do earlier on my life.
This is not the standard letter with a long list of wishes and wants, but rather a personal missive to let you know that I would like this Christmas to be different, at least for me. I don't say this in a selfish way, but in my own eccentric way in an attempt to communicate with you.
It is true that I have never seen you, not once, I haven't catch not even a glance of the tip of the tail of any of your reindeers, but I know you have been there every Christmas delivering to all of us your wonderful and inspiring treasure of love and giving. I know you have eaten the cookies and drank the milk, and my first smile and wide googly eyes on Christmas morning were delivered by you.
Most adults say that you don't exist and they laugh at me when I argue the contrary, but what adults know? If you just take a look to what they have done to our world and planet, you will realize that they have no idea. I know that you exist, and you always come to visit, regardless if I have been good or knotty. Thank you for that.
Well, this letter is about that. I think you have done enough for me already. I know that every Christmas you manage to bring me something and to shield me from reality. I sure know that sometimes it has been really hard to get me presents because the economical situation has been hard. I know this because my parents in some occasions have told me that Santa does not have much money for Christmas this year (or the next), and they have told me sometimes that Santa really wanted to bring me what I requested, but unfortunately he was just able to get me a smaller present.
I wasn't happy on those times, but now that I have grown a bit more, I realize that even in the most grueling times you managed to come up with something, with something from the bottom of your sack, but enough to kept my smile and my big surprised googly eyes going. I thank you for that too, Santa.
I know my Mom and Dad were worried in some instances, and I even heard them talking with whispering voices in the kitchen, about the struggle they were going through to get you to stop at my home. I have to confess that I was scared. I wanted you to visit me, but somehow I knew that my parents had to do something to make this happen, and at times that was very difficult for them; I don't know what they had to do, but they always got you to come to our home. I don't know how they did it, but I'm glad they did.
So, I wanted to thank you for all those Christmas you fought so hard to find the way to bring me presents, smiles, and googly eyes. I know you have done this with other kids too, so I thank you for them as well.
Well, for this Christmas what I really want is for you to skip my home. Is not that I don't want to see you; but I want you to take a break from trying so hard to make everyone happy all the time. I will be happy. I have all I need. I am healthy, I have a wonderful and loving family, and I have received so much from you during all the past Christmas that what I really want this time is to give you something back. I don't know what kind of gift one can give to Santa. See? You make and have all the presents in the world, and there is nothing that I can possibly come up with to make an original present for Santa, the King of Presents, the king of Smiles and Googly Eyes.
So I came up with a short vacation for you. Although you will have to skip only one house, it is at least one more stop you don't have to make. Really, Santa please let me give you this present for Christmas. I have had a lot of time to think about this while I have been growing up, and I am now a big kid that can make good decisions. I know this for sure. Trust me Santa, please. I will still smile and have googly eyes on Christmas morning, just for you.
If you still want to make all your stops, please use mine to stop at the home of a kid who's parents couldn't make it happen for him this year, or perhaps you could stop to visit one of our boy soldiers in some forgotten foxhole, or in some non-recalled trench in the battlefront like Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other cold, dirty, and humid hellhole where our soldiers will spent Christmas so we can be safe here back at home.
Tomorrow I will turn 63, and I think it is about time for me to do something for you. I promise you to have double milk and cookies next year for you and the reindeers. Please take my gift.
Thank you.
Always love you Santa, sincerely,
Yeah! that kid.
A Christmas Recipe for a Happiness Cake
The Christmas Happiness Cake
This is not your standard, edible cake served in many of the Commonwealth nations and other places around the planet during Christmas time. This is a very unusual type of cake. This out of the ordinary cake it is for those hungry souls that starve happiness. This cake is to feed the free spirit, your energetically charged chi, this rare Christmas Happiness Cake will nourish the very essence of your flustered existence.
When you eat a slice (of any size) of the Christmas Happiness Cake, an internal and subliminal metamorphosis commences to develop inside you. A subconscious process is detonated sparked by the potent conglomeration of the elements of the cake. It is an intoxicating sensation, a frantic evolution of your soul; it is a massive and final migration of the last dreadful filaments that incarcerate your spirit. All things suddenly change colors, distances become thoughts, dreams evolve leisurely into bona fide and tangible goals, and people begin to look different.
There is no pain or sadness, no suffering or shame, no desperation or panic, no feverish breathing or lurid nightmares. There is just the peace of the spirit, there is the scudding taming of the soul, there is a consolidation of the quintessential courage of your imagination, and there is an impulsive glint of raw happiness.
What is happiness?
Technically speaking, happiness is an unmetered mental and physiological state expressed as a gregarious emotion. This emotion is tangled and associated with multiple feelings which encompass an assortment of levels going from the simple pleasure and fulfilling satisfaction, to ecstasy, passionate joy, and even frenzy –perhaps orgasmic- conviviality. In other words, happiness is the total lack of despondency, and blah, blah, blah. However, Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, or even Fyodor Dostoevsky could not define happiness better than me or you could. So, there.
Personally speaking, I believe that happiness is made of a lot of ingredients that vary eminently in size, quantity, quality, and nature. Sometimes I am happy eating a piece of soft candy, sometimes I am very happy listening to my youngest son (who is still a promissory project of a man) trying to explain to me how his X-Box works. Sometimes I am happy just by looking at my family, and sometimes I experience happiness just by being in peaceful solitude.
Of course sometimes I need a more complex combination of factors to enjoy a different level (not better or greater) of happiness. Last Thanksgiving for example, my family and I traveled for almost five hours to pay a visit to my in-laws at their home, and to get together with the rest of the family and celebrate the holiday collectively. Almost everyone was there at the big, comfortable, and cozy loving home of my wife’s Mom and Dad. My wife has five brothers, all married with kids, dogs, birds, and a few crazy cats. We were all there, the whole family together. We are “Sempre Famiglia”, Italian for Always Family, as my father-in-law always repeats every time he has the opportunity to do it.
After enjoying the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving celebration, a large, generous meal which my mother-in-law makes darn sure that beats the rest of the neighborhood tables and her own from last year. She always overwhelmingly succeeds in bringing about the demise of everybody’s diet, which are mercilessly crushed every single Thanksgiving by the untamed power of her titanic cuisine. After we all enjoyed as one this gluttonesque supper, I sat in the family room to drink my coffee. I needed to give a break to my saliva glands that were forcefully impelled into overtime and over production. I just sat there quietly and observed my unmitigated family. There is no such thing as “extended” family for us. We all are one-solid, one-cohesive, one-frontier family; we are indeed Sempre Famiglia.
While casually sipping my coffee and blissfully accommodated in a comfy couch, I observed everyone in the big, big family room. The many precious children were running without stinting around everywhere, screaming, laughing, and giggling. The small dogs were fighting for their “new”, however temporary territory while the cats run fully terrorized to hide under the first place they could find. The adults were talking to each other, laughing, hugging, taking pictures of everyone, helping with the dirty dishes, picking up the children’s clothing and their orphan shoes spread everywhere. Some were sleeping with their heads hanging back and contributing musically to the party with their not-so tuned snores. Perhaps this is the only time and place where they can take a blunt, un-inhibited “siesta” without worries or having to maintain a man-like posture. My wife was animatedly talking to her brothers about family matters and other tutti-frutti stuff; some guys were watching a football game on the big screen TV, drinking holy beer, and yelling in some Sanskrit lingo while performing those ritualistic and primordial dances of football every time their team scored.
The ladies could not stop cleaning and picking up things around the house while exchanging important information about the latest clothing styles, food, children’s schools, and other strictly womanly themes. That morning I decided not shave and no one said a thing about it. The only complaints I received were from the evasive children I manage to kiss. There was also my father-in-law, carrying under his left arm long forgotten pictures and aged clips from ancient newspapers giving testimony of the family’s splendid erstwhile days, and relating amazing chronicles of past grandeur to whomever wanted to listen to him. In sum, we were being Sempre Famiglia, like we always are. And slowly, undisturbed, I was gradually but securely slipping into Morpheus receiving and irresistible arms with a stomach full of godly food, and a soul saturated of this “mental and physiological state expressed as a gregarious emotion”, which I still call simply, happiness. My semi-consciousness was briefly interrupted by a furtive hand rescuing the coffee mug from a short, but fatal freefall journey to the genuine Carrara marble floor, but I never knew whose hand that was. Then, I was irremediably lost in the whirlpool of ecstasy created by the black hole of the forty winks. I like to do this. This is happiness for me. I wish I could do this more often. Yep!
I have also experienced happiness in more complex and dangerous ways! My wife calls it immaturity, my brother calls it craziness, my friends call it insanity, my neighbors call it foolishness, and most people would call it madness, but my Mom calls it been myself, and my kids love it terminally! My undomesticated nature finds irresistible to jump from a plane and find out who is the last insane one to open the parachute, before a close and personal summit with the ground below! I know, it is crazy, but I can not shake the last vestiges of my eternal youth and its diehard entrenched hormones, and at last, you live only once. So, there.
Whatever you do and however you do it, happiness is the magic elixir that will extend emotionally and physically the wellbeing of your life. Be happy and make every effort to stay happy. Being almost happy does not count. I never knew a woman that is “almost pregnant”. You are, or you are not! In mathematics, the dull term almost it is used to denote all the elements of something, except for finitely many. In another and more understandable vocabulary, the word almost means crap. No crap at all, that is.
Our beloved Mother Theresa was happy helping others, and so it was our dearest Father Damien. The hustle and bustle of “people helping people” it is always a rich, rewarding, and never-ending source of happiness. Some people are happy just to be alive one more day, and nothing compares to the happiness of the family of a soldier returning home.
You need to look and search around you. Look into your family, your friends, your community. Happiness is everywhere; you just need to learn to distinguish it amidst the emotional bedlam. So you know; we all have a last resource reserve of happiness that lies deep into yourself, at the junction of the armpit of your heart, behind the tail of your soul, and just underneath the guts feeling of the julepe. If you can not find happiness anywhere else, then you can draw colossal quantities from there!
So, whatever happiness is for you, it is for you only. Your happiness will never be like mine, or mine like yours. Happiness it is very personal and its engendered ingredients will be as different as they can be on their size, quantity, quality, and nature. Your personal and precise recipe for happiness will only be determined by your inner-child. Really! Happiness is like a spiritual blob you can shape in any way or form you want.
The German philosopher of Prussian origin Immanuel Kant once wrote: "It's one thing to be happy; it's another thing to be good." The underlining message of his phrase is that “happiness” is discernment, an insight, in fact an emotional state. He does not measure happiness against quality, or a defined list of ever-updated ingredients, or a shining path to its core. Immanuel Kant does not even attempt to define what it means, because as I said before, happiness is an amorphous spiritual blob (a cake recipe for that matter!) that will take unyielding shape in your spirit and nowhere else. In the Hindu Vedantic philosophy, happiness gives life to your cosmic consciousness; is a fundamental conception, a life-giving source of energy for the living creatures.
There are and have been thousands of philosophers, naturists, psychologists, psychiatrists, rationalists, realists, skepticists, idealists, pragmatists, existentialists, phenomenologists, structuralists, analysts, consequentialists, moralists, anthologists, geniuses, idiots, ethicists, cosmologists, epistemologists, metaphysicists, logicians, anthropologist, dumbasses, scientists, and a whole bunch of other wizards and wise guys who tried to define happiness, and they are still trying. What a crock! If they could not even define the size of King Kong’s diaper, how can they define a personal and indivisible concept of the spirit with a universal one-size-fits-all theory? You just can not. Happiness is only and no more than what you make of this wonderful spiritual blob!
If you know what intrinsic and druidistic formula makes you happy, and it is honest, untainted, and fulfilling, Carpe Diem! Forget the rest and go for it! If you really want to learn about the basic and primal mechanics of happiness, watch carefully the Master of Masters, the un-obfuscated: SpongeBob SquarePants.
You see… a cake is a mix of a bunch of ingredients rooted in serendipity, different ones, in distinct amounts, and they are not always the same combination. There are tortillions of recipes, and in spite of their differences, there is always one recipe that makes someone happy. It is that special recipe, that one that it is so unique, so dissimilar, so out of the ordinary, which posses that “Je ne sais quoi!” -a French expression for I do not know what!- that only your soul and spirit will recognize. Like the cakes, your happiness is an exceptionally inimitable and indiscernible recipe that is fitted only to you.
Your real happiness is evident only to you. You might think that someone is not, or it looks that is not happy, but appearances are often deceiving. There is an old Spaniard fable that illustrates the case.
As the fable goes, in a small township in the far-flung environs of Fuentespina, Spain, there was a group of people that liked to amuse themselves by making fun of the dumb guy of the town, a poor soul that made a living by running small errands for people, and receiving alms, to whom the village people called “the idiot”.
Everyday, the men called the idiot up to the bar where they routinely got together to drink, and asked the idiot to choose between two coins they presented to him. One coin was of a bigger size and it worth 400 reales, and a smaller coin was worth 2,000 reales.
The idiot, after thinking carefully and talking some time to do so, always chose the bigger coin of smaller value, immediately unleashing wild loud laughs, and sarcastic remarks from everyone. And this practice had been occurring in a daily basis for years.
One day, another man that was at the bar observing the group having fun at the expenses of the innocent idiot, called him aside and asked him if he has not realized yet that the coin of smaller size was more valuable than the bigger coin, and the idiot responded: “Yes sir, I sure know. I am not that stupid. The bigger coin is worth five times less than the smaller one, but the day I chose the smaller coin, this dumb game will end and I will not make anymore the easy money I have been making at the expense of this squad of morons”.
This tale could end here as a simple joke, however, there is more behind this unpretentious anecdote. First, who seems to be an idiot, not always is. Second, sometimes the real idiots are on the other side of the table. Third, blind ambition can cut short your source of wealth.
The important thing here is that in spite of a bad opinion others can have of you, you can still be fine, therefore, what others think of you it is not important at all, the important thing is what you think of yourself. The genuine intelligent man is the one that pretend to be an idiot in front of an idiot that pretends to be intelligent.
In the story, both, the idiot and the other men were “being happy” at the expenses of each other, and their motives were diametrically opposed.
Happiness is the fine and skilful art of turning around inauspicious circumstances into a resounding success. It is engraved in the spirit of the rousing poem “Don’t Quit!” written by an unknown genius of poetry. For example, people with really bad credit do not have to worry about identity theft so much. With such bad credit, no one will be able to use your identity for a good deal, so there is no point in stealing it. So, bad credit is not so bad after all. But there are other situations where you can practice this art, and here is another witty anecdote to illustrate a situation like that.
Once, a young man was in need of a donkey for his father’s farm, so it took to the country side in search for someone to buy a donkey from. He did not walk long when he found an old farmer who agreed to sell him an old donkey. They agreed that the donkey will be sold for $100 dollars. Donkeys worth more, but this one was too old, and kinda crooked. The young man gave the farmer the $100 dollars and the farmer promised to have the donkey ready in three days.
Three days later, the young man returned to the farm to pick up his newly acquired donkey, but when he arrived to the farm, the farmer had bad news for him. “The donkey died yesterday”, he said to the young man with a sad tone. The young man replied “Oh my! Well, then I guess I will get my money back”. The old farmer responded, “I can not give you your money back. I already spent it”. The young man was not happy, but he was very optimistic and wanted to turn this bad hand into something more positive, so he told the farmer, “OK, I will take the dead donkey then”. “Are you crazy”, yelled the old farmer, “What are you going to do with a dead donkey?”, “I am going to raffle it”, replied the young man.
The old farmer was out of himself. He could not believe that this crazy young man could possibly raffle a dead donkey. He though the young man was out of his mind and the sudden death of the donkey had affected him terribly, and now he was totally insane. The young man loaded the dead donkey into the truck he had brought for that effect, and left the farm leaving the old farmer perplex, and scratching the very few white hairs left on his head, which were heavily flanked by the stubborn, desiccated zits in his wrinkled head.
A month went by and the old farmer had to go to the city to run a few errands, and he met by chance the young man. He could not hide his curiosity, so the old farmer asked the young man immediately, “What ever happened with the dead donkey?” The young man looked at the farmer with a sardonic grim and he said, “I did raffle it. I sold 500 tickets for $2 dollars apiece. I made a profit of $998 dollars”. The old man was absolutely confused. He asked the young man, “But, nobody complained about the dead donkey?”. “Only the winner of the raffle”, the young man responded, “but I returned him his $2 dollars”. And the story ends here.
Perhaps it sounds pretty stupid to you, but the point is that happiness is the relentless pursue of the positive, even into the symbiosis of the real and unreal. Perhaps sounds way too imaginative to you, but remember my young Jedi that all serious and valuable accomplishments ever achieved by mankind, started with a rowdy imagination in pursue of the impossible dream and this seemingly unattainable dream turned into reality. The imagination of the Wright brothers told them that man can fly. The rest of the world thought that they were outlandishly crazy. The Wright brothers created an impossible dream with their feral imagination, and turned this dream into a concrete reality. The world now worshiped them as geniuses. Today, rooted in that impossible dream born out of implausible imagination, we are navigating the unbounded spaces of the sidereal universe, and plotting courageous courses to infinity and beyond. Ask Buzz Lightyear if you do not believe me. Now, you plunk the perspective on this, my young Jedi.
Ok. You have bravely endured my punishing homily on happiness, so you deserve to have the recipe for the Christmas’ Happiness Cake now and without delay. I invented this recipe when I stumble upon an old formula, a magic prescription, an intangible concoction for happiness in one of the many wrinkles of the flight of my uncontrollable imagination. I am giving this gift to you today because when I cooked this cake for the first time, I found true happiness while I was trying to put it together. I hope you give it a try. You may find what I found.
The Cake Recipe at Last!
Happiness recipe ingredients:
1 teaspoon of sincerity
½ gallon of love
1 dash of friendship
1 ½ cups of faith
10 pounds of hope
1 shot glass of affection
5 drops of good will
1 pint of humility
1 bundle of charity
2 chunks of compassion
Gratings of smile
Rinds of patience
Some kisses
Preparation:
At the same time, sift the love and the hope together; slowly adjoin the good will stirring with fidelity and affection.
Dust-in humility and patience smoothly, casually splash in the dash of friendship, and blend the mix with simple bursts of charity.
Beat the sincerity and faith separately, and then, add the smile gratings to them, incorporating the whole mixture to the rest. When the mixture is completed, cover it with the kisses.
Put the mixture in a mold of beauty and spring. Introduce the mold to the heart that it is already warmed up to Sempre Famiglia temperature, and let it cook during a brief and happy thought. Then, remove from the heart furnace the cake conspiracy mix with intrepidity and decision, and let it cool down unguarded within the reach of whoever wants to try it.
Caution:
The cake is not appropriate for egoistic people, and it is highly dangerous for poor devils and enemies of your soul. The ingestion of this cake can cause radical changes on them! This administration will not be held responsible for its wonderful celestial effects.
Recommendation:
Preferably, eat a big piece during childhood. Eat the rest of the cake in small chunks little by little during the rest of your life.
Guarantee:
The cake effects are unconditionally guaranteed to last one, or two eternities.
The Other Way
You may as well make mud pies like you did when you were a toddler; remember? By making mud cakes you will obtain the same effects as the Happiness Cake, as long as you are thinking carefully as you prepare your mud cake about each ingredient mentioned in the list above. You can add some ingredients of your own, or take away some, just do not put parsley or broccoli on it, please.
Post Scriptum: I still eating small chunks of my Happiness Cake from childhood, and still works!
This is not your standard, edible cake served in many of the Commonwealth nations and other places around the planet during Christmas time. This is a very unusual type of cake. This out of the ordinary cake it is for those hungry souls that starve happiness. This cake is to feed the free spirit, your energetically charged chi, this rare Christmas Happiness Cake will nourish the very essence of your flustered existence.
When you eat a slice (of any size) of the Christmas Happiness Cake, an internal and subliminal metamorphosis commences to develop inside you. A subconscious process is detonated sparked by the potent conglomeration of the elements of the cake. It is an intoxicating sensation, a frantic evolution of your soul; it is a massive and final migration of the last dreadful filaments that incarcerate your spirit. All things suddenly change colors, distances become thoughts, dreams evolve leisurely into bona fide and tangible goals, and people begin to look different.
There is no pain or sadness, no suffering or shame, no desperation or panic, no feverish breathing or lurid nightmares. There is just the peace of the spirit, there is the scudding taming of the soul, there is a consolidation of the quintessential courage of your imagination, and there is an impulsive glint of raw happiness.
What is happiness?
Technically speaking, happiness is an unmetered mental and physiological state expressed as a gregarious emotion. This emotion is tangled and associated with multiple feelings which encompass an assortment of levels going from the simple pleasure and fulfilling satisfaction, to ecstasy, passionate joy, and even frenzy –perhaps orgasmic- conviviality. In other words, happiness is the total lack of despondency, and blah, blah, blah. However, Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, or even Fyodor Dostoevsky could not define happiness better than me or you could. So, there.
Personally speaking, I believe that happiness is made of a lot of ingredients that vary eminently in size, quantity, quality, and nature. Sometimes I am happy eating a piece of soft candy, sometimes I am very happy listening to my youngest son (who is still a promissory project of a man) trying to explain to me how his X-Box works. Sometimes I am happy just by looking at my family, and sometimes I experience happiness just by being in peaceful solitude.
Of course sometimes I need a more complex combination of factors to enjoy a different level (not better or greater) of happiness. Last Thanksgiving for example, my family and I traveled for almost five hours to pay a visit to my in-laws at their home, and to get together with the rest of the family and celebrate the holiday collectively. Almost everyone was there at the big, comfortable, and cozy loving home of my wife’s Mom and Dad. My wife has five brothers, all married with kids, dogs, birds, and a few crazy cats. We were all there, the whole family together. We are “Sempre Famiglia”, Italian for Always Family, as my father-in-law always repeats every time he has the opportunity to do it.
After enjoying the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving celebration, a large, generous meal which my mother-in-law makes darn sure that beats the rest of the neighborhood tables and her own from last year. She always overwhelmingly succeeds in bringing about the demise of everybody’s diet, which are mercilessly crushed every single Thanksgiving by the untamed power of her titanic cuisine. After we all enjoyed as one this gluttonesque supper, I sat in the family room to drink my coffee. I needed to give a break to my saliva glands that were forcefully impelled into overtime and over production. I just sat there quietly and observed my unmitigated family. There is no such thing as “extended” family for us. We all are one-solid, one-cohesive, one-frontier family; we are indeed Sempre Famiglia.
While casually sipping my coffee and blissfully accommodated in a comfy couch, I observed everyone in the big, big family room. The many precious children were running without stinting around everywhere, screaming, laughing, and giggling. The small dogs were fighting for their “new”, however temporary territory while the cats run fully terrorized to hide under the first place they could find. The adults were talking to each other, laughing, hugging, taking pictures of everyone, helping with the dirty dishes, picking up the children’s clothing and their orphan shoes spread everywhere. Some were sleeping with their heads hanging back and contributing musically to the party with their not-so tuned snores. Perhaps this is the only time and place where they can take a blunt, un-inhibited “siesta” without worries or having to maintain a man-like posture. My wife was animatedly talking to her brothers about family matters and other tutti-frutti stuff; some guys were watching a football game on the big screen TV, drinking holy beer, and yelling in some Sanskrit lingo while performing those ritualistic and primordial dances of football every time their team scored.
The ladies could not stop cleaning and picking up things around the house while exchanging important information about the latest clothing styles, food, children’s schools, and other strictly womanly themes. That morning I decided not shave and no one said a thing about it. The only complaints I received were from the evasive children I manage to kiss. There was also my father-in-law, carrying under his left arm long forgotten pictures and aged clips from ancient newspapers giving testimony of the family’s splendid erstwhile days, and relating amazing chronicles of past grandeur to whomever wanted to listen to him. In sum, we were being Sempre Famiglia, like we always are. And slowly, undisturbed, I was gradually but securely slipping into Morpheus receiving and irresistible arms with a stomach full of godly food, and a soul saturated of this “mental and physiological state expressed as a gregarious emotion”, which I still call simply, happiness. My semi-consciousness was briefly interrupted by a furtive hand rescuing the coffee mug from a short, but fatal freefall journey to the genuine Carrara marble floor, but I never knew whose hand that was. Then, I was irremediably lost in the whirlpool of ecstasy created by the black hole of the forty winks. I like to do this. This is happiness for me. I wish I could do this more often. Yep!
I have also experienced happiness in more complex and dangerous ways! My wife calls it immaturity, my brother calls it craziness, my friends call it insanity, my neighbors call it foolishness, and most people would call it madness, but my Mom calls it been myself, and my kids love it terminally! My undomesticated nature finds irresistible to jump from a plane and find out who is the last insane one to open the parachute, before a close and personal summit with the ground below! I know, it is crazy, but I can not shake the last vestiges of my eternal youth and its diehard entrenched hormones, and at last, you live only once. So, there.
Whatever you do and however you do it, happiness is the magic elixir that will extend emotionally and physically the wellbeing of your life. Be happy and make every effort to stay happy. Being almost happy does not count. I never knew a woman that is “almost pregnant”. You are, or you are not! In mathematics, the dull term almost it is used to denote all the elements of something, except for finitely many. In another and more understandable vocabulary, the word almost means crap. No crap at all, that is.
Our beloved Mother Theresa was happy helping others, and so it was our dearest Father Damien. The hustle and bustle of “people helping people” it is always a rich, rewarding, and never-ending source of happiness. Some people are happy just to be alive one more day, and nothing compares to the happiness of the family of a soldier returning home.
You need to look and search around you. Look into your family, your friends, your community. Happiness is everywhere; you just need to learn to distinguish it amidst the emotional bedlam. So you know; we all have a last resource reserve of happiness that lies deep into yourself, at the junction of the armpit of your heart, behind the tail of your soul, and just underneath the guts feeling of the julepe. If you can not find happiness anywhere else, then you can draw colossal quantities from there!
So, whatever happiness is for you, it is for you only. Your happiness will never be like mine, or mine like yours. Happiness it is very personal and its engendered ingredients will be as different as they can be on their size, quantity, quality, and nature. Your personal and precise recipe for happiness will only be determined by your inner-child. Really! Happiness is like a spiritual blob you can shape in any way or form you want.
The German philosopher of Prussian origin Immanuel Kant once wrote: "It's one thing to be happy; it's another thing to be good." The underlining message of his phrase is that “happiness” is discernment, an insight, in fact an emotional state. He does not measure happiness against quality, or a defined list of ever-updated ingredients, or a shining path to its core. Immanuel Kant does not even attempt to define what it means, because as I said before, happiness is an amorphous spiritual blob (a cake recipe for that matter!) that will take unyielding shape in your spirit and nowhere else. In the Hindu Vedantic philosophy, happiness gives life to your cosmic consciousness; is a fundamental conception, a life-giving source of energy for the living creatures.
There are and have been thousands of philosophers, naturists, psychologists, psychiatrists, rationalists, realists, skepticists, idealists, pragmatists, existentialists, phenomenologists, structuralists, analysts, consequentialists, moralists, anthologists, geniuses, idiots, ethicists, cosmologists, epistemologists, metaphysicists, logicians, anthropologist, dumbasses, scientists, and a whole bunch of other wizards and wise guys who tried to define happiness, and they are still trying. What a crock! If they could not even define the size of King Kong’s diaper, how can they define a personal and indivisible concept of the spirit with a universal one-size-fits-all theory? You just can not. Happiness is only and no more than what you make of this wonderful spiritual blob!
If you know what intrinsic and druidistic formula makes you happy, and it is honest, untainted, and fulfilling, Carpe Diem! Forget the rest and go for it! If you really want to learn about the basic and primal mechanics of happiness, watch carefully the Master of Masters, the un-obfuscated: SpongeBob SquarePants.
You see… a cake is a mix of a bunch of ingredients rooted in serendipity, different ones, in distinct amounts, and they are not always the same combination. There are tortillions of recipes, and in spite of their differences, there is always one recipe that makes someone happy. It is that special recipe, that one that it is so unique, so dissimilar, so out of the ordinary, which posses that “Je ne sais quoi!” -a French expression for I do not know what!- that only your soul and spirit will recognize. Like the cakes, your happiness is an exceptionally inimitable and indiscernible recipe that is fitted only to you.
Your real happiness is evident only to you. You might think that someone is not, or it looks that is not happy, but appearances are often deceiving. There is an old Spaniard fable that illustrates the case.
As the fable goes, in a small township in the far-flung environs of Fuentespina, Spain, there was a group of people that liked to amuse themselves by making fun of the dumb guy of the town, a poor soul that made a living by running small errands for people, and receiving alms, to whom the village people called “the idiot”.
Everyday, the men called the idiot up to the bar where they routinely got together to drink, and asked the idiot to choose between two coins they presented to him. One coin was of a bigger size and it worth 400 reales, and a smaller coin was worth 2,000 reales.
The idiot, after thinking carefully and talking some time to do so, always chose the bigger coin of smaller value, immediately unleashing wild loud laughs, and sarcastic remarks from everyone. And this practice had been occurring in a daily basis for years.
One day, another man that was at the bar observing the group having fun at the expenses of the innocent idiot, called him aside and asked him if he has not realized yet that the coin of smaller size was more valuable than the bigger coin, and the idiot responded: “Yes sir, I sure know. I am not that stupid. The bigger coin is worth five times less than the smaller one, but the day I chose the smaller coin, this dumb game will end and I will not make anymore the easy money I have been making at the expense of this squad of morons”.
This tale could end here as a simple joke, however, there is more behind this unpretentious anecdote. First, who seems to be an idiot, not always is. Second, sometimes the real idiots are on the other side of the table. Third, blind ambition can cut short your source of wealth.
The important thing here is that in spite of a bad opinion others can have of you, you can still be fine, therefore, what others think of you it is not important at all, the important thing is what you think of yourself. The genuine intelligent man is the one that pretend to be an idiot in front of an idiot that pretends to be intelligent.
In the story, both, the idiot and the other men were “being happy” at the expenses of each other, and their motives were diametrically opposed.
Happiness is the fine and skilful art of turning around inauspicious circumstances into a resounding success. It is engraved in the spirit of the rousing poem “Don’t Quit!” written by an unknown genius of poetry. For example, people with really bad credit do not have to worry about identity theft so much. With such bad credit, no one will be able to use your identity for a good deal, so there is no point in stealing it. So, bad credit is not so bad after all. But there are other situations where you can practice this art, and here is another witty anecdote to illustrate a situation like that.
Once, a young man was in need of a donkey for his father’s farm, so it took to the country side in search for someone to buy a donkey from. He did not walk long when he found an old farmer who agreed to sell him an old donkey. They agreed that the donkey will be sold for $100 dollars. Donkeys worth more, but this one was too old, and kinda crooked. The young man gave the farmer the $100 dollars and the farmer promised to have the donkey ready in three days.
Three days later, the young man returned to the farm to pick up his newly acquired donkey, but when he arrived to the farm, the farmer had bad news for him. “The donkey died yesterday”, he said to the young man with a sad tone. The young man replied “Oh my! Well, then I guess I will get my money back”. The old farmer responded, “I can not give you your money back. I already spent it”. The young man was not happy, but he was very optimistic and wanted to turn this bad hand into something more positive, so he told the farmer, “OK, I will take the dead donkey then”. “Are you crazy”, yelled the old farmer, “What are you going to do with a dead donkey?”, “I am going to raffle it”, replied the young man.
The old farmer was out of himself. He could not believe that this crazy young man could possibly raffle a dead donkey. He though the young man was out of his mind and the sudden death of the donkey had affected him terribly, and now he was totally insane. The young man loaded the dead donkey into the truck he had brought for that effect, and left the farm leaving the old farmer perplex, and scratching the very few white hairs left on his head, which were heavily flanked by the stubborn, desiccated zits in his wrinkled head.
A month went by and the old farmer had to go to the city to run a few errands, and he met by chance the young man. He could not hide his curiosity, so the old farmer asked the young man immediately, “What ever happened with the dead donkey?” The young man looked at the farmer with a sardonic grim and he said, “I did raffle it. I sold 500 tickets for $2 dollars apiece. I made a profit of $998 dollars”. The old man was absolutely confused. He asked the young man, “But, nobody complained about the dead donkey?”. “Only the winner of the raffle”, the young man responded, “but I returned him his $2 dollars”. And the story ends here.
Perhaps it sounds pretty stupid to you, but the point is that happiness is the relentless pursue of the positive, even into the symbiosis of the real and unreal. Perhaps sounds way too imaginative to you, but remember my young Jedi that all serious and valuable accomplishments ever achieved by mankind, started with a rowdy imagination in pursue of the impossible dream and this seemingly unattainable dream turned into reality. The imagination of the Wright brothers told them that man can fly. The rest of the world thought that they were outlandishly crazy. The Wright brothers created an impossible dream with their feral imagination, and turned this dream into a concrete reality. The world now worshiped them as geniuses. Today, rooted in that impossible dream born out of implausible imagination, we are navigating the unbounded spaces of the sidereal universe, and plotting courageous courses to infinity and beyond. Ask Buzz Lightyear if you do not believe me. Now, you plunk the perspective on this, my young Jedi.
Ok. You have bravely endured my punishing homily on happiness, so you deserve to have the recipe for the Christmas’ Happiness Cake now and without delay. I invented this recipe when I stumble upon an old formula, a magic prescription, an intangible concoction for happiness in one of the many wrinkles of the flight of my uncontrollable imagination. I am giving this gift to you today because when I cooked this cake for the first time, I found true happiness while I was trying to put it together. I hope you give it a try. You may find what I found.
The Cake Recipe at Last!
Happiness recipe ingredients:
1 teaspoon of sincerity
½ gallon of love
1 dash of friendship
1 ½ cups of faith
10 pounds of hope
1 shot glass of affection
5 drops of good will
1 pint of humility
1 bundle of charity
2 chunks of compassion
Gratings of smile
Rinds of patience
Some kisses
Preparation:
At the same time, sift the love and the hope together; slowly adjoin the good will stirring with fidelity and affection.
Dust-in humility and patience smoothly, casually splash in the dash of friendship, and blend the mix with simple bursts of charity.
Beat the sincerity and faith separately, and then, add the smile gratings to them, incorporating the whole mixture to the rest. When the mixture is completed, cover it with the kisses.
Put the mixture in a mold of beauty and spring. Introduce the mold to the heart that it is already warmed up to Sempre Famiglia temperature, and let it cook during a brief and happy thought. Then, remove from the heart furnace the cake conspiracy mix with intrepidity and decision, and let it cool down unguarded within the reach of whoever wants to try it.
Caution:
The cake is not appropriate for egoistic people, and it is highly dangerous for poor devils and enemies of your soul. The ingestion of this cake can cause radical changes on them! This administration will not be held responsible for its wonderful celestial effects.
Recommendation:
Preferably, eat a big piece during childhood. Eat the rest of the cake in small chunks little by little during the rest of your life.
Guarantee:
The cake effects are unconditionally guaranteed to last one, or two eternities.
The Other Way
You may as well make mud pies like you did when you were a toddler; remember? By making mud cakes you will obtain the same effects as the Happiness Cake, as long as you are thinking carefully as you prepare your mud cake about each ingredient mentioned in the list above. You can add some ingredients of your own, or take away some, just do not put parsley or broccoli on it, please.
Post Scriptum: I still eating small chunks of my Happiness Cake from childhood, and still works!
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