From: ufo777@webtv.net (ufo777)
Subject: [Illusions] Fwd: Dec. 25 column - Christmas
Date: 25 Dec 1998 05:27:22 -0500
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Happy Holidays  Patricia

Sincerely, Patricia  http://www.serve.com/ufo7
"If you suppress The Truth it becomes your enemy...if you expose the
truth it becomes your weapon.Col Corso"                   


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Subject: Dec. 25 column - Christmas
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    FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED DEC. 25, 1998
    THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
    I'll be home for Christmas

    And now the bustling streets and malls fall strangely quiet. In many a
home the living room rests ankle-deep in an effluvia of ribbons and paper
and bows, while in the background someone has left the TV running --
Alistair Sim throws open his window on a bright a shining world for the
47th time, asks the lad in the street what day this is.

  It's Christmas morning, sir.  And yes, we certainly do know the shop on
the corner with the big, fat goose still in the window.

  The bleatings about the "commercialization" of the holiday seem to have
faded a bit in recent years.  Since Christians didn't exactly invent the
date -- merely superimposing their own celebration of the (springtime)
birth of Jesus onto a Winter Solstice week of feasting and merriment
observed by the Romans and the pagan tribes for a thousand years -- it does
seem less than generous to protest whatever traditions others may cherish
at this time of year.

  Yes, even if that includes animated Santas sledding across the snow on
highly unlikely rotary-blade electric razors. (For that matter, some of us
even pine for the throaty ladies who used to sing to us about shaving cream
and cigars.)

  Surely it can in no way dilute the religious meaning of this holiday to
sincere believers, to know that in other homes Christmas is honored
primarily as a day for family, for feasting, for good fellowship and the
exchange of gifts.

  It even occurs to me that the ancient and modern holidays aren't such a
bad fit: The superstitious ancients lit bonfires and hauled their sacred
mistletoe and evergreen indoors out of fear the ghosts of the dead might
walk abroad on the longest and darkest night of the year.  Yet still they
chose to look on the bright side, celebrating the fact that the lengthening
of each day from this point promised the vital return of spring. And modern
Christians, too, celebrate this date for the arrival of a new hope to lead
mankind out of the darkness.

  Here is a day for friends and family, for again celebrating our freedoms
and the bounty they create. For make no mistake, the notion that armed men
can enforce some uniform brand of "compassion" by mandating the
redistribution from those who have earned "too much" to those with less,
has been tried now for most of a century across half the globe ... and has
universally collapsed in a pitiful heap of poverty, devastation, and
recrimination.

  Only by allowing men and women to profit from the fruits of their labors
can a society be truly moral and just. And only by thus allowing each soul
to remain a free agent is true, voluntary kindness and charity made
possible.

  Finally let's remember, this day, to act broadly out of the charitable
instinct we all share, to help those who are less fortunate not because
someone tells us we must,  but out of the goodness of our hearts, and the
joy of rediscovering our shared humanity.

  There's a tendency to think today's crises must surely be more
complicated and dispiriting than those that faced our parents or
grandparents. But in fact,  today's doubt and confusion pale when we
consider how the future of this nation and our freedoms hung in the balance
for a generation of cold and lonely sailors and G.I.s and Marines,
stretched as thin as freedom's line has ever been in the desperate
Christmas season of 1943, when Kim Gannon and Walter Kent wrote:

  "I'll be home for Christmas, you can plan on me. Please have snow and
mistletoe, and presents on the tree.

  "Christmas eve will find me, where the lovelight gleams. I'll be home for
Christmas ... if only in my dreams."

  Merry Christmas to all, and especially to the generation of the great
victory of 1945, who can proudly answer as Benjamin Franklin did when asked
what bequest they leave to a grateful nation: "A republic, if you can keep
it."

  Thank a veteran today. Thank a grandparent, as though it's the last
chance you'll have ... because you never know. Tell them: "May your days be
cheery and bright. And may all your Christmases be white."


Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com. The web
sites for the Suprynowicz column are at
http://www.infomagic.com/liberty/vinyard.htm, and
http://www.nguworld.com/vindex. The column is syndicated in the United
States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas
Nev. 89127. Watch for Vin's book, "Send in the Waco Killers," due from
Huntington Press in February, 1999.

***



Vin Suprynowicz,   vin@lvrj.com

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John
Hay, 1872

The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not
get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases
to discriminate between good and evil.  He becomes a slave in body and
soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt
against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943

* * *



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