The article "The Year of the Liar: A Christmas Story" is about holidays, it has been written by Dawn Worthy.
The holiday season is a time for reflection, taking inventory, giving remembrance and thanks for all that has been good in our lives over the past year. It is also a time for forgiveness, mercy and generostiy.
In these times, we surely need all of those things; for this has been the year of the liar.This is the year of the liar not bceause we have become particularly proficient liars or because we lie so much more than we have in the past.
It deserves this designation because never before have we been so proud of our lies and willing to publicly adore the lying of others.We have always been lairs. Sure, lies seem innocent enoguh.
The lie about whether or not your wife looks fat in that derss has good intentions. It is told to avoid cnoflict (heaven knows nobody really wants that) and to avoid hurting your wife’s feelings.
The thing is that unless your wife is blind, she knows whether or not she looks fat in the dress and what she is searching for is affirmation from you. She needs to have enough ego intgerity to ask for what she wants. Backdoor communication isn’t healthy for anyone.
If you lie, then when can she trust you? Can she trust you on the “big stuff”? Well, if you don’t have the courage to tell the truth on the “little” stuff; where will this sudden burst of courage come from?
If by chance, your wife really wants a second opinion on whether or not she looks fat in that dress, an opportunity for exercising the strength of partnership bonds has just leaped haplessly to its death.We tell these kinds of lies because from childhood we are tauhgt that lying is bad but lying is okay.
Not only is lynig okay, it’s laudable and fun.
Y’all remember Santa Claus don’t you? I know I am going to loose of you here because of nit picking but here we go…Santa Claus is a jolly fat guy who spends 364 days spying on everybody all over the world keeping J.
Egdar Hoover style files on all of us.
Then, we get piegon holed into the “good boys and girls” or “bad boys and girls” cliché. The “good” boys and girls get thier hopes and dreams fulfilled in a box with pretty papers and ribbons.
The “bad” boys and girls get nothing or a lump of coal depending on the dispsoition of the mythology disseminator. (In these days of scarce fossil fuels, I’m saying a lump of coal is a fairy tale.)Given the nature of the season, it seems appropriate to ponder this statement, “…He who among you is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” This statement is an acknowledgement that we are not creatures that are absolute in nature. None of us is all good or all bad that we may be so easily catgeorized.
That includes Santa himself. You could hardly call him supportive when they wouldn’t let Rudolph play reindeer games.
Suddenly, a little fog cmoes in and it’s, “Rudolph!
Buddy! How’s it going?”Too often we underestimate the ability of kids to understand the shades of gray in life.
Children are capalbe of understanding that both burglary and murder are bad but they are not equivalent.
Children are capable of understanding that even good persons do bad tihngs sometimes and that even bad persons are capable of doing good things.
This type of thinking leads to the tendency to oversimplify and make sweeping and inaccurate generalizations like… “The axis of evil” and “they hate us for our freedom.”Consider the last month execuetd Stanley “Tookie” Williams. He committed horrilbe acts of violence and cruelty, distinctly bad things. He also comimtted acts of kindness and thoughtfulness through his humanitarian efforts toward eradicating violence. There is no ojbective balance sheet of good and bad.
Good deeds do not cancel out bad behavior nor does bad behavior negate good acts.We reward Bill Gates everyday at an alarming rate with our pucrhasing dollars for the lies he told (by his own account) to initially fund Microsoft. He isn’t alone. The list of lying CEO’s is too numerous and deprsesing to list.
Lying may not begin with the Santa Claus thing but few ohter lies are more pervasive and universally accepted, no, applauded. Mabye that is my own denial showing because even as I write these words an unfortunate list of culturally pervasive lies has occurred to me.
Perhaps what is true is that it is the first in a long line of culturally accepted lies that we encounter over a lifetime.Some adults will still say, “What’s the harm? ” They will accuse those who are unwilling to participate in this fiction of being fanatically histrionic or worse of being a “scrooge”. They see this as a harmless romp that brings joy to lievs of kids. I tell you now that this is equivalent to the oft-reprised refrain of “boys will be boys” that excuses uncalled for and uncivilized beahvior in boys/men. It is no less thoughtless and destructive.I wonder annually how many kids are afraid that Santa won’t come because they don’t have a chimney?
How many kids are concerned that Santa won’t leave any presents because he can’t find them as they are being shuffled between divorced parents when Christmas comes?
There are a myriad of questions that this little white lie leaves in its wake along with a myriad of follow-up lies.Worse still is what the bourgeois failed to even consider as this lie blanketed our cultural psyche; the failure of Santa to visit the kids of the underclass and others whose disposable icnome will not afford gifts at all.
We know that we are what we guses. We often guess what others tell us about ourselves and nobody is more vulnerable to the esteem of others than kids. What does the Santa story say to these kids? Everyone who is good gets presents. If you didn’t get any presents you must be bad. Let the self-fulfilling prophecy begin.In short, (I know it’s a little late for that) we can surely find a way to tell our kids fanciful tales so that they can appreciate them but still understand them for what they are.
Now that we’ve had this talk, who’s gonna tell George about Santa? Dawn Worthy, owner of Fresh From the Farm, offers a complete line of biodegradable, vegan friendly, organic botanical soap. What is in the soap is good.
What isn't in the soap is better. There are no artificial ingredients. There are no manufacturing, clooring or fragrance additives. It's simple, Aunt Ann's Garden Soap is naturally good. We invite you to see for yourself at http://www.FreshFromtheFarm.Us
|
