Tom Guarriello traces the holiday season back to solstice celebrations of the sun's return, arguing that hope is the real thread running through Christian, Buddhist, and other traditions. He acknowledges why hope feels hard amid environmental crises and war, but finds it in human connection and children's wonder.
Hi, it's Tom Guarriello. I wanted to talk a bit today about the holidays. Holidays, holidays, the— in America at least, an overwhelming period in which all commerce, all media, all conversation practically is focused on the holidays. The holidays. What are you getting people? What do you want to get? What are the hot things? What are the— so the holidays have become commercially an enormous, enormous part of the success of businesses today. So, and it's easy to simply become immersed in the commercial aspects of the holidays. I don't know how many catalogs you guys get. We get hundreds of catalogs. So the holidays, it's this, it's this enormous wave of commercial thinking and commercial activity. And a lot of people have a religious aspect that they fall back on to counterbalance those commercial aspects of the holidays. I do not. I'm not a member of an organized religion, and so I don't have that to help shape my thinking about the holidays. So every year I'm faced with this dilemma about the holidays, but I've, I've been able to come to my own understanding of the meaning of the holidays by looking at what it is that we are celebrating together in these celebrations. Now, regardless of your religious background, this time of year has been singled out as an important time of year, and I think it's because of the, the natural cycles of life on our planet that demarcates this time of year as the time when the shortest day of the year occurs. And so the solstice has always been the focus of a lot of celebration going back into prehistory. What is it that our prehistorical ancestors were celebrating when they were celebrating the solstice? Well, you know, I think what we can understand about it is that what they were celebrating was the return of the sun, the days getting longer, the beginning of renewal. So this is a time of year when hope has played a central part in human relations. Um, it's no accident that the birth of Christ is located at this time of year. Christian historians will tell you that there's no accurate historical record as to when Jesus was born. This time of year is a good time of year to have the birth of the hopeful renewal of humankind being born because of this long tradition. Other religions have similar celebrations at this time of year. The Buddha was reported to have found enlightenment at this time of year. So hope as the center of the meaning of the holidays is what I've celebrated, uh, for years now. And, uh, it's a tough time for hope, you know. This is not an easy time to be hopeful. There are a lot of things, uh, that the less hopeful, more skeptical among us, uh, will tell us that that, you know, not a lot of reason to be hopeful, you know, planetary environmental difficulties, political strife, wars, genocides in many parts of the world, Africa now in particular. So why in the world? It's hard to be hopeful. It's hard to be hopeful at this time. Why am I hopeful? Well, I'm hopeful because I continue to find in the human spirit, in us, this overpowering desire to want to live together and to want to enhance the quality of our lives. It doesn't mean everyone wants to live together. We know that's not true. It doesn't mean everyone wants to improve the overall quality of our lives. We know that's not true. But for me, the vast majority of the people that I see are looking to find ways to connect with one another, to share our common humanity, and to contribute to for want of a better word, the good. To want to contribute to enhancing our lives together. When you see children together, alone, gulping up life, trying to take in everything around them, For me, that's a cause of great hope. And so despite all of the, uh, very real and very troubling difficulties that we all face together, for me, this is a time of year to celebrate hope. And so I hope that you have a wonderful holiday season, that you and your friends and family get to connect in ways that will enrich your spirit and theirs, and that the new year will be filled with peace and joyful connection for all of us. So thanks a lot. I've really enjoyed being part of this, of this community at YouTube in the past few months, and I really look forward to 2007. To seeing what we're going to be able to do with this together. This also has been a cause of great hope for me. So thanks very much.
