Seasons Greetings

 Among the detritus of the holidays now behind us is a card from an organization we support.  Perhaps five inches by seven, the heavy card stock piece struck me as a viable book mark, which accounts for its placement at the ready on my bedside table.  “Seasons Greetings,” it trumpets, and while I know such verbiage is controversial I’m rather grateful for it.  True, “Merry Christmas” is the purer sentiment, and I know that many view the more generic greeting to be a cultural sellout to nefarious secularism, or worse - a diluting pandering to the supposed evils of profaning multi-culturalism”. 

But I harbor no disapproval. Indeed, in this case I unapologetically prefer it.  There is, after all, the promising utility of the card, yes, along with the sentimentally significant hand-signed gratitude of the sender.  And then there is the embossed admonition of the mentor/sage:  “Be joyful because it is humanly possible.”  

I - and those around me - can benefit from that reminder.

All those, yes, but it is the portability of the presenting sentiment that teases my imagination.  Seasons Greetings.  There is, I note, no possessive apostrophe in the greeting - as if it belonged to, and was bounded by, the moment.  Not, “season’s greetings”, but rather “seasons greetings”, as in “greetings for the seasons”.  Omitting the punctuation engenders a generosity I appreciate.  It is, after all, not simply Christmas that needs a greeting - not simply December or, more broadly, winter.  Every season could benefit from a kindly greeting, and a fresh, reminding nudge toward joy.

Because in every season - the drab sluggishness of winter, the muddy renewal of spring, the blistering weediness of summer, the languid chilling of autumn - joy is humanly possible.

Blessings, then, on this New Year already unfolding, and the greetings hungered for and received in each of its seasons, and the joy that will be their labor and their fruit.