They showed "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on TV again last night

Because it's the 40th anniversary, I suppose. And I have three observations:

1. Television shows were leisurely paced, back then. Not much happens in the story, really.


2. That despite Linus's heartfelt sermon on the stage of the school auditorium, the moral is quite clear: "The real true meaning of Christmas is 'The Tree will save you.'"


3. It turns out that Charlie Brown got it wrong about fancy lighting decorations on your house. It not crass commercialism (anymore). It's how we talk to each other, this time of year -- like fantasticly colored smoke signals from a distant hill. We don't have skating parties or go caroling door-to-door, but we do put giant, grinning polar bears and lighted candy canes in our yards.
   
   Every year, the cul-de-sac I live on is aglow. And I actually like it. But I've never put up decorations of my own. I keep having fantastic ideas on homemade displays that another Pagan would probably recognize as being for the Solstice, but my Christain neighbors would probably see as quaint, "old fashioned" and "rustic." But I've never actually done anything to make those ideas a reality.
   
   So that will be my 2006 resolution, or at least, the symbolic culmination of it at the end: to communicate with my neighbors more -- and reveal as much of my true self as I can without scaring them.