A resolution everybody can make for 2010

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday December 28th, 2009

Ah the proverbial nothing day.

Christmas is over, the weekend is over, New Years is still a few days away. This is one of the slackest times of the whole year.

Did you take down your lights? This is my personal pet peeve. Everyone begins celebrating Christmas as soon as Halloween is out of the way, and then on Boxing Day it all gets packed up again.

Everyone remembers the 12 days of Christmas, right? Well, day one is Christmas and it lasts until Epiphany, or the eve of, on Jan. 5. That is when we should be celebrating! Christmastide is the season, a little over a week long, that comes after Christmas.

The most popular Christmas song of all times, perhaps because it is one of the oldest, even lays out the presents you should buy for each day. Oh, and in case you did not do the math, if you got everything that they sing about, all those maids a milking and geese a laying, you would have 364 gifts; or one for every day of the year; and lest you run right out and buy it; the PNC Bank publishes a price index each year for current market prices of buying all the gifts in the song and the 2009 figure is $21,465.56.

But I have a less costly solution which I hope, accomplishes the same thing. And I would like to suggest that as you sit around waiting for New Years and all those resolutions, you consider the song, the Twelve Days of Christmas, as your starting point.

What if our resolution was to fill the next 364 days with reminders of the love and grace and nostalgia and joy we feel at Christmas?

What if we could bottle the Christmas Spirit into a way of life for 2010?

You see, I was talking to someone this past week who pointed out that 2009 was a terrible year; for many, many people. Perhaps it was that the economy tanked. Perhaps it is that the weather has really been horrible. Perhaps that whole Copenhagen, climate change, end of the world sort of thing is finally starting to edge its way into our subconsciousness.

Whatever it is, I think almost everyone would agree that we need a do-over.

And if we are going to do the year over again, then why not do it over in Christmas style?

It seems I quote Charles Dickens in almost everything I write over the Christmas season, but there is a reason, he said it perfectly when he said: "I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

And it is so true, people will hold doors for each other, people will stop fighting, people are more generous, everything seems a little more festive and a lot more hopeful. But this is not something that needs to be mired in one block of weeks come late November. With very little effort this could be a year long way of life.

There was a movie and a movement a while ago called "Pay it Forward." For those of you who missed it, the concept was simple, do something nice for someone because someone has done something nice for you.

I know I am using too many quotes, but here is the concept as explained by the character in the book:

"You see, I do something real good for three people. And then when they ask how they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward. To three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do 27." He turns on the calculator, punches in a few numbers. "Then it sort of spreads out, see. To 81. Then 243. Then 729. Then 2,187. See how big it gets?"

It almost sounds too good to be true, but it is not.

Want a simple experiment about the power of suggestion? Go into a crowded room, yawn, and then wait. People will start to yawn. Even reading this, odds are that you are going to yawn.

The same thing is true of a smile. It is contagious.

So how about Christmas cheer? Let's pass it on and make it contagious.

If you cannot think what you could possibly do, here are a few suggestions. Hold the door open for more people. Let people pull out into traffic all the time. Buy the coffee, without even telling them, of the person behind you in line at Tim Horton's. Randomly give people gifts. It can be as large a gesture or as small as you can imagine.

And we all know it would work. If you win a free coffee, how does it make you feel? Realistically it only saved you a couple of bucks you were going to spend anyway, it is no big deal, but the whole world looks a little better when even one insignificant nice thing happens.

So there it is, while you are finishing putting away Christmas, and as you wait for New Years, make this your resolution: 2010 will be better than 2009. I will do what I can to make it just a little tiny bit better for everyone I can. Christmas never really has to end.

You deserve it.