By Cliff Dunn

If this is at least your fifth or sixth Holiday Season on earth, you’ve probably by now heard all the variations on this theme: Commercialism is Killing Christmas. (In fact, this jeremiad has been so familiar, for so long, one wonders if it was being bandied about in the Holy Land, circa the Year 1: “All this gold, myrrh, and frankincense is ruining Hanukkah and the Saturnalia!”)

The lament, of course, has merit, depending upon whom one is speaking with at the time.

Those with deeply religious convictions may mean much the same thing when they remind us to “keep Christ in Christmas.” Individuals who have had it “up to here” with efforts to charm, solicit, implore, or seduce them into purchasing the new iPad/Kindle/Nook clone may be feeling the stress of trying to keep up with Number One at a time when they’re being paid like ‘number two.’ And we mustn’t underestimate the recessive

Scrooge-Gene which seems to become all-too-dominant in many of us when December 1 rolls around.

Much like we know inherently that it’s wrong to do certain things (like killing, or lying, or behaving hurtfully), there’s a sense in most people of what “the right things to do” are; most often, these values are drummed into us during our childhoods. And at the heart of these values is the high “value” most of us naturally place on connecting with one another on a fundamental, human level.

Along with this, I like to think that a spirit of giving exists in each of us. Like most traits we are born with, life has a way of either helping to hone them, or to dull their once-promising edge. When I listen to people kvetching about the state of the world, or the seeming lack of “Holiday Spirit” in those around them, what I hear is an unarticulated longing for a bygone time when they believed in the lessons they learned as kids in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” (or “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” for that matter), but that life’s varied experiences have tarnished.

What some people need is a catalyst to remind them of the true meaning of the Holidays: that we should try to love one another, even if it’s for a few weeks at year’s end.

Whatever your Holiday flavor there’s an outlet to exercise those invisible muscles that enable us to feel that sense of connection. It could be The Manor’s “A Toy’s Story 2;” the holiday gift drive at Shawn & Nick’s Courtyard Café; the Marine Corps’ Harley-borne Toy Ride; the Gamma Mu Foundation’s HEAT 12 fundraising weekend, which raises money that provides direct assistance to people with HIV/AIDS, primarily in rural America, as well as bestowing trade-school, under-graduate, and advanced-degree scholarships to deserving gay men; donating your time to help in a Food Pantry, or pediatric HIV unit; the watchword this Christmas (and Hanukkah, and Kwanza) should be Connect.

Easier said than done, I know. But in an era of 15-second TV commercials, do you really have the time to be visited by three ghosts this close to the Dolphins-Patriots game? I think that if each of us would endeavor to “keep Christ in Christmas” (or “Han in Hanukkah”), then, like Scrooge at the end of his Trial by Spirits, “it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.” God Bless Us, Every One.

Cliff Dunn

CLIFF DUNN is the Editor of the Florida Agenda. He can be reached at Editor@FloridaAgenda.com