Pacific Index

Issue date: 11/30/07 Section: Life

Burbank

As much as I want to make a Christmas wish list this year including a digital camera or a Nordstrom shopping spree, I asked for my stocking to be filled with used books, because I wanted to reread the classics for a $1.23 and because not everyone wishes for a diamond necklace from Kay Jewelers.

It's awful that the winter season is devoted to this kind of consumerism. I say 'winter season' because I don't want to offend anyone with saying Christmas or Hanukkah and what exactly is the Yule Tide?

It fascinates me that this is the time of year people become overtly generous to strangers. Holiday bonuses and 25 percent gratuity are nice gestures but why does kindness and joy come in the form of some paper with scribble on it?

I'm not Mother Teresa or the Virgin Mary but I do believe that there is something that is frosted over during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, and again on Valentine's Day:

Love.

I feel as though love is characterized by objects not abstract emotions; two dozen roses cannot say 'I Love You' the way a daughter running through the city on an early lunch break trying to find two over-easy eggs and a side of hash browns for her father who is tired of the rubbery scrambled eggs at the hospital for the third week in a row does. Roses die, love shouldn't.

Love should be about the dedication to family, friends, humans, and individual passions. What I find difficult as an Oregonian student from Massachusetts is that my dedication to my family has been overlapped by my dedication to my passion for education and literature. I have developed a new family here, a family that I also cannot turn my back on, a family that cooks me Thanksgiving dinner and holds my hand because I cannot hold my father's. This is the love that is stronger than platinum, gold, or diamonds, something that no company can advertise.

So all I want for Christmas, besides a healthy father, is for everyone to experience the love of life and happiness for those who aren't able to or don't know how to.

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