Holidays just don’t mean the same as you get older. All the beauty and pageantry of the decked halls, the holly and the ivy, the legion of Christmas specials, even the Yule log, tends to give way to empty glitter and glitz and cookie-cutter Hallmark movies.

Santa Claus ceases to be a kindly toymaker to the world’s children, whose belly laughs rattled chimneys from Washington, DC to Christchurch, NZ, and is transmogrified into a rapacious producer of plasticated ephemera, more than willing to use any and all psychological techniques to get people to buy buy buy, while Christ, the Prince of Peace, gets shunted off the stage, confined to a creche, tended solely by the downtrodden and the forgotten. (And if you think I’m being a killjoy, I invite you to read George Monbiot’s treatise on pathological holiday consumption habits.)

Do I wax cynical? You bet your holly, jolly tuchis I do. Every attempt to retain the spiritual meaning of Christmas is countered by the mad men and mad women of Madison Avenue, who see dollar signs instead of crosses.

I’m just thankful that every human hasn’t been contaminated by this materialist, highly commercialized view and can still find moments of kinship and worship with their fellow humans. I’m equally thankful that my two favorite Christmas specials–A Charlie Brown Christmas and How The Grinch Stole Christmas–are still airing, nearly 60 years after they were created.

I suspect the reason they survive the great Christmas purge is that they are animated. Adults notoriously put down cartoon shows as being “just for kids,” even though animated programs from George of the Jungle in the 1960s to Family Guy today put the lie to that belief.

Hell, just look at any Looney Tunes cartoon from the 1940s and you’ll clearly see that while the explosions and such entertain the kiddies, the dialogue is often above their heads. I mean, how many 10-year-olds are going to know or care what the Hays Code was?

These two perennial shows also demonstrate the true benefits of giving and sharing: that love is the answer, always the answer, as it is the bridge between evil and good. An unwanted Christmas tree, shown kindness and caritas, transforms into a bright, beautiful symbol of the season. And even the Grinch, once he realizes that, despite his theft of their presents, Whoville is still celebrating Christmas–that gifts are not the purpose, but sharing and caring are–his infamously shriveled heart triples in size.

Holiday cartoons are one of the few things I have to look forward to this Christmas season. I am not ungrateful for having a bed, or good food, or a roof above my head, although these could be taken away at any time. The cuts to housing aid by the Fed, as ill-timed as Scrooge firing Bob Cratchit, are already having a ripple effect throughout the state and the country as a whole.

And we all know that Trump’s promise of a $2000 check, besides being 99.9999% hot air, would barely pay a month’s rent in Orange County. So the gratitude is conditional and, as it does in Japanese, contains a degree of resentment.
Meanwhile, Scott Turner, Trump’s latest token African-American, is gleefully promoting a snitch line for residents in Section 8 housing to turn in their neighbors. Whatever you do, DO NOT CALL 800-347-3735. Especially do not call to report members of Trump’s cabinet as suspicious characters.

My unhoused status is a prime driver in my own opinion–although I’d prefer to think I’m just being a decent human–that I’d rather see one person get EBT or housing that doesn’t deserve it than 9 deserving not to get it at all. So they found 186,000 dead people receiving food stamps.

I’m surprised it was that few. Take ‘em off the rolls. Problem solved. This does not require a fundamental shake-up of the EBT system–186,000 nulls out of 42 million falls well within the error rate.

And while I’m ranting, did you know that the Federal minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour? You can’t even rent a cardboard box with that salary. California just voted to raise the state’s hourly minimum to $16.90–more than double the Fed rate–but it would require tripling that amount to be able to afford a home in the Golden State. It’s a fundamental inequity that has not been addressed, and now the state has to address it with one hand tied behind its back.

We can do better than this. As Buckminster Fuller wrote six decades ago, we have the capacity “to advantage all without disadvantaging any.” It’s a fundamental disconnect between ideas and reality that hobbles us. “Between the Idea and the Reality,” T.S. Eliot warns us, “falls the Shadow.”

The old song “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” doesn’t ring out the way it used to. For far too many, there is no home to go to. And a shelter, for all its positive attributes, cannot be anything but a poor substitute.

You may find community there, and refuge, but it just isn’t the same as being welcome and loved in a home with family, friends and loved ones. So if I had a Christmas wish–a big, tall wish–it would be that we all get to go home for Christmas. Whether Donald Trump thinks we deserve to or not.