Make the World Softer
A Christmas Eve Appeal
As a new father, I’ve been struck by just how soft the life of my baby is. We shift her from fluffy onesies to piles of pillows to the arms of doting family and friends and back to padded bassinets. Our daughter never comes into contact with the sharp, abrasive, or hard edges that are far closer to her than she realizes. And that’s a good thing. It’s as it should be. It is one of many parental charges—she is, after all, a precious, delicate creature incapable of protecting or defending herself.
But then something happens.
As we grow older and bolder, we encounter (sometimes willingly) the sharpness of the world. Our society, our culture, and our communities are fractured by the weight of human failure, conflict, and self-serving agendas. Our post-infant lives are too often marred by clashes with inhospitality, violence, or just rudeness. And we react, sometimes justifiably, other times not, with our own contributions to the whetstone of the world. We file and hone the world’s harsh edges to catch and cut with our own entitlement or gnarl with our own vindictiveness, deceptively glossed over with well-aimed virtue signaling. This is all of us. Even as I write this post, I find myself unconsciously churning out myriad excuses and justifications for the ways in which I have already made the world pokier, today!
So why am I lambasting our collective approach to being, and on Christmas! (I wrote about fear last Christmas, so my subscribers shouldn’t be that surprised.)
While it will not — in and of itself — absolve us from our contributions to the world’s harshness, I do think we can pivot, if ever so slightly, to reintroduce a bit of softness. I don’t just mean a softer disposition, though that is certainly part of this. I mean adding to our sharp contributions a few soft ones.
To offer a bit of shape to what I’m proposing, let me note the multifaceted prompt that Christmas in particular provides. As a Christian, I celebrate this day for what is, both in its remarkable religious significance (God condescending to take on human form only to live perfectly, die unjustly, and rise unpredictably to save those who reviled him) as well as the less overtly religious, more Dickensian sense of ‘good will to all.’ These two layers are often the battle lines in an awkward, unfortunate, and extremely misplaced culture war that ironically produces the very sharp edges each side purports to buff out. Disagreeing on what Christmas stands for should not produce the very justifications for rudeness, inhospitality, and general vindictiveness that cuts many other lines of division that are mincing our society.
While I believe Christmas to be a holy celebration of divine mercy, it is also a good time to be reminded of the ways in which we, all of us, can polish, refine, and soften the shards of our collective shortcomings. But if pillows and fuzzy bear outfits are the soft elements that help encase my sweet little girl from the corners of coffee tables, then what are the soft elements for the rest of us?
Christmas should prompt generosity, charity, and yes, even goodwill to all. We forget, in the throes of good-natured debate gone awry, that on the other side of the X account is a person. And as infuriating or ignorant or insulting as we may find their latest post to be, try, especially on Christmas, to let it go. And when you become equally angry that you’re refraining from the perfect retort or the seemingly well-deserved chiding, blame your silence and your discipline on Christmas. Who knows, maybe not firing back will bring its own satisfaction that snowballs into something more permanent (apologies, as a new dad, I am contractually bound to insert lame puns). Sometimes, we just need a reminder that, especially amid a deeply divided society, our neighbors need just what we need: kindness.
While my hope is that we, you and very much I, take this special day as reminder to reset and to love better, I hope the benefits that come from this posture change can summon a more foundational shift to our viewpoint in the process, a shift to make the world softer, even in January.
Merry Christmas to all.