c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Let me be among the first to beg the misanthropes on the right and left not to make this another miserable holiday season. Please do not hijack this one time of year when we could still be unshakably assured of a little solace and peace.

In case short memories need be reminded:

To the left: You roasted the holiday spirit on a spit with such a vengeance that you charred it beyond recognition. I do not remember the ACLU sponsoring one “Seasons Greetings” float to replace the “Merry Christmas” floats that you so ardently worked to ban from the holiday parades on Main Street.

To the right: Not once did the angelic cry of “goodwill to men” interfere with your accusation of a vast anti-Christian conspiracy. I do not remember Limbaugh & Co. ever once breaking into a chorus of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” to moderate their attacks on the miscreants who denigrate the sacred nature of the season.

I beg both sides, please _ please! _ postpone your wrath, or once again we will be gifted with the worst-case scenario holiday season, with which we are all too familiar.

What would a best-case scenario look like? What if the reason for the season were to beckon the parties of these idiotic disputes to the contrite realization that, while hiding behind self-righteousness and tortured legal precedent, they are sucking the marrow out of a child’s joy? But is that even realistic? Doubtful.

If not the best-case scenario, what might we reasonably expect from even the most vituperative of the media-fed thugs? Perhaps a truce.

Cynics see truce as hypocrisy: a temporary peace with an enemy on the assumption that after a respite, strife will start all over again. Yet, at its best, a truce can plant a seed of the possibility of peace, which invariably begins with enemies recognizing their mutual humanity. If nothing else, a truce during a time of celebration bespeaks a level of civility that distinguishes humanity from animals.

The spontaneous Christmas Eve truce along the Western Front of World War I in 1914 has become the subject of books and doctoral dissertations for its historical significance and psycho- and socio-dynamics. Snoopy and the Red Baron even declared a personal truce. In three decades as a rabbi, I have seen many nasty divorces bode ill for a wedding or a bar or bat mitzvah. I have always counseled, and often negotiated, a truce between the warring factions. In instances in which the families have complied, the civility and goodwill have been universally celebrated, while those that declared no truce left only revulsion.

So here comes Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa, the season, the reason, the possibility of a little joy, a little less crankiness, a little more “let nothing you dismay.” It is a season ripe for a truce.

We cry bitter tears that we cannot speak of even momentary “truce” with al-Qaida, which is precisely what make them savage beasts, beneath humanity, incapable of civility. Here at home, where Americans claim the crown of humanity and civility, we also enjoy no holiday truce, no respite.

Instead, we get a continued barrage of ugly, shrill rhetoric on both sides of every issue from people who have the easiest access to the microphone: politicians, Hollywood types, media squawkers. There is not one voice on the left or right, not even among the spotlight-grabbing clergy, that is pleading for a truce, a seasonal restraint from invective and counter-invective.

To be sure, during the truce, talk radio would not garner the same market share. Celebrity preachers would not have Bill O’Reilly’s bully pulpit for the gospel of hate. The ACLU would have to go back to actually defending someone’s civil rights. Popularity and advertising might temporarily decline.

Sounds pretty good to me.

So stuff those killjoys with fatted geese and get them good and snockered on spiked eggnog. Then send them home until Jan. 2, while the rest of us fearlessly deck the halls, march down Main Street and dare to say Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Habari Gani above a whisper.

(Marc Howard Wilson is a rabbi and syndicated columnist in Greenville, S.C. His essays can be found at http://www.MarcMusing.com, and he can be reached at MarcWilson1216(at)aol.com.)

KRE/PH END WILSON

Editors: To obtain a photo of Marc Howard Wilson, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.