Making a Dent in Making a Difference

Well, the Holiday season is upon us. The Hallmark Channel is already showing round the clock Christmas movies. I would normally not know that, as the Hallmark Channel is not part of my 9-channel cable package that a few years ago would have been called ‘Free with a decent set of rabbit ears’ but is now considered ‘Premium basic cable’ thanks to the digital switch (remember the announcement that scrolled across the bottom of the TV screen for what seemed like years, warning us that if we didn’t make the switch to digital by such and such a date, we’d suddenly find ourselves staring at a black screen?). Don’t get me wrong—I’m not one of those anti-TV people. I have two of them. One has 9 channels, and one has no channels, but both have Hulu readily available, and Netflix will be added, at least temporarily, when the new Gilmore Girls episodes are released the day after Thanksgiving (just one more reason Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday). If you want to know just how not anti-TV I am, you can go back and read my blog entry titled, ‘The Story Behind the Story’.

But back to the Holiday season being upon us. Santa is apparently already at the mall. Hopefully I won’t be able to confirm this because while I try to avoid the mall year round, I really make an effort to avoid it during the Christmas season. I may not be anti-TV, but I am absolutely anti-crowded-shopping-malls, especially when they have all of those over eager sample pushers stationed at the kiosks. Last time I went to a mall, I left with some sort of Jerusalem sea salt cream on one wrist and an Alaskan mud bath on the other wrist, and I didn’t even get what I went for because I was out of wrists and didn’t know what they were going to try to put where next.

And if your local soft rock radio stations haven’t switched over to ‘All Christmas Music All the Time’ yet, I’m sure they will soon. I actually like listening to occasional Christmas music during the Christmas season. I just can only listen to the same song being sung by different people in slightly different ways so many times during the same hour.

It may not sound like it, but I love the Holiday season. I love the decorations (not my own—I have one little supposed-to-be-indoors fake pumpkin out right now and that’s only because my neighbors all decorated for Thanksgiving and I didn’t want to take away from their motif). I love the smells. I love the food. I loved that one time snowflakes fell on Christmas Day (If you don’t live in the south, you don’t understand the excitement that the sight of a snowflake brings, even to an adult).

Most of all, I love the Christmas spirit. I don’t even know what that really means, but to me it means that people have a softer spot in their hearts for their fellow human beings. We donate tons of food so that others can have a Thanksgiving meal. We drop change into the bell ringers’ buckets. We give a dollar to help homeless pets at Petsmart. We take an angel off the tree at the YMCA. And we all feel like we made a difference in the world. And we did. But the people who needed a meal on Thursday probably also need a meal on Friday. And for every animal who’s fortunate enough to end up in the care of animal lovers, there’s another one or two or ten still being abused by animal haters. And that little girl whose angel simply asked for pants will likely outgrow those pants before she can ask for more next year. And those are just problems within our own country. There are other parts of the world whose problems my brain literally will not let me comprehend.

Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed with all that’s wrong with the world that I end up doing nothing because it seems like the something I can do won’t do much of anything. But anything is better than nothing.

So…

If you would like to purchase signed copies of Behind My Eyes for $15 each between now and Christmas 2016 (great Christmas gifts by the way), just get in touch with me through the Contact page on my website or at my Author page on Facebook using one of the links below ... 

If you live in the Upstate of South Carolina my distribution department (aka my mom) will be happy to personally deliver them to you.  If you are anywhere else in the continental United States, we’ll ship them to you for a flat fee of $2.00.   If you're anywhere else in the world, send me a message and we will see what we can figure out.

Thank you for making a dent in making a difference this Christmas!