“When you are finished changing, you are finished.”
– Benjamin Franklin

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – I must not be finished, because I feel a change coming on, a change in the way I feel about America’s national holidays.

For most of my adult life, I tended to feel pretty “Bah, humbug” about traditional holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Part of the reason for that is the holidays were always a time when I had to travel back from wherever I was working and living at the time to my home town of Birmingham, Alabama, especially for Christmas. Whether it was Alexandria, Virginia, or Knoxville, Tennessee or New Orleans, Louisiana, the annual trek was often more depressing than inspirational for me.

I’ve also long been turned off by the crass commercialization of the holidays in a country where capitalism seems to have replaced democracy as the primary mission.

What has changed?

Many things changed over the past few years for millions of people, not just me, after four years with Trump in the White House and two years of Covid stress. Maybe like everybody else, I’m searching for a way to cling to something traditional — just to try to feel normal again.

Plus, my 93-year-old mother finally died in December, 2019, alleviating my responsibility to face going back home again every year. My companion dog also died on Christmas Day in 2019, relieving me of a responsibility to take care of him as he got too old to jump on the bed at night.

So when I saw the announcement about the 99th National Christmas Tree Lighting at President’s Park presented by the National Park Service and the National Park Foundation, I almost got motivated enough to hike downtown to see it in person. But I will watch it on CBS Sunday like everybody else, and sneak down there in the next few days to take pictures for myself.

According to The Washington Post, there are so many street closings on Thursday the event would be difficult to get to anyway, although I’m sure I could pull it off if I tried.

But the National Christmas Tree site is free to visit and will be open to the public from Dec. 4-Jan. 1 between 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, and 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

It’s an event that has been a tradition since 1923, when President Calvin Coolidge presided over the first national Christmas tree lighting.

Maybe as I grow older I’m becoming less cynical, less jaded, and just want to smell a real Christmas tree and see it light up in the interest of national unity — not that we will ever see such a thing ever again thanks to Trump and Facebook.

But perhaps it’s a step in the right direction. The Greek Philosopher Plato gave credit for the quote about change to Heraclitus, who the quote books attribute the saying: “The Only Constant in Life Is Change.”

“Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things pass and nothing stays, and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river,” Plato wrote according to Socrates.

But according to Psychologists, while one constant since the beginning of time is change, the fear of change is also a constant.

“Since times immemorial, humans have liked routine. It makes us feel in control of our lives,” according to certain academic experts.

When that fear of change becomes irrational, they say — as it has become in recent years — our ability to control it becomes a phobia they call “Metathesiophobia.”

We are suffering a mass, society-wide version of this.

People who feel this way think they have no control over their lives due to constant change, so they tend to live in the past and are unwilling to progress, which often leads to depression and can seriously impact their professional and personal lives.

“If a society or country rejects change there is no growth, no progress,” they say. “The inability to change, progress, or grow can result in stagnation. Stagnation rejects realizing one’s full potential. Stagnation is not a healthy flowing river; it is an idle and stale pond.”

In other words, a dead swamp.

It’s too bad that a large percentage of the American public has been traumatized into this fetal position by blatant political propaganda.

I wish there was something I could do or say to shock people out of it. Maybe something inspirational on television can help, I don’t know.

I just want to go back to 2016 for a moment, in the era before Trump, and celebrate Christmas with the Obama’s. Maybe this will help you too.

Watch President Obama light his final National Christmas Tree: