As the holidays approach, it seems so many people are touched with the Spirit of Christmas. I pray so hard to be touched by that Spirit, but all I feel is aloneness and pain...

I am alone. I am a compassionate person with a giving heart. As a dedicated Christian and a Certified professional food manager, I spend my life looking for ways to serve God by serving others. God gave me so many inborn qualities. But why? I can no longer keep putting the energy it takes into maintaining my "inner Spirit". It seems that most of my 45 years has been spent in picking up the pieces of the ongoing devastations that have created my "life". A life I have tried to LIVE. A life I have tried to cherish and prosper within. A life that once had beliefs, & hopes. & goals...
     But the fact remains. I am alone. I have no family or friends. None of the local community outreach s have no Angel trees for people like me I constantly struggle to make ends meet on my $614.00 monthly disability. I go without the basics very often. My light bulbs get unscrewed, my hot water is turned off, and my day old bread from the soup kitchen is starting to mold...

I am still dreaming of a Thanksgiving dinner. I went to the extreme of just trying to obtain the turkey carcass's from local churches, but everybody seemed to "dedicated " to their outreach cause verses helping me... Maybe next year...I'll have a dinner just like the world has...I always crave a holiday feast, it does not go away.  

Although I try not to focus on materialistic or negative things, I can't help but feel the pain that does not go away as the world celebrates the holidays. IT HAS BEEN YEARS SINCE I HAVE GOTTON SO MUCH AS A CHRISTMAS CARD. I hate to admit it, but it hurts...

The month of December, to me, is just a never ending assault on my Spirit. One continues lie. A never ending fantasy of family, friends, food, & giving...When year after year, I always wind up sitting alone, usually outside in the cold, watching families as they gather into churches or resturants, I wonder what that feeling of "Christmas spirit and cheer" must be like. But no one ever sees me. I am invisible to the world. I am silent in my torments. I am broken within. Shattered pieces of a lost soul. A masterpiece with no canvas...
 
I know God is with me. I know the promises of the Bible. But as a human being living in an endless circle I pray and I beg for the forgiveness it must take for me to "get a life"...For God To direct me to a key to the source...

      Please pass this message onto to anyone who might send me a card. I would be so grateful. I know so many people take for granted all the holiday foods and special meals shared with family and friends. I would give anything for just the bottom of the pot scraps of special holiday foods...
 
 
Please pass this message onto to anyone that might care just a little....
                                                        Thank You and God Bless You
 
Elisabeth Canady    
4300   18th  St   W   #  102  B
Bradenton, Fl  34205

godschef@hotmail.com

Christmas is a lie, dec 25 is no more Jesus's birthday than june 25 is. The only reason that we "celebrate" on the 25th of december is because it coincides with the Winter solstice, which was an important holiday in the Roman social structure.

As for how you feel, I'm sorry you are alone, but however lonely you may feel you are not alone in being alone, many people/animals get the cold end of the shaft in life, but as they say shit happens and then you die. You have my condolences during this season, and I wish you the best human society has to offer.

so is it a lie??

How can you call Christmas a lie. Now understandable that it is not what is should be warped by the retail stores, and the movies who tell the meaning of Christmas as the time for giving, when they should be teaching it as the birthday of Christ. As for the date, just about every holiday that we celebrate is on a date that is entirely speculation because the original data for the holiday has been lost. Jesus' actual birth is specualted to have taken place in April or May. They chose December 25th, not because of the Winter Solstice which is Dec. 21st, but because that was the date that the Romans believed that God created the sun, so it made sense to celebrate that date as the day that God created the Son.

Elizabeth, I don't know if you are still out there. Why is it that at 45 you don't have any family? Where are they? Are you're parents deceased? You're letter sounds depressing. You have friends here, so you are not alone.

I know sometimes I struggle with Christmas. I often wonder what most of it has to do with the birth of Christ. Lights everywhere (the house, yard, the tree), putting up a tree, buying presents, singing songs that have nothing to do with Christ's birthday or even christmas such as "let it Snow", or "Frosty the Snowman" which comes on tv every year at christmas. What does snow have to do with Christmas. All the whoop de do over one day. Now mind you I have always loved Christmas, and I am glad we have a day that we celebrate the birth of Christ, but with all these other things that we do, I wonder if Christ doesn't get lost in the shuffle. The last few years I have asked him if he minds all the fuss people make over Christmas. It has become so secular. I was depressed a few years in a row at Christmas that I didn't even want to celebrate it. I have always loved wrapping christms gifts andseeing them under the tree, that I could easily have wrapped empty boxed just to put them under the tree to look at. I love beautiful wrapping papper. But one year around 95 I started thinging about the massacre in Rwanda when militia Hutu's massacred almost 1 million Tutsis. I imagined a child who's family had been killed and he was sitting on the ground crying with flys flying all around him and I was singing "Have youself a merry little Christmas; from now on your trouble's will be miles away". It depressed me. I thought, "how can we go all out when there is so much suffering in this world". I would cry constantly (this was at Christmas time) when I was by myself, and I just couldnt' get into the Chriwtmas spirit. The follong year it was the same. Slowly I started to come out of it. I still struggle with all the fuss. Last year I went and looked at some homes that were decorated and only saw one manger scene. Everything else had nothing to do with Christ-Candy canes, Santa Claus, reindeer, trains, candles, ferris wheels. They are really taking Christ out of Christmas. People don't even want to say "Merry Christmas". It's "Happy Holidays". I see how kids are spoiled with some many gifts, you would think it was their birthday. I love putting upa tree and putting on the lights. Last year I didn't because my mom and I went up to northern California to visit my sister. This year I will put one up though. Hopefully there wil be nthing to depress me including the secularism of Christmas. I quess is what you make of it. I would like to love it as much as I used to growing up.

At least I have family to spend the time with.

Elizabeth, how is it that you are certified professional food manager and yet live on disability?

I never had a lot of friends, so I know what it is to feel lonely. I have had many days like that. of course that was years ago. When I feel lonely now I just talk to the Lord. I know it may be a cliche to say but the Lord said he would never leave us or forsake us. Are you active in a church? Certainly you should have a few friends there.

Remember the Lord loves you and so do I. Hope that you come back and post here.

God Bless you

Judy

no one knows exactly when Christ was born so i don't what else to say..

I shall bump an old thread.

Um I heard that the date of Christmas was set on December 25th so pagans(some sun worshipping group)would recognize it.They saw that day as the birth of the sun,and the missionarires changed it so it would be the birth of the Son.
Yeah..AFR is where i heard that.
I also heard that Jesus birthday was also probably in the spring time..but I don't know when or where I heard that one.