Put Some Perspective in the Christmas Stocking

My Christmas wish to all is a generous dose of perspective. The year 2025 brought a long litany of disasters. Deadly heat waves. Catastrophic flooding across parts of Europe and Asia. Wildfires forcing mass evacuations in North America and Australia. Powerful earthquakes striking without warning. And humanitarian crises that deepened, driven by conflict, hunger, and climate displacement around the world.

I don’t think I would be alone to say that 2025 brought bad news to family members and dear friends. We suffered setbacks. We lost loved ones. Our hearts ache for those who have been dealt a terminal illness, at no fault of their own.

It’s likely the year ahead will bring more trouble. Though, I hope and pray for less. Don’t we all.

Every year, my husband and I stuff four stockings for our children – now all of them grown up, but still we love the tradition. And every year, I try to find that little something that instills a sense of faith. But faith in what? It’s hard to say.

Faith in our common man? After all, we’ve watched neighbours shovel each other out after storms, while strangers raise millions overnight for people they will never meet.

Faith in our country? That’s harder, when public trust feels thin and institutions seem slower to protect the vulnerable than to protect themselves.

Faith in artificial intelligence? It promises efficiency and answers at the click of a button, yet it still can’t teach compassion, wisdom, or when to pause before doing harm.

I’d like to have more faith in a greater God. But aside from the humility of knowing that we just don’t have all the answers, religion has not been kind to the world.

I have decided to put luggage tags in the stockings this year. The message is, get out in the world. Go far enough away to see how small your own assumptions are and how much we all share once borders blur. When you get to know distant people by being up close, it’s a lot easier to love one another.

In fact, though, one needs not go far. Just down the road is often far enough to come across people who are perfect strangers, and yet, neighbours. There is nothing wrong about trying to “do unto others” with the people right around the corner.

Perspective doesn’t just broaden the mind. It teaches gratitude by showing us how much we have compared with how much we truly need.

And gratitude is the hardest thing of all to put into a Christmas stocking.

We are now a quarter century into the 21st century. We have more information than at any time before, more comfort, more choice, and yet remarkably little patience for uncertainty or inconvenience. But gratitude has not kept pace with innovation. And we are slow to learn it.

This is the first year I must wish readers a Merry Christmas without my father alongside. I can hear his voice, lamenting that over all his many years, people have not learned from history. But hope springs eternal, I prefer to think. Let’s make the year ahead a better one.

If you catch yourself complaining, just stop. Have perspective. Be well. Be happy.