Looking through the lens of my new secular viewpoint, I stopped to think about the meaning of the holidays -- why should I continue to celebrate them? What do they actually mean to me?
The winter holidays are a celebration of death and of life, of ending and of beginning, and ultimately, of hope.
Winter is a time when snow blankets the life of the land, when only pine and fir trees show the promise of spring in their enduring green. The end of the year is near, all is quiet. Winter is a time of waiting.
We wait for spring, for the earth to renew itself, for plants to bud, for the world to grow green with new life.