What do you mean happy holidays?

Around 217 B.C. the Romans needed to cheer themselves up a bit, so they introduced a celebration to honor the god Cronus, and called it Saturnalia. They wore different clothes, they allowed gambling, they even exchanged gifts. But the thing they did which I find most interesting was that the slaves and masters would switch roles. The ruling class would serve the serfs, so to speak. A couple of hundred years go by, Jesus is born, and the celebration of the Roman god is absorbed into the catholic church.
Now most people would agree that the celebration of Christmas is far too commercialized, but the gift giving is clearly an enduring theme, so what else does Christmas mean. If the holiday cards are any indication, peace and love are supposed to be the central ideas. Ideas sorely lacking in society these days. Peace? When in the history of human existence has there been peace?
There is a famous story about the Christmas truce of 1914. Already dug into trenches in France, the Allies and the Germans, took a break from the war to sing songs and kick a soccer ball around. But the peace was local, and did not last long. But it helps to illustrate a point.
If you can find the humanness in someone, if you can find a commonality, it becomes less likely that you will try to kill them. A lesson which is essentially lost in America today. Just try to imagine what peace would really look like, or feeling love for a terrorist. We can't do it, because we do not try to put ourselves in the mind of our adversaries.
Reversing roles like the Romans did, shows you what life is like for other people. Understanding better who we are by experiencing whom we are not. Even in A Christmas Carol, Scrooge has to see life from a different perspective in order to understand himself. And he did not like what he saw, but he endeavored to change. So during the holiday season, we should try to examine how we would even go about achieving peace. I suspect it has to do with reducing the number of people who hate each other, by reflecting on how we and our actions appear to them.
Peace and love are very easy concepts, which are very difficult to practice. Especially in Bethlehem.