Editor’s note: 2020. While we have all experienced changes to our daily lives during the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are also hopeful about what is coming for all of us in 2021. On that note, the Westfield News once again asked members of the WhipCity Wordsmiths to share some impressions and reflections for a writers’ series which begins today with Susan Buffum of Westfield.
WESTFIELD-Susan Buffum is an author and artist best known for her holiday stories and ghost stories.
In June of 2017, Buffum and her daughter, Kelly Buffum, founded the WhipCity Wordsmiths, a social and support networking group for writers at all levels of the craft.
An inspiration board graces the wall of Westfield author and artist Susan Buffum as she works at her desk. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)
Buffum’s books include A Major Production, The Red Velvet Suit, The Winter Solstice Ball, Christmas Inspirations, Christmases Past, Christmases Present, Christmas with the Family, The Hanging Man and other stories, and Only BOO and nothing more, all available on Amazon, in the Kindle store, locally at Blue Umbrella Books, or directly from her.
Buffum is a director of Artworks of Westfield, acting as the literacy liaison in the community.
Her 24th novel, Camden Lake, will be published this month.
She works full-time as a medical secretary.
Her submission is titled “Christmas in the Time of COVID.”
Meanness, lack of compassion, hatred, intolerance, selfishness, anger, frustration – a country divided and struggling to understand the nature of a global pandemic that is unlike any the world has ever seen before; the loss of so many lives in a year. Where does one begin to find Christmas amid such chaos?
This is, more than ever, the year we must search for and find Christmas within our own hearts and spirits. We must push aside our riled up emotions and battered psyches and seek the core of basic humanity within ourselves that holds fast to hope, to love, to faith, to charity, and to peace.
This is the year when more than ever simple acts of kindness are needed to renew our sense of humanity and reunite us as a people who share a planet where all life is of value regardless of color, creed, and circumstances.
Recently there have been reports of people waiting in line at drive-thrus being surprised to find that their order has been paid for by the person ahead of them. These persons, if able, then pay for the person behind them—the act of generosity and kindness passing from one anonymous person to the next along the line. It is a small thing to those who can afford it, a big thing for those who may be struggling in these difficult times when so many people remain unemployed, or have decreased hours, or decreased pay for the same amount of hours due to slowdowns in business. People are discouraged, trying to cope, trying to survive. Many businesses have closed. School children, our most adaptable members of society, have had big changes in their lives as have our senior citizens, especially those in nursing homes where visitors have been prohibited.
In this great big world, as this next wave of COVID sweeps across our country, the largest population of sociable creatures, human beings, find themselves more and more isolated by health and safety restrictions. With misinformation running rampant across all social media platforms, with the country obsessed with conspiracy theories, we all need to take a step back and think about the heart of this season—Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice— however your faith celebrates during the darkest days of the year, ask yourself, “What does this season mean to me?”
This year we need to reach deep within ourselves to find the heart of Christmas. We need to become that heart. We can start by being kind to and considerate of one another. Behind the masks we wear in public we are not superheroes. None of us can know what the next person we encounter is going through. Hold a door, say hello, be kind, drop a can or boxed product into the collection bin at the grocery store to help feed the hungry, send a donation to Toys for Tots, or another charity that helps people in need. Make someone’s day better in some small way and experience the satisfaction of having given something from your heart. However, if you need something, reach out, do not be afraid to ask. In Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, beneath the robes of the spirit of Christmas present were the ever present Ignorance and Want. The spirit, showing these ragged children to Scrooge, served to remind us that hidden in society there are many who need our help, our charity, our kindness, and our care. We must not be ignorant of the needs of others.
By spreading the Christmas spirit in whatever way you can you will find your spirit filled with peace, your heart lighter, your inner radiance brighter. This holiday season, may we be blessed, one and all.
