Dear family!
Dear friends!
Early Lines on December
with his great Christmas and New Year’s thoughts
I know… it’s only December 3rd, so the good wishes for Advent, Christmas, even Hanukkah (this year from December 25 – January 3, 2025) are a bit early.
But not when you have become very old! Every day has long been regarded as a gift from the only one. You have to enjoy that. Because: will the next day still make this possible?
In addition: good wishes are never out of place. For everyone and everything: Comfort and love to the mourners! Get well soon to the sick. Contentment and joy in the family, with friends, fun through work success, peace and quiet in retirement and vacation – and good health and a happy mind.
Above all: peace on earth.
I wish this to EVERYONE: my family, dear friends, as well as all people. Yes, also to everything that crawls, flies, moves! In addition, good health – also of nature with its many wonders, which everyone needs so much.
That is probably the reason for this letter. An amazing year lies behind me! A year in which I received enormous support and sympathy, gifts for birthdays and other anniversaries, also beautiful words were given to me, not all of which I deserved.
For this and for more, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of you. Even if I don’t show it like I used to, through longer conversations or communicate it personally. Unfortunately, it would be too much to name all those who have made this year more beautiful for me! I hope and think that you feel addressed and know that I appreciate everything highly. Even the e-mails, which I no longer answer with long e-mails.
I’m still trying to do a lot via Zoom. – This brings me to the punch line of wishes at the end of the past twelve months – and the hope for the next ones!
Your values allow you to live a different kind of life than those that approve of today’s rightward swing: governments that close their borders to refugees, ignore the massacres with blindness, want to cut social welfare, make health care more expensive for average citizens, restrict freedom of the media and freedom of speech – even instigate wars for ambitious reasons – and much more.
Injustice has probably existed since man lives upright on this earth. In the course of the ever-developing “progress” of mankind, did not this also increase? Isn’t it our common responsibility not only to deplore this, but to take action against it? People like you are protesting! Accuse and help the less privileged!
Not everyone had a remarkable year behind them: there were too many sufferers.
The victims of war, the record number of refugees, the poor, the hungry, the homeless – and the deep gap between rich and poor to the super-rich is constantly widening!
Corrupt rulers oppress their population. Humans torture other people, also – apart from working animals – even other animals, even those who seek their habitat in the wilderness, which they are increasingly losing due to humans. Other homo sapiens cultivate prejudices against those who think differently, look different, believe differently or other sexual identities.
Climate change is denied by some rulers, insufficiently combated by others, despite the increasing number of natural disasters. The burning, cutting down of forests, the pollution of oceans, rivers, lakes, mining companies that do not make up for the damage they do to the earth – this and more goes on almost indefinitely. The governments of the United Nations have not even been able to bring themselves to an agreement to reduce plastic. At the same time, the arms industry is happy about the record-high number of wars and those that are still expected today.
Therefore, I wish you all the best and love for the coming year, as well as further strength, courage, energy and dear comrades-in-arms, as you are outraged and fight against injustice. People like you deal with so many things. You and others like you, who deal with uncomfortable issues with often limited opportunities and under difficult circumstances, take care of refugees, make friends with newcomers, adopt entire families, are active in your communities, keep the past alive. So participate in the life of the community:
You, and others like you, are “the salt of the earth.”
This gives hope for the next year and beyond into the new one, which will come with new challenges.
I send very dear wishes, greetings and thoughts to everyone,
as well as a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – also a nice Hanukkah,
Ruth