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Wishing for Better Holidays to Come

2009-12-23
By

Let me take this opportunity on behalf of Men’s News Daily to wish all of our readers a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and a Happy New Year.

Sorry, but it is hard to express those sentiments without sounding canned, and perhaps even a little disingenuous.

Fact is, the holidays are a particularly rough time of year for many MND readers and subscribers, and I don’t think it is fair or decent to just toss out a scripted message without acknowledging that.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, from tree top ornaments to glasses of eggnog spiked with smoky bourbon, it is firmly ingrained in my mind as symbolic of family ties, and of goodwill toward men.

But I can’t even think of Christmas any more without considering how hard this time of year is on disenfranchised fathers who miss their children even more than usual; and hard on their children, going though another Christmas without Daddy, many of them being told he doesn’t care enough to be there, or that his meager presents are a reflection of his lack of love, not the result of the family law system that reduced him to poverty.

I think of how hard it is on men shattered by a bad economy and struggling to provide Christmas cheer that invariably comes with a financial price tag, and the depression I know that many of them feel because they still invest all their self worth in what they provide to others.

I think of men falsely accused and wrongfully convicted, spending the holidays surrounded by steel gray bars that clang and echo off cold concrete; where the air itself is oppressive and thick with the promise of unspeakable violence.

I think of Men like Kevin Driscoll, who will spend Christmas on house arrest in Deschutes County, Oregon, while he awaits a second trial for rape and sodomy based completely on the porous and glaringly inconsistent allegations of a shopworn party girl. He will undoubtedly spend these days wondering if next Christmas will find him in the Kafkaesque nightmare that the prosecutors are so tenaciously planning for him.

And I think of average men, like my close friend Marvin, who will be spending Christmas Day in my home, again, because his abusive and narcissistic ex wife so completely succeeded in poisoning their daughters mind that she no longer wants anything to do with him.

I know, it’s a dismal Christmas message in a time of honored celebration. Some might say the canned message is a better way to go.

Perhaps, either for the sake of sanity or to keep from tainting tradition, it is only natural to pick this one time of the year and live it in chosen denial; to escape into gift giving and Christmas tunes piped in to shopping malls and liquor stores. Heaven knows we sometimes need escape from the cheerless realities of modern life.

We can, if we wish, use the holidays to hide all this harshness behind a facade of Christmas and Chanukah wishes and decorate it further with positive and hopeful tidings for the new year. Perhaps we need to.

But this is not a Hallmark moment for me, nor do I expect it is for many readers whose issues have my fullest sympathy and concern.

There is a lot of work to do, for them.

So to those of you blessed with families you still have access to, and the means to celebrate, and the love and respect for what you provide, my hat is off to you. Please share that good fortune with others in some small or large way.

But also please remember that though we are getting there, we still have a long way to go before Christmas lights and menorah candles burn as brightly as they can and should.

In the meantime, let us carry the message of goodwill toward men with the knowledge that so many men and boys are now floundering from a lack of it. And let us remember that the message isn’t just one of fairness and equity. The problems we are attempting to redress are measured not just in frustrations and righteous outrage, but in lives destroyed and futures turned from bright to bleak with the deathly touch of misandry.

All that being said, I do wish you and yours the very best in the holidays and in all the days that come after. And I wish, even more, the very best for the cause of men and boys.

Paul Elam is the Editor-in-Chief for Men’s News Daily and the publisher of A Voice for Men.

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  • Mr.K

    @ steven deluca,
    Your post was not too long but it was very painful to read. It’s good you didn’t make to San Francisco and end one more casualty of the Golden Gate Bridge; Link ,Bridge to Nowhere.
    http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/398-bridge-to-nowhere-a-map-of-golden-gate-jumpers/
    Perhaps your perseverance will help some other father to endure what seems like a hopeless situation.
    It’s also sad that those pioneers for father’s rights, like Jim Cook, Professor Daniel Amneus and particularly Richard Doyle will not have a monument erected for them as for other heroes.
    Modern mens helpers like Mike LaSalle and Paule Elam will be remembered in the cyberspace for the ages.

  • Trust

    I remember my old boss when I was in college. He was (obviously) a full time department head at the hospital I worked at. He took a part time job supervising a fast food restaurant for extra money while his wife earned her degree (they were both in their upper 40s and had been married over 20 years).

    One day, we were chatting before our shift started (the boss got off at the same time the evening shift started) and one of my coworkers says to him “are you moving?” he said, “no why?” the the coworker told him he just drove by his house and there was a moving van there all day.

    The boss went home to find his wife had cleared him out, leaving nothing but his clothes and belongings behind. All the furniture, dishes, everything, gone.

    She had found a job a few hundred miles away — using the degree she got while he worked two jobs so she could study without working. She never told until she cleared the house. He was served with divorce papers afterward.

    Here’s the real kicker — he got hit with a double whammy. First, since she didn’t work for four years while (he was paying for her to be) in college, she was entitled to spousal support. Second, since he worked the second job temporarily, his income was artificially inflated which increased his alimony obligations.

    Not only did she scam him out of money and everything in the home but his clothes and the paint, he was obligated to finance her — heven though her new job made more than his current job.

    He didn’t have a very good Christmas that year.

    I wonder what would have happened if he cleaned out the house while she was out?

  • steven deluca

    One Christmas when my son, now 23 and daughter, age 21 were toddlers and just starting school I had not been diagnosed or treated for PTSD and “slight?” brain damage I had my worst Christmas ever.

    My X wife had received her masters, top of her class, (I had cared for our son while she worked full-time and went to school full-time when he was an infant) she had a good job and was visiting her well-off parents in Colorado in a mountain town near skiing and such.

    I was leaving an apartment that I could no longer pay for, – had fixed the place, painted it better than it was, had fixed a hole or two in the walls, and cleaned it like you clean the barracks in basic training… but the “land lady” wanted to keep the damage deposit that I had hoped to have fully returned (her rep was to always keep it I learned after I moved in) so I would have gas money, a present or two for the kids, and, you know, something to eat.

    The last thing in the apartment was my phone, answering machine, which I checked often hoping to hear from my kids on either Christmas eve, or Christmas day, but their mother didn’t have them call. She was disappointed in how “I had turned out” as a man, as a father and as a husband too.

    I had two dollars, thought about getting a meal, or a beer in a bar. Sitting with losers at the bar later on Christmas eve… had my beer, someone bought a couple more for those “others” with nothing better to do.

    Today, having “survived” homelessness more than once, I was able to give my daughter, a young woman who studies hard in college and hits the gym 5 or 6 times a week a $1700 dollar bike. I didn’t want her riding down those big hills in San Francisco on a 25 year-old bike. I wanted her to have disc breaks.

    Things change.

    I have been close to more than one many who has taken who has taken his own life.

    I was Judged as a “dead beat dad” because I couldn’t make life work. My children’s moms step-father, a very $ucce$$ful man in certain ways had adult daughters who would not speak with him – ever – although he paid their college semester after semester without a thank you note or Christmas card, ever.

    He wrote a very rude letter to me about how “women” know best about what kids need and how I should, as such a loser, butt out. No money, no food, no call from the kids, no friends or relatives I could go to… I thought, what made him a parenting expert? He was being “the man” defending women.

    We wonder why some men “go off” on the world, or kill themselves but do we really care? Most of us don’t. We judge men harshly if the fail and we are ready to take their children from them at the mother’s request.

    Today after a few years of therapy, living well, I look back at those days as I read the paper about “dead beat dads” homeless men, fathers not supported by society in any way…. I think of the tens of thousands of men living with 100% disabilities, many with PTSD and I hear Obama and others criticizing fathers while clueless that females adjudicated to pay child support are worse dead beats…

    It was nice to read this Christmas article and to see what I didn’t see 20 years ago… men expressing care about fathers and other men, I see a growing number of women starting to care too. Maybe in a few years it will be Politically Correct to be supportive of men and fathers in particular… maybe. And if it’s PC, maybe Obama will join in. Until then we will have 30,000 more males – well, almost all will be males, going off to war and while many will die, or be injured, many more will end up on the streets – many more will die at “home” …

    Sorry for the long reply – My Christmas this year didn’t revolve around waiting to see a blinking red light on and answering machine hoping to hear from my 3 year-old-daughter and 6 year-old son on a Christmas night when I was vacating a crappy apartment and moving into a car, thinking about putting a newspaper over my license plate to steal gas and drive off to San Fran to check out the view of the city from the Golden Gate Bridge … considering suicide. And if I had, … well, it would have been just one more guy dying – a news story, something to hide from my kids until they were “old enough to understand” … And today some of our “brothers” will die in work or war and few will give a damn.

  • Hunchback

    Mr. Elam, your editorship is the best thing to happen to MND in years; it is now truly a men’s right site. Thank you for the love letter to our troops–all the millions of men and fathers suffering under the misandric system during this holiday season. God bless you and Merry Christmas, Paul.

  • Mr.K

    One more reason to be grateful:
    In the beginning there were Internet sites and blogs appeared later for vairety if views. Then there appeared an article in a major newsaper “LaSalle vows outdo Drudge”. The article vanished into the dusbins of newspapers. Then a link appeared in the end of Wikipedia’s article. Here it is for those who like to read the genesis of MND.

    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_9_18/ai_83699652/

  • MichaelT

    There is no good reason for men to feel sadder at Christmas than they do at any other time of the year. It all depends on your attitude to Christmas.

    Christmas is a drug. It is just another ritual of meaningless behaviours that people indulge in to numb them from their pain. It is all about nostalgia and sentiment and nothing at all about the integrity between feeling and action. Sure, people claim that it makes them happy but so do narcotics and alcohol. They desensitise you and that is never a good thing. You don’t actually feel anything at all especially pain. Denying pain will never help make it go away.

    Christmas is not a time for families – anytime is a time for families. Being with your family may or may not be a joyful experience. Christmas behaviours add absolutely nothing to that experience. We do not need an excuse to be with our families other than the enjoyment of their company. The desire to be with your family is not something that is governed by an arbitrary date on the calendar – it should come from your heart and if it does not then have the honesty to say so and act accordingly.

    Families may come together at this time of the year because of the conjunction of public holidays. If that is the reason then we should say that. We have no trouble saying so at other such convenient times of the year. That is enough reason – Christmas and all its gross excesses do not have to be a part of the deal.

    Those who have nothing to do with Christmas are not necessarily sad or lonely. They just do not need that particular drug. Those men who cannot see their children at this particular time of the year are in reality no sadder than at any other time of the year when they could reasonably expect to be with them. The only things they are missing are Christmas behaviours and these have no intrinsic value at all.

    Let us not exaggerate the pain by counting as a loss something which has no value and which like drugs and alcohol only numbs our capacity to work towards solving the injustices which lead to our real pain.

  • Saga1916

    “And I wish, even more, the very best for the cause of men and boys.”

    My Christmas wish too. A hard hitting and effective article and so true. Many a disadvantaged Man reading that will find Christmas a little less depressing knowing that he is not alone after all.

  • Robert Stevens

    I can’t count the number of holidays, I spent in a bar! Just trying to forget the loss of what was and still dear to me, that is my life, my home and my family. I have lost it all not once but three times, each time hopping that it would not happen again, but it did.
    We need to put a stop to this God awful fraud and racket. It is by this very holiday that we celebrate the birth of Jesus, son of God and the savior of mankind! This holiday celebrates and praises God and his goodness and mercy. The very goodness and mercy that created man and the family too. It should come as no surprize that the family, fathers and men and the holiday honoring God greatest gift of love are under attack. Oh, I have no doubt that God and his goodness will prevail, but a whole lot of innocent fathers and their children will suffer before we awake to that glorious day where this evil and God awful racket are destroyed. When holidays, can indeed by merry and something looked forward to.

  • Mike Hunter

    Great post, and very true. Thanks for all of the work that you do, for all of us!

  • http://www.angryharry.com Harry

    HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

    And especially to Mr Elam!

  • Ray Merk

    While you are all celebrating Christmas don’t forget to spread the word about the greatest threat to your freedom to do so. That threat is Islam itself which calls for the death of all infidels. The Koran says:

    [8.12] I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

    [8.55] Surely the vilest of animals in Allah’s sight are those who disbelieve …

    No wonder they call Jews pigs. Pigs are among the “vilest of animals”.

    The Koran online: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/k/koran/

  • Mr.K

    Happy Holidays
    We all can be grateful for wise man Mike LaSalle for selecting Paul Elam as the Editor In Chief of MND. Both men have the vision and wisdom that is needed for men.

    Over 30 years ago it seemed that there was no light at the end of the tunnel. But the Internet changed the MSM control of editing out what fathers/husbands/men internationally need for communication and camaradie. Even Wikipedia explains MND.

    Link.

  • Jerry Fino

    Paul, so well put. Hard to have Christmas cheer this year. I woke up to see the nefariousness on parade of all that is wrong with this country embodied in that leering, Ichabod Cranian ball-sack Harry Reid touting the “historic” legislation that will financially Krakatoa The United States of America. Perhaps if we have one thing to celebrate, it is the fact that Valdmir I. Lenin was wrong when he said “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Wrong. In the end, it will still be a communist (named Obama) but there will be no “sale” involved. Obama just stole the rope and charged the American people trillions for it then told them that it was really a diamond necklace that we would all be required to wear (or go to jail.)
    The same odious motives that drive these legislative provocateurs are the same ones that persecute men in the form of social INjustice in our laws and the false presentation of men that feminized, socialized, leftist elements proliferate to their glee and the destruction of ALL of us, especially the American family. These scumbags seem to be the only ones laughing as the ship goes down.
    Tiny Tim said, “God bless us one and all.” This year I hope he’s retweaked it to “God HELP us one and all.” We’re gonna need it to survive this catastrophe.
    So, we press on. Thanks for spearheading the effort with MND.

  • Fidel

    Paul,

    Thanks for the blessings, and the great articles that have come before from you.

    To everyone, all my best wishes …….

  • paul parmenter

    You said it well, Paul. Christmas can at least give many of us a short respite from the struggle we face in our everyday lives. A time to count our blessings. The biggest blessing for me is that my family still remains intact after many years. We will all gather together on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and be a complete family. There is nothing better. It will help to give me the strength to continue the fight in 2010.

    God bless you all.

  • TXAGGIE

    Mr. Elam

    Your writings are illuminating not just from the facts you present but from the pictures you paint with your eloquent words. We are all better off for being exposed to your insights. Thank You

    By comparison to many excommunicated fathers I am blessed. I live less than a mile from my son and my ex is somewhat reasonable. My heart goes out to all that will be denied the joy of having their flesh and blood separated from them this time of year.

    I lost my mother 4 days ago. I will be flying back to Boston to attend her funeral the day after Christmas. When I was young she made sure Christmas was the best it could be, rich or poor. I note this only to say that life is short and expressions of love need to be conveyed to your loved ones every chance you get. Our time on this earth and the amount of times we can say, “I love you,” is finite. Try and express love instead of fear and anger every chance you get.

    Merry Christmas to all.

  • Ray

    My heart-felt best wishes for each and every one of us, and thank you Paul for your caring words. Your articles mean a lot, and of course you do too. I want to believe 2010 will be a better year for us all. I’m going to try my best to do my part to make it so and hope we can share heartfelt greetings again a year from now in our good and noble family of human beings who truly want the best for men, and all others too.

  • Trust

    I agree with Jim. If Paul receives even a small fraction of the blessings he has given, it will be a very Merry Christmas for him indeed.

  • http://avoiceformen.com/ Paul Elam

    And merry Christmas to you, too, Jim. Thanks for the support.

  • Jim

    Paul

    Thanks for all that you do!

    I have been a fan of your site and videos for a while now.

    Merry Christmas!

    Jim







Right.

Man up.

Buy the book now on Amazon.com. Or listen to Ronnie tell a story at escaping-from-reality.com.

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