Historically, Quakers don't celebrate traditional holidays, because we believe every day is equally holy. So beyond some strung-up lights and watching "The Holdovers," Christmas, as a day, doesn’t mean much to me.
But as an earnest sap, I can’t help but love that verse of Luke’s that comes with Jesus’s birth: “Peace on earth and good will toward men.” That phrase sums up so much of the meaning of this season to me: that for millenia, we have faced the cold and the dark by gathering together and wishing the best for each other.
I like knowing that our ancestors, too, had the urge to gather together when times were coldest, to decorate with light (candle or otherwise) when things were darkest, and to eat a lot of carbs when the nights were shortest.
We choose to connect with one another around this time of year, across holidays of all different locations and traditions and faiths, precisely because it is when the world is darkest and we feel our most alone.
I feel so lucky that part of my job is to encourage people to connect this way all year long. Today from The Ohio Newsroom’s tagline states we report on news and neighbors from all over the state. I believe that every Ohioan is my neighbor, and the more time I spend in this job, the more convinced of it I become. This year, through our reporting, I saw how different cities worked to solve their housing crises with similar solutions. I saw my own neighborhood school’s struggle reflected in a district 100 miles away. And I saw how we can all hold a shared pride in our state, whether we are a yak farmer or potato chip maker or smell scientist.
When we wrote that tagline in the early days of our newsroom, we could only hope to live up to it. With a team of just three, it was unclear just how expansive our reporting would become. Now, two and a half years in, we’ve visited 85 counties. In the past 12 months, we talked with more than 300 Ohioans. And next year, we are expanding our team with a reporter dedicated to news and neighbors in Appalachia.
And while we’ve covered important issues like the disbursement of opioid settlement funds and critical current events like the effect of federal cuts across Ohio’s industries, the stories I remember most are always, always people-driven. It’s the 90-year-old who worked on Ohio’s behemoth coal excavator, it’s the veteran working to expand depression treatment in rural Ohio, it’s the lifeguard paying it forward for Youngstown's youth. Those are the Ohioans I’m proud to call my neighbors. I can’t wait to introduce you to many more of them next year.
Until then, peace on earth, and good will toward neighbors.
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