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Christmas, December 25, 2013, by Fr. Kevin Anderson

I find that there are two basic questions that people ask me about my sabbatical . . . What? And How?

For example, What did you do?

How did you like it?  Or how did you do what you did?

These are good questions, but there’s one more question that needs to be added . . . Why?  This is a question that we often fail to consider.  People will ask me “What different things did you encounter?”

I tell them . . .                    different stars at night

                                                people were so friendly

                                                Santa in shorts being pulled by kangaroos

                                                a stereo-type of Americans (many think we all carry hand guns)

                                                rugby is their sacred sport (and they think American football is for weaklings, because we wear pads and helmets)

                                                they drive on the left side if the road (many times I nearly was hit by a car)

I can answer what they do . . . drive on the left side if the road (And by the way, they have many round-a-bouts).  I can answer how they do it . . . the steering wheel is on our passenger side of the car.  But why . . . helps to make sense of it.  It has do with being a Colony of Great Britain where they also drive on the left side.  Why?  Because long before cars were invented, the British horse and buggy had  . . .  . .

Those three questions are ones we could (and should) ask all the time.  Especially to ourselves.  E.g.  What are you doing for Christmas?  (Going to the cousins, etc.)  How are you arranging that?  (Oh, we’re flying out.  Or we’ll open presents on Xmas eve and then travel on Christmas, etc.) And then consider . . . why?  Not that you shouldn’t go, but do you only go out of obligation?  Well, then of course no matter what happens at the cousins, you’ve set yourself up to dread it.  But if you ask yourself “Why?”  And seriously think about it . . . and can answer “to deepen family ties, to connect with someone we care about.”  Then that changes the whole flavor of “why.”

You could ask the same thing about going to Church at Christmas.  What you doing? (Going to the 4pm Mass).   How is that happening? (We’ll get cleaned up and eat afterwards, etc.)  Why are you going?  Think about your answer.  Is it just to get it “out of the way?”  Or “It’s just what we always do.”  But think about it . . . you all know the story, so it’s not going to be a surprise.  You’ve heard all the songs . . . since Halloween.

So here’s a question, “Do you come with an openness so that God can be born IN you . . . once again?”  

So that you can know (that even with the craziness of the past year . . . with deaths, and loss, and pain) that there is place IN you, in your story, in your pain . . . that doesn’t have to be fancy (just like the manger wasn’t fancy) or perfect (because Jesus’s first visitors were dirty, conniving, often thieves: shepherds) or even have things figured out in your life (just as we often can’t figure how Jesus could be born to a virgin, or why the three Wise Men didn’t bring some practical gifts like diapers or formula . . . what’s a kid going to do with frankincense and meir?) . . . .that there is a place IN you God wants to dwell, to be received, to be born anew.

We could ask those three questions about Christmas itself.  What happened?  (Jesus was born.)  How did it happen? (The Gospels will give us different answers:  Matthew says  . . . ., Luke says . . . . .) But the most important question is Why?  Some people answer “To save us from Adam and Eve’s sin.”   I prefer the answer that I John says . . . because of love.   Not only love for all of humanity, but love for you personally.  You with your stinky manger, you with all the rotten things you did, you in your unworthiness . . . God says, “I love you and I want to become a bigger part of your life.”

So try something different this year . . . in whatever you plan to do (or not do), to give a present, or how you act . . . ask yourself, or better yet . . . talk it over with God . . . Why you do things.

In the Middle Ages you kept to the left for the simple reason that you never knew who you'd meet on the road in those days. You wanted to make sure that a stranger passed on the right so you could go for your sword in case he proved unfriendly.

This custom was given official sanction in 1300 AD, when Pope Boniface VIII invented the modern science of traffic control by declaring that pilgrims headed to Rome should keep left.

The papal system prevailed until the late 1700s, when teamsters in the United States and France began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses.   These wagons had no driver's seat. Instead the driver sat on the left rear horse, so he could keep his right arm free to lash the team.  Since you were sitting on the left, naturally you wanted everybody to pass on the left so you could look down and make sure you kept clear of the other guy's wheels. Ergo, you kept to the right side of the road. The first known keep-right law in the U.S. was enacted in Pennsylvania in 1792, and in the ensuing years many states and Canadian provinces followed suit.

In France the keep-right custom was established in much the same way. An added impetus was that, this being the era of the French Revolution and all, people figured, hey, no pope gonna tell ME what to do. (See above.) Later Napoleon enforced the keep-right rule in all countries occupied by his armies. The custom endured even after the empire was destroyed.

In small-is-beautiful England, though, they didn't use monster wagons that required the driver to ride a horse. Instead the guy sat on a seat mounted on the wagon.  What's more, he usually sat on the right side of the seat so the whip wouldn't hang up on the load behind him when he flogged the horses. (Then as now, most people did their flogging right-handed.)  So the English continued to drive on the left, not realizing that the tide of history was running against them and they would wind up being ridiculed by folks like you with no appreciation of life's little ironies. Keeping left first entered English law in 1756, with the enactment of an ordinance governing traffic on the London Bridge, and ultimately became the rule throughout the British Empire.

The trend among nations over the years has been toward driving on the right, but Britain has done its best to stave off global homogenization.  Its former colony India remains a hotbed of leftist sentiment, as does Indonesia, which was occupied by the British in the early 19th century. The English minister to Japan achieved the coup of his career in 1859 when he persuaded his hosts to make keep-left the law in the future home of Toyota and Mitsubishi.

Nonetheless, the power of the right has been growing steadily. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, it brutally suppressed the latter's keep-left rights, and much the same happened in Czechoslovakia in 1939.  The last holdouts in mainland Europe, the Swedes, finally switched to the right in 1967 because most of the countries they sold Saabs and Volvos to were righties and they got tired of having to make different versions for domestic use and export.

The current battleground is the island of Timor. The Indonesians, who own west Timor, have been whiling away the hours exterminating the native culture of the east Timorese. The issue? Some say it's religion, some say it's language, but I know the truth: in east Timor they drive on the right, in west Timor they drive on the left.

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Up to the late 1700's, everybody travelled on the left side of the road because it's the sensible option for feudal, violent societies of mostly right-handed people.

Jousting knights with their lances under their right arm naturally passed on each other's right, and if you passed a stranger on the road you walked on the left to ensure that your protective sword arm was between yourself and him.

Revolutionary France, however, overturned this practice as part of its sweeping social rethink. A change was carried out all over continental Europe by Napoleon.The reason it changed under Napoleon was because he was left handed his armies had to march on the right so he could keep his sword arm between him and any opponent.

From then on, any part of the world which was at some time part of the British Empire was thus left hand and any part colonised by the French was right hand.

In America, the French colonised the southern states (Louisiana for instance) and the Canadian east coast (Quebec). The Dutch colonised New York (or New Amsterdam).
The Spanish and Portugese colonised the southern Americas. So The British were a minority in shaping the 'traffic'.

The drive-on-the-right policy was adopted by the USA, which was anxious to cast off all remaining links with its British colonial past.

Once America drove on the right, left-side driving was ultimately doomed.
If you wanted a good reliable vehicle, you bought American, for a period they only manufactured right-hand-drive cars.

From then on many countries changed out of necessity.

Today, the EC would like Britain to fall into line with the rest of Europe, but this is no longer possible. It would cost billions of pounds to change everything round.

The last European country to convert to driving on the right was Sweden in 1967. While everyone was getting used to the new system, they paid more attention and took more care, resulting in a reduction of the number of road accident casualties.

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