Best of the season to you and yours

By Sam Reiss 

It’s been a tragic start to what should be a jolly season, as we mourn with our neighbours the loss of 26 people, most of them young kids just six or seven, in the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

The event has brought political differences roiling to the surface, with as much discussion of mental illness, gun control, sensationalist media, even movie violence as of the human scale of the heartbreak. It’s too simple to just hug your kids tighter and be grateful you’re here and not there, but realistically it’s all most of us can do — and we should do it, a lot.

Perhaps more than any year in recent memory, we enter the holiday season thoughtfully, maybe even a little somberly, and try to keep those poor kids and their brave teachers in our hearts in the days and weeks to come. I do hope we never forget, but I also hope we can forget long enough in the next couple of weeks to laugh loudly, steal a kiss, express delight in a wonderful gift, stuff ourselves with turkey, or whatever brings us that unique joy that is special to this time of year. Whether you’re born lucky or not, life is short.

I always think of the holidays as a reset button, a way to wind down, celebrate, work a little less, and hopefully spend some time with loved ones before ramping up for another year. In these parts, it always feels like an accomplishment just to make it this far, a mid-point in a long winter, although we’ve been blessed with unseasonable warmth in Toronto this year.

Sometimes in this business, we get caught up in the left-brain stuff — the money, the regulations, the city planning meetings, the prognosticating and the politics — and forget what it’s really about: making homes for families, whatever shape that takes. I’m going to try to remember that this year, too.

While we grieve for those families and take comfort in our own, I am thankful that for every such tragedy, there are humanity-affirming moments that help the healing. After the Newtown massacre, Lutheran Church Charities in the Chicago area sent 10 golden retrievers along with their handlers for grieving residents to pet — which may sound nuts unless you’ve ever been comforted by a dog. Throughout Hurricane Sandy, we saw pictures of New Yorkers sharing their power so others could charge their cell phones to call family, and heard stories of cabbies ferrying around refugees.

Ottawa committed to a quarter million in support of victims of Typhoon Bopha in the Philippines, and to provide further assistance until basic human needs are met. Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia installed a puppy room for stressed-out students (I told you that was powerful stuff). Toronto’s “Gitchhiker” Mark McIntyre hitched across the country in his underwear to raise money for testicular cancer. A team of designers in Montreal whose goal was to bring magic to everyday events installed swings next to a bus stop, which play a tune and light up only when they move in unison. (Gotta love a good visual metaphor!) ‘Peggers swapped guns for cameras in the Pixels for Pistols program. Even the “pouring it forward” movement of treating the people behind you at the drive-through to a double-double warmed my heart.

There is a lot of good in the world, and I hope we remember that while the real estate and home building industries are exciting, potentially lucrative, and for some of us a life’s work, they’re not everything.

That’s it for us until the New Year, so we at The Toronto Star’s NewinHomes.com wish you and yours every blessing this season. Hug your kids, enjoy your magic moments, and may 2013 bring you all good things.