Holiday Wishes, 2023

andrea_lunsford
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‎12-21-2023 07:00 AM

Christmas_presents.jpg

In these dark days of so much hatred and war, I am grateful for even brief moments of comfort and hope (not coincidentally the title of a wonderful album from Yo Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott). This holiday season offers some such moments—whether in the tradition of Hanukkah, which concluded on December 15; Christmas and its associated holy days; Kwanzaa, which stretches from December 26 to January 1; the Muslim Eid al-Fitr, which marks the close of the holy month of Ramadan; the Buddhist Rohatsu, which falls on December 8—or another important event.  

Whatever traditions you and your students are marking this year, I hope that the events will bring time for reflection and reassessment, and especially for grace and goodness and kindness and love. In these times, we must search for, honor, and hold on to our commonalities—with persistence and commitment. This is our time to shine, to make our light known, and to share it freely.

 

Happy holidays to all!

Andrea

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About the Author
Andrea A. Lunsford is the former director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University and teaches at the Bread Loaf School of English. A past chair of CCCC, she has won the major publication awards in both the CCCC and MLA. For Bedford/St. Martin's, she is the author of The St. Martin's Handbook, The Everyday Writer and EasyWriter; The Presence of Others and Everything's an Argument with John Ruszkiewicz; and Everything's an Argument with Readings with John Ruszkiewicz and Keith Walters. She has never met a student she didn’t like—and she is excited about the possibilities for writers in the “literacy revolution” brought about by today’s technology. In addition to Andrea’s regular blog posts inspired by her teaching, reading, and traveling, her “Multimodal Mondays” posts offer ideas for introducing low-stakes multimodal assignments to the composition classroom.