“A dog is for life, not just for Christmas.” Everyone probably knows that slogan discouraging people from giving pets as gifts without preparation. If you’re the kind of person who finds themself in church at this time of year you’ll also have heard “God is for life, not just for Christmas” or similar. That’s encouraging you to build your Christmas religious faith into the whole year rather than just giving it a good go once a year. Special days are hugely important for humanity, but the really powerful things in life – whether caring for a dog or living your beliefs – have to be done every day and not just on the high days and holidays.
What’s this got to do with autism? I wanted to write about something really special for Christmas and the most special thing I can think of is my dream of how I want the world to be. And what I want is for autism to stop being special and rare (like Christmas) and start being boring. I want autism to be accepted as a day-to-day thing in the same way that many other characteristics have come to be over the years. Not interesting at all and certainly not worthy of comment. If I may, I’ll illustrate with some examples.
Autistic Civil Servant 