Christmas, Time for More Than Gambling: Let in Light, Banish Shade [Worlds Outside Our Windows]

To people striving toward cities on the hill, there’s no holiest time of the year. To those employing the services of the casino’s shill, there’s no busiest time of year. To other businesses and their operations, this is the time to pause and reflect. To everyone else, Christmas is the peak of the holiday season, time to embrace the love, to forgive and let go, to feel the grace of life or fate or God — depending on personal beliefs — and to realize the healing power of flowing tears of gratitude and happiness.

Even those coping with grief feel comfort. Christmas is the time of year we look into the world outside our windows: we delve into our hearts and souls just as others do, we share them, we remember the roads and bridges that connect us, and we transcend all boundaries.

Christmas is the time of the year for more than gambling. It’s time to celebrate life.

Families gather in yet another opportunity to unite and cherish the only guaranteed thing we have — the mutual sense of belonging to the same roots and blood. Speaking in gambling terms, the family is the unique joint with 100% RTP and zero house edge, regardless of occasionally vertiginous, even strained relationships. Those with family sometimes forget this; those without can provide for an effective reminder anytime.

Introverts ready themselves to traditionally rejoice in the upcoming festivities from the safety of their living rooms. Everyone’s welcome, by all means, as long as they come by texts, emails, chats, except for the very selected few ones — what’s with the plural here, dude? — and books or movies, of course.

As cats or dogs cozily place themselves in our laps or at our keyboards, even the fishes in aquariums experience the special moment — “Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me; your presence fills my eyes with your love; it humbles my heart, for you are everywhere.” (Yup, The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro.)

Extroverts, on the other hand…

... are bracing to take the central stage as sought after social commodities, soaking up the whole vibe, or to hang vivaciously from parties’ chandeliers. They’re always welcome, particularly those with great stories to tell and haute couture dresses to show for. The best among them can salt our earth with exceeding fun and outgoing conversations, making us verdant with laughs during the whole season.

Come Christmas, and even the most antagonized parties feel the kumbaya moment. The hell with everything — we’ll get some in any of the upcoming fifty-two weeks of 2020, but this one is for peace.

What about us, the gamblers?

Christmas’ Bottom Lines and Lifelines

At this time of year, we keep rolling, spinning, throwing, and hitting — even when we take a pause — as we reflect on the effects of our choices. We deflect those we’d like to have back, we curse the ones that should have gone the other way — them chances! — but we keep standing, pulling the lever of life even harder.

We try to grasp annual tolls on our bankrolls — ranging from do we need to have this conversation right now up to thought you’d never ask — as we live with our decisions and own our mishaps, as well as victories, knowing all too well that one day, our prudent Joie de vivre will fill each lacuna we encountered or created.

But…

…come Christmas, and we, the gamblers, also get a chance to remind ourselves that the substance to fill those voids does not necessarily have to be the money. So, we leave everything else behind and carry over just one sentence into each new year.

Keep learning, keep getting better, keep growing responsibly.

Why? For two reasons.

Just as high-end, professional athletes face their mistakes, we, the gamblers, know that the only role of the past in our lives is to teach us something. That’s the only takeaway. Not the guilt, not remorse — although, a healthy dose of self-criticism is always more than welcome — just the lesson.

Observe any high-end sports star as it plays, and you’ll notice it purges the mistake on the spot. Otherwise, the mistake keeps haunting it and suppresses any further premier performances. (Just to be clear, this is an amazingly difficult skill to master — which is why the majority of these guys visit specialized therapists during the off-season — but it’s doable; what we seek in this example is nothing more than inspiration and motivation.)

So…

…yesterday, last week or month, or any previous year for that matter has just one purpose — to teach us something. This goes for everything (including beautiful memories) but particularly for our mistakes, defeats, losses, failures.

The lesson functions as the release valve that lightens the weight of the load we carry through our lives.

Of course, the instant question that pops up at this point is — all right, let’s assume you’re right, but how come that things keep repeating themselves, how come that I get to be in the same position again and again, or at least it appears to be so?

Pema Chödrön, an American Tibetan Buddhist, maybe gave the best answer there is: “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know... Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched.”

Come Christmas, and we, the gamblers, somehow, allow ourselves to be touched. Not only by religion or philosophy, though.

The Second, Ultimate Reason

Come Christmas — and the moment when we feel her head calmly residing on our chest or his strong and gentle arms around our thighs or we see our toddler sleeping between the two of us — we, the gamblers, remind ourselves that we play with fire.

Yes, we’re good in games we play, yes, it’s doable, yes, we take care, but at the end of the day, we only control so much as we gamble, which is, like it or not, sometimes very little. (Just as is the case with fire. Without it, humanity would never progress into where we are today. But, whenever we underestimate its powers, we read shocking headlines.)

And…

…say what you want, say what you will, cite GambleAware or UK Gambling Commission or the American Gaming Association or any other reputable and quite a necessary source, but when potential outcomes of our choices hit the fan, there’s just one lifeline we have while facing gambling abyss.

It’s love.

That lifeline is a kaleidoscope of her smiles or touches and his listening, showing up, paying attention. That lifeline is one kid looking at daddy or mummy, one parent calling us son or daughter, one brother caring for sister. That lifeline cannot be bought, let alone replaced, with any jackpot.

Come Christmas, and we get to feel it infinitely stronger than ever.

By allowing ourselves to be touched, we, the gamblers, also get to be reminded of such love, the only unconditional sensation human beings are capable to create.

We can run ultra-marathons, 100-hundred-milers, up to 65 years of age, but after that, we just can’t do it anymore. We can unconditionally love till our last breath.

Thus…

…we use the moment to realize that gambling is much more than just winning or losing. It’s about never forgetting those we love and those that love us.

Only love can remind us that no gambler can be a template for the other one. Instead, it can be the inspiration that serves as the paragon, a shining example on the hill of intelligence, hard work, education, discipline, and responsibility.

It’s irrelevant who it is, as long as such gambling foundations deliver the best balance of accretion and accrual in our learning, growing, and in the outcome, our earnings.

Gambling history is rampant with such stories, and one of the shiniest examples is Don Johnson.

Come Christmas, and we, the gamblers, get a chance to shrug our shoulders, smile, and say: what else is there?

Unconditional Affiliation, Too

At this time of year, we also get to laugh a lot. We get to remember all events that, no matter how serious they seemed to be at the time, are today so funny. Companies around the world tell tales and anecdotes on Christmas parties that put smiles even to I-don’t-do-laughs colleagues’ faces.

Gambling affiliates are no exception.

We remember our beloved Garfields that loathe getting up early, go by can’t-people-today axiom, are constantly in some kind of hurry, but are also masters of non-verbal communication with the heart of a gold, to have and to hold (indeed, Depeche Mode) as we pledge the unconditional acceptance.

We remember our Twitch heroes, pathfinders, and wonderful human beings having electrical fuses popping up like crazy during the shows for no reason whatsoever, and continuing as nothing happened.

We remember our content managers, software engineers, and writers in charge of Rogue Reports section of our website, who in the span of a bit more than sixty days from August to October experienced the invasion of online casinos’ piracy just as people feel heavy, pouring raindrops on faces — and theirs you shall not pass determination.

(Enjoy in this kumbaya moment while you can buccaneers, this week only, for you’ll feel our razor’s edge again in 2020.)

We remember our U.S.-based content leadership amid guidance, support, and ultra-fast publishing tempo — at the LCB Network, it equals to close to couple of hundreds notifications per day, which also explains why we so respect our Garfields — taking a time to feel for Walter Geoffrey the Frenchie, the lovely bulldog living his “best life in Meltdown City at the corner of Unstable and Emotionally Over Dramatic,” during his Who’s the Baby challenge. (Don’t laugh, it was serious!)

We remember our Australian command wing flying the crimson sky, Sun not being able to melt their wings that night (mhm, U2) nor ever, while huge hailstorm battered Down Under during July. To have such weather is not funny even today, but two of them were radiating light during their visit.

We remember no-mud-is-too-tough approach of all our engineers, on-the-fly reactions of our analysts, it’s-the-middle-of-the-night-and-I’m-working-so-what attitude of our Account Managers, virtual masterpieces of our designers, let-me-know-if-you-need-anything devotion of our leaders.

We remember everyone.

But most of all…

…we remember our community.

Come Christmas, and we get to be grateful for significantly more than 125,000 players that make up for everything we do at the LCB Network (all our websites included). We get to recall all smiles and cries we’ve experienced together because that’s all we have and nobody can take that away from us (exactly, David Ayer in Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day).

We yet again, for another year, get to remind ourselves that while gamblers don’t always have Midas touch in their online endeavors, at least here at LCB, we get our place under the sky that hides the night behind it and shelters us beneath what lies above, unblinkingly, stopping the giant maw to be revealed (of course, Bernardo Bertolucci in The Sheltering Sky).

For that…

…for the year behind us, for many more in front of us, for all the lessons and interactions, for all the moments, for the support and loyalty, for everything we’ve experienced together — we thank you, guys.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, may the luck shower you with choicest blessings in everything you do.

Keep rolling, spinning, throwing, hitting, standing, pulling hard. Keep growing, learning, improving. Keep celebrating life. Keep letting the light in and banishing the shade (naturally, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, Do They Know It’s Christmas?)

Above all, keep winning, as we intend to do.