Season’s Leavings
Well, Christmas is over but still, somehow, it lingers. Okay, “somehow” is a little vague, let me be more specific. We’re at that point where the stores have mostly taken down their decorations but not quite everything is gone yet. I was in a hotel this weekend that still had their miniature village in a fake snowscape on display. I had lunch this week in a fast food outlet that still had a holiday pastiche painted in the windows. There’s a house down the street that still has its lights up, though it no longer turns them on.
And God looks fondly into my empty cookie tin and picks at the crumbs of homemade goodies that are now long gone.
I asked him why he doesn’t just wiggle his nose and refill the tin, or at least just recreate the cookie whose remains he’s picking over.
He told me that getting the cookie isn’t really what he’s after, getting the cookie wouldn’t complete the experience. Part of the experience, part of the holidays, is the nostalgia, the stirring up of still fresh memories. In this case the memories of recently-fresh baked goods.
Most of the time nostalgia is a dish best served cold, best experienced after the rough edge of time has sanded off the burrs and filled in the nicks and gouges, but God reminded me, while picking at the crumbs, that sometimes even fresh nostalgia can be pretty tasty.
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