Oh Happy Christmas
Well, it’s a week to Christmas. It’s past time for me to complain about how early some stores put up their decorations or start playing the music of the season. It’s even past time to gripe about yet another version of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.
But it is time to talk about nostalgia. That’s what Christmas often seems to be about. We use the season to drag out idealized images of the past, to talk about when family was king, to hoist our glasses in traditional toasts and fill up our bellies with traditional roasts.
So what is it about Christmas that brings in so much more of days gone by than does Easter, or Halloween, or myriad other holidays? That was my question for God this week. And what did she say? She blames it on the movies. When we see George Bailey discover how loved he is, when we see Scrooge learn the importance of generosity, when we see that Red Rider Range Model Rifle gleaming in the store window, it takes us back. It takes us back not only to our own childhoods but to our parents’ and to their parents’ before them.
And God looks down and sees that it is good.
And for at least one night a year, we all get to live happily ever after.
No comments yet.