Season of Joy, in spite of it all
I had another, new Christmas piece prepared, but I decided to recycle an old one. A person wouldn’t have to live under a rock this year to be unaware that it’s Christmas. Some folks have made it their mission to reconstruct this season to just another ‘holiday’. It won’t work for me. Even if we celebrated Christ’s birth at the time, spring, when experts tell us it probably happened, some people would cry ‘I’m offended’. Well, I’m exercising the freedom we enjoy to celebrate Christmas, not ‘holiday’. And I predict that next year, if Jesus tarries, all these ‘politically correct’ stores will go back to urging us to buy those Christmas presents, not ‘holiday gifts’.
Since next week is Christmas, I suppose it behooves a writer to produce a seasonal piece. Just to remind folks. Though anyone who doesn’t know it’s Christmas must live under a rock unequipped with radio, tv, cell phone, computer, or even Ipod. Heaven forbid.
Christmas comes each year to remind us that there is hope. We may not always feel it. Sometimes that unrelenting hype about ‘tidings of comfort and joy’ only makes us feel worse. But there it is. Emmanuel. God with us. Come to show us He understands what we humans endure. Children see that truth dimly, but sometimes more clearly than adults.
My grasp of the truth was rather fuzzy in my earliest Christmas memory. It was the first time my family lived in Alabama and I would have been about three years old. In fact, my own misty memory is probably enhanced because Mother reminded me of it regularly. We all gathered at Grandma’s house on Christmas Eve. She lived nearby, not over the river and through the wood, though. After dark Daddy donned Mother’s red jacket and played Santa Claus. We screamed and giggled and pretended to believe it really was Santa. (I probably did!)
My sister, Doris, two years older than me, and a couple of our young aunts, who were near her age, received baby dolls. So did I. But mine was a little tiny plastic job wearing just a diaper. Their dolls were larger and wore dresses and little slipon shoes. I was not happy and showed it, Mother said, by flinging the unsatisfactory dolly under a bed. But that was the breaks, and I had to play with my doll or not play at all.
I survived that first Christmas disappointment without permanent damage to my psyche. I think. There would be others. Those I survived also. Maybe some Christmas disappointments in a lifetime are a good thing. When we feel the joy, however fleetingly, we will realize it came with a price. Would any of us send our child, or near and dearest, to Death Row to take the place of even a person who appreciated it? Much less to replace one, or many, who spit on and cursed them?
So turn on the radio or tv and sing along with those well-loved carols we’ve heard at least a million times. Call someone on the cell phone and wish them a Merry Christmas, or send a cheery holiday greeting email from the cell phone(!) or your computer. Soon enough, it will all be over for another year. Though not all over, I hope. We’ll need some of this good will to greet those January mail deliveries.
©2003 Sylvia Nickels
